FreeWater: the water revolution. A conversation with Albert Prewitt

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Sand, wind and wasteland. This was the old wild West. Thousands of miles traveled by cowboys and caravans of adventurers, with the American dream in their pockets, in the hope of finding luck. The sweet Pacific coast as the last landing, and a recurring sign placed at the entrance of sparse saloons to act as a mirage: it recited Free Meal, a soft deception of peace and refreshment on the dusty path. A hundred years later Milton Friedman, Nobel laureate and father of modern economics, unmasked it, explaining to the world the principle of opportunity cost: be careful, wayfarers, because free meals, q uite simply, do not exist. Because if in the wild West the plate of beans offered by the saloons paid itself off through the silver coins coming from whiskey and hay useful to put the horses back in force, it is since the dawn of time, Adam and Eve included, that there has always been a hidden price both for a succulent apple or for a sumptuous meal charmingly offered as a gift.

However, a doubt remains. If free meals do not exist, what about water? Can we trust a sign that says Free Water on the side of the road, or on top of a vending machine?
It is a startup founded in 2020 in Austin, Texas, where once there was only sand, wind and wasteland, to answer that it is possible to offer free spring water, as well as packing it in recyclable cartons or aluminium bottles for reuse. And not only that; for every bottle, FreeWater donates ten cents to charities to try and fix the thirst issue around the world.

It may sound like a joke, but in the United States it is already a reality. Although limited, so far, to North America. The brilliant idea, which once spread worldwide could help save the lives of over thirty-six million people who do not have access to water, came to Josh Cliffords, the unconventional entrepreneur as American newspapers have rebaptized him, whose inspiration have been visionary geniuses such as Nikola Tesla and Elon Musk. Cliffords began his career at nine, selling on the street fresh lemonade made by squeezing lemons from the tree in the garden. But young Josh soon realized that by offering it for free, he could have made more. He was able to attract buyers for his much more expensive baseball cards. A year later, in 1995, at the age of ten, he had already convinced his parents to invest in Microsoft, and in his early thirties he had already completed the tour of the Americas and Europe where in 2015, in Belgrade, he founded Save the refugees, a non-profit organization committed to helping migrants fleeing Eastern Europe via the Balkan route.

His partner and right-hand man Albert Prewitt sums up the story of Cliffords as follows: «Thanks to Save the refugees, Josh has come to help up to ten thousand people a year, but he soon realized that the non-profit system alone cannot last over time. “Otherwise the Red Cross would have already saved the world”, as Cliffords is used to say. This is why he decided to take a new approach through FreeWater. He wanted to make sure that donating to charity could be as easy as eating a slice of pizza, or taking a sip of water. Because, let’s face it, there is an underlying reason why non-profits are not always able to achieve their goals and it is because, when donations run out, they are forced to quit, to stop operating. They can no longer do anything about it. The FreeWater model is able to guarantee a continuous flow of money to invest in a quality non-profit with a high success rate, Well Aware, a specialized non-profit with a 100% success rate. Thanks to them we financed and built our first water supply system in Kenya, which captures rainwater, in an elementary school».

The trick is there, even if you can’t see it. Even without the victory of a Nobel Prize, Cliffords discovered it by giving away lemonades as a child. So, once he got older, he first turned Milton Friedman’s old mantra into free bottles of water do not exist, and finally he decided to revolutionize it for good. «We consider – Prewitt explains – our startup as the future of marketing. Quite simply, we turn the product packaging into an advertising space and we use the revenues coming from this ad to cover all production costs. And we believe this system can be applied to several consumer goods available today in shopping malls. In our ambitions, water is only the first of many products that, one day, could fill the shelves of real free supermarkets».
Imagine for a moment a world where the Free Meal and Free Water signs are replaced by Free Supermarket signs. There you are, now you are looking at the world from the same perspective as Cliffords and partners.

«We have been operating since 2021 and, so far, we have produced seventy thousand free bottles of water. As soon as we have demonstrated that this model is successful here in Austin – Prewitt argues – it won’t be too difficult to spread it not only in the States, but throughout North America. Our first target is Canada, where we have already made contact with some producers in order to have everything we need to start distribution». In fact, FreeWater is not the owner of the sources from which the bottled and distributed water comes, but quite simply it pays it at prices negotiated with the owners of the sources, yet it manages to offer it for free. This speaks volumes about the actual costs of bottles sold in supermarkets around the world, and it represents also the reason why FreeWater is a rather uncomfortable startup for its competitors. «The reason why nothing like this has ever been done before – Prewitt confirms – is that offering free water would not be in the interest of big brands like Nestlé and so on. The interest of the large production companies is rather to offer bottles of water at the cost of two or even three dollars, that is, two or even three thousand times the price of tap water. And drought and climate change are likely to drive up prices, making a primary commodity like water increasingly expensive. A basic necessity for which, in the future, perhaps wars will be fought».

