How to sell fresh air. Seriously! Troy Paquette from Vitality Air cans and sells fresh air! | #400

Tim

I’d buy that. That’s a fair answer. It’s not easy today to find a unique product. I mean most things I think, have been invented but bottled air certainly is a new one. I understand that Moses your business partner, he started it was a mortgage broker in a previous life and for a joke started selling bottled air well actually not bottled air but bagged air on eBay.

Troy

Yeah, that’s how it started. We thought well, we’ll give it a go and we’ll start with putting a bag on eBay and see. The first bag sold for like 99 cents. It wasn’t a very good business venture because I think it cost us like nine bucks to ship. The business 101 we kind of didn’t make it on that one but the second bag sold, I don’t have a number on me. I think it was about 160 dollars US.

Tim

Get out of here!

Troy

Also, that one we actually made money on then we ship that one down in the States.

Tim

Why the difference? What did you do differently to get 168 dollars vs. 99 cents?

Troy

Not a lot different. We used a bigger bag. So, there was a little bit more there. Yeah but it’s eBay, sometimes you get top dollar for stuff and sometimes you don’t. That’s online marketing, you never know who is going to be on their computer that day and find something interesting.

Tim

At this point where you just you and Moses just mocking around. Or are you seriously testing the idea on eBay

Troy

A little bit of both. I think much like anything, it’s kind of like wouldn’t it be funny and don’t you think wouldn’t it be cool to give people experience. I wonder if this would work. And it was a little bit of both. I guess one would say. Everything kind of starts as a crazy idea right.

Tim

Cool. Yeah, absolutely. And from what I read Moses was sort of over his career in mortgage broking you’re a commercial diver by trade looking for a bit of an entrepreneurial bent.

Troy

Pretty much yeah. And I also was in real estate as well so that’s how I know Moses too. So, you know each other on the business side too. So again, both of us you know, I always joke with my wife. I always say I never know what I want to be when I grow up so might still haven’t found it.

Tim

Might join the club. I’m just wondering when I got a grow up. Tell me I do want to get into the product and the marketing of air. I never thought I’d say that but just for my benefit and for those listening who are still in that cynical phase of come on these guys are joking around. I found a quote by a Greenpeace representative to say and I quote “Unfortunately we need about 20 cubic meters or twenty thousand one-liter bottles of air every day.” So, bottled there is hardly a long-term solution. I’m not sure if he’s having a go at it he’s just putting some numbers around it but I reckon there’d be a lot of people who just look you in the face and look you in the eyes and go you guys you’ve got to be kidding yourself you ripping people off. What do you say to them

Troy

We always say it’s a lifestyle. It’s a treat so it’s something that you know you could treat yourself. So, for instance you can make coffee at home but a lot of people love to go out and experience a higher level of coffee. You can get water out your top and put it in a bottle. Yet people like to buy it on the go and try water from different places in the world so it is more of not solving the world’s pollution problems by any means. It’s just something to treat yourself something different that you can try and explain.

Tim

You say it’s a lifestyle product decision I guess is what you’re saying there but from a lot of the collateral on your website you do talk about the fact that and I think you quite China a lot. Beijing in particular that has pollution and smog rates off the charts. I mean I was in Shanghai last year and there was one day when they actually suggested don’t go outside. So is it a lifestyle solution, this bottle of air or is it a genuine health remedy

Troy

We have to be a little bit careful obviously with trying to make any kind of health claims so we’re not going to say you know, come on breather it’s going to cure anything. On the other hand, breathing clean air versus polluted air obviously has a positive effect. But it’s like those days in Shanghai where you just can’t get a break, you just can’t get your wind about you and you could literally instead of where some countries they go outside for a smoke first cigarette. You could stop and have a can of fresh air and you just inhale it and it’s more of a cool deep breath and it’s not not thick. Some of us have experienced in Shanghai it’s hard to explain when you come from a country with great air and you go somewhere like that it’s just, it’s thick, I don’t know how to explain it.

