Today we’d like to introduce you to Josh Cliffords.
Hi Josh, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Back in 2015, my wife and I founded a nonprofit organization in Europe to help refugees. During that time, we helped more than 10,000 people and spoke to as many as we could to learn something from their stories. We found that approximately 20% of them had left home because they didn’t have access to water, food, or medicine. So, we dug a bit deeper, and after a ton of research, we learned that roughly 35,000,000 people die annually around the globe because they lack access to what we believe should be a human right. I wanted to change that by somehow making saving a life, the environment, or an endangered species as simple as drinking a free beer or eating a free slice of pizza because if it were that easy, everyone would do it.
Fast forward to today, we have launched what will evolve into the world’s first free supermarket and our first product is free spring water in aluminum bottles and paper cartons. Our water is free because the packaging is the ad space. When you have that free product in your hand, if you feel like it, you can engage with the ads by scanning QR codes to collect coupons, watch videos, visit websites, shop, order food, donate, or download music, tv shows, movies, or videos games… you can connect anything that’s on the internet to our platform. But most importantly, ten cents from each beverage are donated to charity to build water wells for people in need. When you do the math, we only need 10% of Americans to save money and drink our free product so we can solve the global water crisis permanently.
Free water is just the first of our free products which will include groceries, clothing, medicine, smart devices/computers, transportation, travel, and more. Each product will include free local delivery and will also donate significant portions of the revenue to different charitable causes. All while earning much higher profit margins than can currently be achieved by selling similar goods today!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
In September 2017, I created three processes that would enable the free and profitable distribution of any product that is currently sold in a COSTCO, Target, or Walmart today. When I realized what I had created, the first thing I did was try to forget all about it because I didn’t want to rock the boat or have the world’s largest industries ie; big water, big sugar, big retail, big energy and all the rest who currently sell these products to come after me. And on top of all of this, I couldn’t type or use a computer. But eventually, I felt so guilty that I dropped everything and started working on this project 100 hours per week.
It was an uphill battle from the beginning and I had to recreate countless existing processes and systems that only existed due to folklore. There were thousands of “NO’s” and I was constantly told that it wasn’t possible, I was insane, and that the world’s largest companies will physically harm my family.
The pandemic made things that much more difficult, it became harder and harder to find people who will willing to risk their time to work for free in exchange for a slice of the pie, and my mother who was my biggest supporter passed away last December. During the lowest of the low times, all I wanted to do was quit, but I couldn’t out that same sense of guilt that got me started in the first place.
So we pushed forward and started to freely distribute freewater in Austin while making small sales B2B in other states. And with each beverage we handed out, opportunities started to present themselves. Eventually, we came up with the idea to share our project on TIKTOK and everything changed. The world started to reach out to us and lend any help they could. We have 30,000 people visit our website in the month of September alone and more than half of them left their emails or messaged us to express their support, get more info about our ad medium or investment opportunities. We were able to donate our first $5000 to Well Aware to help to finance our first water project at a school in Kenya and then our movement turned a magical corner and it was obvious that everything had changed. We are now in an amazing position because the worst possible scenario is that we become the MySpace of free groceries and another company puts us out of business by offering a better future free supermarket that donates more to charity than us. And if that happens, it was still worth the struggle. However, I will wager that we become the Amazon 2.0, “the free Amazon”, and that the world’s largest companies restructure their business models to compete in a truly free and democratized marketplace.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about FreeWater Inc?
We are a new type of advertising platform that uses free commodities as the vessel to get your message into your desired audience’s hands. It’s a complete 180 from the rest of the advertising industry because instead of inconveniencing or attacking people, we make them happy by saving them money, donating to charity, and we will never use plastic bottles. The platform creates the highest levels of PR and brand loyalty that can only be achieved when helping people.
The most unique attribute about our business is that it will evolve into a free supermarket and we are the world’s first negatively priced consumer product company since our products are free + a charitable donation. At the full realization, our members will receive free groceries, free local delivery, and profit-sharing which will equate to -150% off. All while earning higher profit margins than Amazon can earn by selling similar goods today.
Our first free vending machines and freewater truck prototypes will be on the streets of Austin in early 2022. Austin will be our testing ground to perfect our distribution models before we scale our D2C distribution to other states.
Free and negatively priced products enable new types of manufacturing and distribution models that are extremely green and efficient. We aim to produce the world’s first 100% hemp cartons and to be carbon neutral by 2025.
We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
Luck hasn’t played much of a role yet, but we are looking forward to making our own luck as we keep accomplishing more milestones and start expanding our platform into other types of free goods and services.
Contact Info:
- Email: info@freewater.io
- Website: www.freewater.io
Image Credits:
All images were taken by the FreeWater team