Here are the premises that gave birth to the FreeWater enterprise. Offering advertising for one dollar a bottle, a price that rises for investors up to a maximum of one euro and sixty cents for aluminium models, with ten cents destined to build wells or water systems in developing countries. But how do they attract the advertising then found on the wrappers of the bottles? «Usually people notice us through social media, behind the project there is a lot of work coming from the marketing sector», Prewitt reveals, also explaining: «Once reached our website, those interested in advertising through FreeWater fill out a short questionnaire in order to be called back. We try to understand together what the customer’s objectives are and, based on the budget, we think about the amount and type of best bottles to achieve those objectives. We can deliver them to the customer, take them to shops, restaurants, cafes or distribute them by ourselves through guerrilla marketing campaigns on the busiest streets of Austin. That is only phase one of our startup. We will soon be launching our phase two: vending machines. Through an app on the phone anyone, scanning a �R code, will be able to pick up from our vending machines up to three bottles of water a day for free, after having seen three short video commercials».
And the videos of incredulous people receiving, on the streets of the United States, cartons and aluminium bottles of free spring water have gone viral on Instagram and TikTok. One of these was shot by Albert Prewitt himself, totalling nine million views: «Yes, it was just a girl who was jogging and to whom I handed out a bottle in order to cool off. At that point she stopped and started wondering why we were offering free water. We often publish videos with people’s astonished reactions. You know, when someone offers you something on the street, you tend to believe there is always a trick somewhere, but in the case of FreeWater the trick is nothing more than a different business model. Thus our social channels have dramatically grown – now we have almost 380,000 followers on TikTok – and this helps us a lot. When we give away a bottle explaining that it is the advertising on the packaging paying for it and that, by drinking it, they help us donate ten cents to charity, they simply stand open-mouthed».

According to Cliffords, Prewitt and the FreeWater startuppers, the calculation is simple: «Worldwide, eight hundred million people do not have access to drinking water, and forty million people a year die from this. We want to help build new water systems in these depressed areas. If only 10% of Americans, about thirty-three million people, would drink our free water, we would be able to end the global water crisis in a few years. In order to do this you need eight to ten billion dollars, but if thirty three million people in America would drink a bottle of our water even once a year, we would be able to donate three and a half billion dollars to charity».
It sounds like a political speech and basically, by choosing which advertisements have to be printed on its bottles, FreeWater constantly makes a choice of field. «In Austin – Prewitt warns – there is a large chunk of homeless population. In the past we have organized some events in collaboration with the Salvation Army, having religious and charitable organizations as clients whose target, if we can call it like that, is precisely represented by people in need».
It is therefore obvious that even the advertising revenue can turn into a matter of opportunity for those who want to act ethically, and the fact of being a startup does not change the approach. «We undoubtedly choose companies with a crystalline reputation» confirms Cliffords’ right-hand man, who points out: «We have never advertised messages with dubious morals or that could pose risks to people’s health, such as messages coming from the arms industry, and we have also taken into account the issue of political advertising. We will never convey blatant lies, or even defamatory, false or slanderous messages».

Aside from politicians, major companies such as Hewlett Packard, JP Morgan and the Hilton hotel chain have already contacted FreeWater. And overseas? «That’s the beauty of social media – Prewitt lights up – we have also been contacted by companies from Asia and Europe. We are still a newborn startup, but we do have big plans, and not just for America. For example, Air France recently contacted us about the launch of a new air link to the United States. But from Italy, the first phone call we received is indeed yours».

WEBLIOGRAPHY

Report on the scarcity of drinking water in the world:
www.water.org

World Health Organization, Children: Reducing Mortality, 2019:
www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/children-reducing-mortality

Simon Cocking, FreeWater aims to be the world’s first free beverage company, 2020:
www.irishtechnews.ie/freewater-worlds-first-free-beverage-company

Sara Cravatts, The Unconventional Entrepreneur Trying to Make Essential Products Free, 2022:
blog.hubspot.com/the-hustle/entrepreneur-trying-to-make-essential-products-free