Tim

Yeah, I get it man because I live in Melbourne where our water is beautiful. I mean it is great water. Yet I’m sure like every other city bottled water sales are very high and I like I don’t get it. And I buy the odd bottle of bottled water but I don’t really understand it and I guess until you live in a country in your case where the air is not good. You can sell fresh air to them. It’s starting to make sense in my mind. So, tell me, you get your second sale on eBay one hundred sixty-eight U.S. dollars. You and Moses have looked each other in the eye. Couple of high fives I’m guessing. Well what was the next step

Troy

Well the next step is we realized that we needed to try and create more. So, you need greater volume because at the end of the day you open this bag there comes out a kind of deflate. So, we had to put our minds together and come up with something that we could capture the air in it, it would be smaller for shipping purposes while still having more volume inside of it. So that’s where we came up with the cans that we currently use.

Tim

So, you literally gone from the bag to we’re going to put this into aerosol cans. So, explain the process, is not really the manufacturing. Explain the bottling process.

Troy

So, what it is we go to Banff park areas out to the Rocky Mountains. So, we go right out there the two of us. We spend anywhere from about 20 to 40 hours collecting there depending on how big our orders are or what not. We go there we capture the air, we bring it back and then we hook it up and we fill all the bottles by hand. When it comes to filling we have some people that come in and help us depending on order size

Tim

That all sounded very easy. Two questions how do you capture the air when you’re out in the Rockies

Troy

Well that’s the trade secret. Moses is in the back of the truck and I drive fast.

Tim

Come on give us a little bit more. Okay, you’re not going to tell us exactly how but.

Troy

Basically, you know we collect that, we vacuumed it up, we compress it, we put it in two bigger cylinders that we can bring back and then transfer across.

Tim

So, you got these condensed. It’s in these big cylinders. And then back at the ranch, back at the factory vitality is HQ, you then hand I don’t know the language is, dispensed into these aerosol cans. Right

Troy

Correct. We transfer from the bigger cylinders into the aerosol cans and then that way to it straight across is not exposed to the air, not contaminated and things like that. And we’re not trained to produce cans out in the market that are in a safe clean dry facility.

Tim

Do you still see the humor in it, Troy?

Troy

I absolutely. I mean you got it all the time right. My family always teases me and says well you know what. When we have a kind of sales or anything like, well you should be able to sell anything, you sold air. So, if you could sell air, you could sell anything.

Tim

Totally. So okay so you go out to these places, you don’t just go out to the Rockies. Where else do you source your air from?

Troy

Well for us it’s about a three or four-hour trip into where we go. We have a couple different locations that we go in to. And then we collect the air there depending on the time of the year and what not. In the winter it’s a little bit trickier because the mountains get a lot of snow. So, our spots are a little bit harder to choose from but we always go and collected from them

Tim

So, you’re actually you’re not going out into other parts of the world. It was more what I was getting at.

Troy

Well currently vitality air is out of bounds in Alberta Edmonton. And then we have another sister company that we’ve created in South Korea and that’s called Jeery Air. So, we’re actually collecting air from a national park in South Korea, in the southern part of South Korea. So down there we’ve partnered with the local government and some other people down there and we’ve created another line of air called Jeery air.

Tim

Why South Korea because it’s close to a distribution point into China or because the actual air in South Korea which I can’t imagine is very good?

Troy

In the park that the National Park where it is, the air isn’t as bad. It’s definitely some of the cleaner in Asia. But it was just the opportunity the Korean people’s seen interest. The Korean people worry about their health. They like different products. They wanted to be a part of this and to be able to share some of the Korean experience in to China as well because sometimes it’s not always about the product, it’s about the story behind it right. So, for instance it may not just be all a can of air but if you look into it, I mean if you looking around on our website and you see that you know there’s these two guys and they go out into the mountains and you’ve got pictures on Instagram and Facebook and you see what they go through just to get this kind of air. There is a bit of experience around it and then you realize this air actually is transferred from one side of the world to the other where you get to actually sample it. And there are unique smells like the pine that we have here is much different than what we were reporting in Korea. There is a tiny bit of a different smell if you actually did a side by side taste test per se.

Tim

Seriously? So that was my next question because I’m looking at your product range and it’s pretty significant on the vitality dot com website. I mean you have got. We’ll discuss that in a minute because it’s not just it’s not just canned air from a local area that you’re selling, you got a whole lot of different things. But if I was to get one of your cans of vitality air it comes with some kind of little face mask that you attach to the top and breathe it in. Am I genuinely going to smell pine needles? I don’t know is it going to be that different?

