Message on a bottle

BOULDER — Bottled water is big business. People all over the world buy it, carry it wherever they go and drink it in vast volumes. With the mileage they get, what better medium for advertising a business then on a water bottle label?

That’s what Roger Reed thought, when he founded H2LOGOS Inc., a Boulder-based company that designs full color labels on water bottles, featuring photographs, paintings and logos created to advertise businesses. Reed’s first year of putting messages on bottles rather than in them was a success, and, he hopes, just a taste of what is to come.

“Water is one of the world’s most popular drinks,” says Reed. “In bottles it’s also a great vehicle for advertising. We’ve been going a year now, and we’ve proved that it works.”

Reed’s client list includes many hotels, such as The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, Denver’s Inverness Hotel and Golf Resort, several Holiday Inns and the Boulder Marriott, as well as restaurants, cafes, shops, bowling alleys, fitness centers, theaters, cinemas and schools throughout Boulder County.

Personalized water bottles can be seen in doctors’ waiting rooms and the offices of lawyers and stockbrokers, at television stations, real estate offices and title companies, employment agencies, apartment complexes and insurance offices.

H2LOGOS’ bottles also are proving popular with people on the move, such as travel agents and car rental companies, and on buses, planes (International Jet Aviation) and trains. Ward Hicken, vice president for Coach USA/Ace Express in Colorado, says customized bottled water is often included as a complimentary service for passengers.

Although the company leads tours throughout the United States, the bottles are especially popular with Coach USA passengers visiting Colorado, because they have been advised to drink plenty of water in the higher altitude.

And the quality of the water is one of the main reasons it’s available to passengers on American Orient Express luxury trains, according to Judy Lew, the company’s director of hotel services.

“The water tastes good,” Lew says. “It’s a premier product, and we are a premier service. The bottled water is available to passengers in their rooms or with lunch boxes on the Antebellum South route which runs between Washington (D.C.) and New Orleans.”

The cost per bottle, including the artwork, printing full color labels and free delivery anywhere on the Front Range is “surprisingly comparable to non-private label brands,” says Reed.

His clients often resell the bottled water or give it away as a promotion or a thank-you present to their own customers.

Bottles are available in three sizes: 12 oz., 16.9 oz. and one liter and the minimum order is 20 cases (480 bottles). Costs increase for orders of limited run labels used at sporting events or other one-time occasions.

Before he embarked on this business, Reed had a successful 30-year career (10 spent in Boulder) as a marketing executive with Eastman Kodak Co. He retired from Kodak in 1995 and for a while worked with his wife Peggy, a RE/MAX Realtor broker, writing articles for the Internet about real estate and dabbling in marketing.

All that changed, however, when his old friend Bill Reineman called to ask Reed if he was interested in a business venture — the same one Reineman’s son Derek had started three years earlier in California, called the Chameleon Beverage Co.

“Derek was doing private labeling on a huge scale in California where they have their own graphics department, which does artwork for clients and a printing works. They are planning to expand right across the United States,” says Reed. “They asked me to start something similar in Colorado so I went to California at the end of 1997 to have a look. As soon as I got back I decided to duplicate the venture, and we were in business in Boulder by March 98.”

While upbeat about what’s on the outside of the bottles, Reed is just as enthusiastic about the quality of the water inside, which is supplied by the Chameleon Beverage Co. He describes it as pure alpine spring water from a pristine source high in the Sierra Nevada mountains. It is bottled in California and then trucked to Reed’s warehouse and labeling facility in Denver, where he can keep a close eye on business.

“Having manufacturing and distribution done here means I can keep a close eye on the customization process, ensure quality control and make certain my customers are well satisfied with what we give them,” says Reed. And apparently they are, because this year Reed is predicting he’ll ship at least 300,000 bottles, and he’s also considering starting similar ventures in New Mexico and Arizona.

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