Troy

There is a difference. There absolutely is a difference. I don’t know about yourself in Australia, you can actually tell the difference say from one side to the other or the beach area. There is, for us it’s so amazing. Anybody who drives out to the mountains in this area that is surrounded by trees they literally just sit there and go you know and just take it in.

Tim

Totally. Absolutely. In real life, there’s no doubt. I live down near the beach and I know that beach smell that salty air. It’s wonderful if I go up into the hills it’s a completely different vibe to the air. I get that but for you to capture that and it can, I mean I find that incredible. That’s just your secret sauce obviously. So, you’ve got this range. I’m assuming that with the pure vitality year you add nothing to it. Tell me if I’m wrong but then you have other things like vitality essentials in which there is just clicking on that now but you’ve got like sleep and energy and what else have you got there

Troy

There’s sleep energy, tantra, allergy, stress.

Tim

So, you’re adding an essential oil or something. Is that what you’re doing

Troy

Correct. We’re working with some different things. So, at first you know, like we said it was a bit of a joke slash interest, let’s just see how it all. But then you know you have to go, okay this is selling so we need to create a business. You can’t just carry say canned them. So then the next thing was to also carry oxygen. So recreational oxygen. So that’s on our Web site too. And then from there we’ve just been kind of brainstorming what else is out there, what else could we do and that’s where we came up with the essentials and then the other thing that’s very famous in the Canadian Rockies is our water. So being able to create a mist that allows you to spray you know Canadian rocky water on your face and we have organic sulfur mixes while also experiencing the two combines together.

Tim

What do you think about, I love a niche. Boy oh boy is this a niche. But what do you think about over the course of time being dragged into these different areas like oxygen, like mists. Maybe one day you’ll do water. Do you think that’s a smart business move or are you better off just being known worldwide for the best canned air going around?

Troy

I think it is. It’s a balancing game I think you have to be careful that you’re not just that one person doing the one product because eventually something else is going to come along. I don’t know. I’m trying to think what we could really compare it to. I don’t know if you ever remember the data machine. Yeah, I don’t know about that but you know the data machine they patent it and they secured it and it became that nobody else could do anything. They only did that one thing that data machine in that department. And for them they just pigeonhole themselves so nobody else could get into the game. So, I think it’s important to give yourself some diversity to not stray too far away. Where we’re not interested in going and making rubber boots tomorrow.

Tim

Come on I’ll hold you to that.

Troy

Okay but you know what, maybe if the rubber boots come filled with Canadian air then man you would know.

Tim

Now you’re talking. That could be the answer to the suspension system. Pure Canadian air, you’ll never walk better anywhere. Tell me I’m talking to Troy Paquette

Troy

Yes, it’s Troy Paquette

Tim

Yeah, I’m talking to Troy Paquette. He’s one of the co-founders of Vitality Air which is canned air that comes out of the beautiful BAMF area in Canada. Troy, how do you go about pricing air

Troy

Well we basically took our time, took our product, decided what our time is, what times worth, supplies, and basically came up with a price and we have established what the price is. One might argue it was just pulling it out of thin air but we used our brains to come up with it.

Tim

Okay so time and equipment and all that. It looks to me, well what’s the typical price. Just give us a sense of what a can cost.

Troy

So currently a can is thirty-two dollars and can be viewed on our website.

Tim

So, I think you’ve kind of factored in I’m going to say a luxury text because you wanted to be seen, you mentioned earlier the word lifestyle, you’re sort of positioning it I’m guessing as a premium purchase?

Troy

Correct. Yeah.

Tim

Okay. So, there is the argument and again you’re in business and you’ve made a business decision but the people who need this the most are the poor people in the developing countries. Who are particularly affected by smog. They’re not going to be able to purchase this?

Troy

Correct. Like you said it is a business decision. It’s something that we chose to do. I think in some ways, you know bringing awareness to it. It does bring awareness to people around the world that if somebody can sell Air. So, part of me thinks you know sometimes that maybe bringing that awareness, brings light and maybe in turn, who knows maybe that makes people look closer about what their carbon emissions are what it is they’re doing. I don’t know, right. I’m one guy who has a business and you know I think that everything has a bit of a ripple effect and sometimes people say you know what this is crazy. We’re selling canned air we need to we need to create a committee or something like that to look at this pollution and how we can narrow it down, right.

Tim

Yeah. Fair call. You can’t do everything, a fair answer. Eight liters. Thirty-two dollars. How many gulps of air does that get me

Troy

It gets you about a hundred and eighty-one second breaths.

Tim

One hundred eighty-one second breaths Okay. Okay so that would probably last me about half an hour. What I love too is, look at your website. You’ve got eight-liter Banff air with diamonds, nine and a half thousand dollars with diamonds plus signed by 2chainz who is a what like an American rapper?

Troy

Yeah and he’s got a TV show as well. It’s very unique expensive product.

Tim

For twenty thousand dollars. What are the diamonds add to the experience Troy?

Troy

Well, sometimes diamonds. I don’t know you have to ask my wife. It makes everything better they say.

Tim

Have you sold that 8 liters can of air with diamonds for nine and a half thousand dollars

Troy

Not yet. I haven’t finished talking to you. So maybe there’s a way we can sell this yet today.

Tim

Man, I would love to have it. I’d love the show to be responsible. Funnier things have happened to guests on the show let me tell you. Talk to me about distribution you have an online store and e-commerce play which is where I’m guessing the majority of sales come from. But then you also have distribution points in a few countries around the world, is that correct

Troy

Correct so we have we’ve started to change gears a little bit and work more with distributors and not with them. We have people in the local countries and cities. And it’s a lot easier than trying to deal with stuff here in Canada. So that’s kind of been our shift is to try and get to work with distributors and different investors and stuff like that to get our product out there.

Tim

How do you how do you go about finding someone? I interviewed a fellow a few months ago who has a product called Power planter. It’s an e-commerce store it’s basically a drill bit that you’re attached to your drill, drills a little hole in the ground and makes it very easy to plant seeds and bulbs and in the first ten months when I was by the time I’d spoken to him, he’d done one point eight million dollars in sales. He has an amazing story head a very, very focused web site and he was keeping it that way in terms of an e-commerce play. And the way he’d found Power Planter was that he’d approached the man, the creator of it, the inventor of it out of the states and bought the license to sell it in Australia. Is that how you’re finding distributors in other countries are they approaching you or are you reaching out?

Troy

Most of them are approaching us. So, we’ve had a fairly good run here with different media and exposure on different platforms. So, a lot of people are out there looking to get into the next thing and possibly look at opening their own business and finding products to sell and the most of them are approaching us and saying hey you know we think we would be a good candidate to sell your products and here’s why.

Tim

Okay well it’s good. I notice there is, you’ve got some not really competition but someone is set up in Australia I’m just trying to find what they called. But there is an Australian version of canned air these days. Have you been in contact with any of your competitors

Troy

We know there’s competitors out there and it’s kind of interesting because you know if this idea is completely asked the wrong completely crazy, it wouldn’t be the competitors out there right. Yeah, they’re out there. We think we’re the premiere company, we’re the first company and we feel like we’re leading the charge and the rest are trying to keep up and follow suit. It’s good and bad it can be frustrating because we find you know, let’s say we create the can in the mask and next thing you know, everybody used that. We’ve created a website and I can read our website and other people’s websites. So, it’s frustrating that there’s no creativity their complete cut and paste right there. They try and ride on our coattails and I guess maybe that’s what happens when you’re the first.

Tim

So, you’ve got two choices there. You can either go after them or you can continue to tell your story and do your work better. What do you choose to do?

Troy

That’s what we’re doing. We choose to plug it head right. We’re the first ones to come out with all of the canned air and that’s what people have done. So, we shifted gears and we started doing the oxygen and some of the people started doing oxygen and we’re like Well that was that was eight months ago we were already on the essentials right. As you know we’re working on other products too so we’re constantly trying to grow and keep building and we’ve seen some of the people that think it’s really easy and they’ve popped up and they’re already gone. Right.

Tim

Let’s talk marketing. Most of the discussions have been around marketing already but no one I’m guessing, is going to Google and keying in “buy canned air from Banff” or even “buying canned air”. I’ve just done it here and what’s popping up is air compresses, compressed air, duster cleaner, you know anything but the type of canned air that you are selling. So how are you getting customers?

Troy

On social media. So, we do a lot of social media. We’ve been very lucky with individuals like yourself reaching out different media platforms. We’ve done numerous interviews all over. Our products been featured on talk show like The Doctors. We did the 2chainz show. So, we’ve been really lucky with that along with just you know some of the different Facebook marketing and word of mouth and it just being such a unique product, people are willing to share it.

Tim

When you say social media tell me more. So, you post photos of you and Moses going up into the mountains and doing your thing that’s interesting behind the scenes always works. What are you running Facebook advertising campaigns or are you using other? What are you doing

Troy

We don’t really do much of the campaigns. There’s a little bit here and there but not anything dramatic. I mean we get tons of those calls you know the Google AdWords people and the different social media people saying you know are you going to spend here. But I think the product so uniquely you said who googles fresh breathing canned air, right? I don’t even know how to buy that Google Ad.

Tim

Right. So, it’s really just an organic approach to social media. And I would have to say, that obviously I found you by watching that 2Chainz show on vice. That’s how I found you guys. That’s a strategy that’s going to wear thin and I imagine relatively shortly, you know back then canned air. It was new and it was novel and people wanted to know more about it. Now that you’ve got competitors coming on the market, that idea of news podcasters, news stations whatever it is reaching out may dry up, what next

Troy

Yeah, we’re aware of it and you know we’re blessed and we kind of count our blessings with that you know, that we’re still getting the attention of the media and we’re trying to ride on it. And you know from there I think it’s just word of mouth. So, people look and then and from there with the local distributors putting it out on the platforms and putting it out on different online sites. Customers are looking for unique guest. Customers are out there looking for alternatives and they’re able to find it on a lot of different platforms throughout the world whether it be you know some of the different ones out there

Tim

What do you love about the business, Troy

Troy

It’s ever changing. It’s creating new things and creating new equipment. So, when we first started there wasn’t exactly something you go by to create canned air. So, for me it’s been a lot of just building unique equipment and building different things and I’m very much a hands-on guy. So, I love to be out there in the wilderness and I love to be in the shop building stuff and inventing stuff and you know we bring products home for our lives all the time and we say give it a try and they look at us like we’re nuts in this My kids always have a blast like Dad can I try this one, wants this one. So, we’re always involved in family. I have fun doing it

Tim

It sounds like you’ve found something that you truly love. A thought just came to me just finishing up, going back to pricing. I subscribed to Dollar Shave Club. That’s where I get my blades for shaving. It’s a recurring revenue model. It works, my blades arrive each month and I don’t have to think about it. I would have thought given 180 gobs of air in one can probably won’t last that long is a reason you’re not doing a recurring subscription model?

Troy

At this point we just honestly haven’t set it up. We just haven’t done it. I know there’s stock. We talk about all this stuff and unfortunately Moses and I sometimes we talk and we get caught and we’re all over here and we have all these ideas and we just need to narrow it down to that monthly subscription and stuff like that. We do have clients that are somewhat on a subscription but we don’t really advertise it so we have clients that just about every three weeks they get their orders there. We follow up with them but we don’t actually advertise they come monthly. A monthly club per se.

Tim

I would have thought and give me a buzz when you do implement it. I would have thought it would be a business game changer. Because this is the nature of the product and the way people use it but I would have thought it’d be a priority but hey what would I know I’ve never sold a can of air in my life. Who has? You

Troy

We’re still learning!

Tim

Troy thank you. And if we make a sale of that nine and a half thousand-dollar eight-liter bottle of Canned air with a diamond as a result of this show, I look forward to receiving a free can myself with a diamond. I love it. vitalityair.com is where you will find this product. Do you deliver to Australia?

Troy

No, we typically can’t get it over to Australia.

Tim

Because we’ve got good air over here we don’t need it.

Troy

You do. But hey what’s wrong with experiencing canned one as well. That’s why you don’t have to fly to the other side. We can ship some of our natural product straight to your doorstep.

Tim

Good on your Troy thanks for sharing buddy.

Troy

Ah thank you very much.