 This is Startup Storefront. About a year ago, NFTs were all anyone could talk about. Mark Cuban, Justin Bieber, and Jimmy Fallon each spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a particular variety of NFTs, called Board Ape Yacht Club. Seth Green also bought in and began writing a TV show around his ape, while in Long Beach, a fast food restaurant opened up called Board and Hungry, using the Board Ape Yacht Club IP. Since then, the news concerning NFTs has not been great. Seth Green lost his ape in a fishing scam and a stock market downturn plunged the budding crypto boom into a crypto winter, sending NFT prices tumbling along the way. While many chalked up the NFT crazes nothing more than a flash in the pan, there were those who still saw the potential in the technology. Our guest today is one such person, who saw the communal aspect of NFT ownership as a feature to be harnessed. Today we talk with Andrew Bagg, the co-founder of Ape Water. We discuss how they're building a business that is not tied to the turbulent NFT markets, how Ape Water cans are similar to Wheaties boxes, and how Ape Water uses Web 3 technology to give their consumers more than just to refreshing beverage. All right, welcome to the podcast on today's show. We're talking to Andrew from Ape Water. Thanks for joining. For people who don't know what your company does, what do you do? What are you working on? Yeah, we are Ape beverages. Ape Water is our first product and we are the water of the future, the water for the next generation. We feature some of the top IP in the world on our can, and Web 3 is a big initiative. When you have access to Ape Water, you unlock the magic of Web 3. How did you first get into this concept and so were you a CPG guy in the past, or was it like you were introduced to this via Web 3, via the board APEA club? What was the thing that you said, okay, I think we have the ability, the concept, the idea, maybe to start a company around water, CPG? What was the first thing that you were introduced to? Was it just the Web 3 component? I mean, there's a lot of variables. I've had a kind of a untraditional path. I was a touring DJ. I used to headline 300 shows a year, roughly for like over a decade across, mostly North America. And essentially, when you're a DJ, my job is to get people to drink more. So I've always understood consumption habits. And the thing is, I don't like to drink. So I'm a water guy by virtue. You don't drink. I have no desire. It's not that I'm like, was AA or anything like that. It's just, it does, it's not my thing. It just doesn't, I just get sick when I drink. And so for me, I understand that the real mechanism in drinking is just a way to socialize and create connection, right? And so water has always been my go-to beverage of choice. And I also started a company called Drink City 12 years ago. I'm really dating myself, which was like group on for bars. We would sell the excess capacity of venues and give you 50% off your first $50 spend. So I started learning a lot about, you know, the challenges with new beverages, you know, gaining, educating the market. And formulated beverage is inherently very challenging. I wouldn't recommend anyone getting into it. It's an absolute, like you're pretty much guaranteed to almost fail. Like it's just the failure rate is tremendous. Whenever you have a formulated beverage, it's just the starp cost is high. The education is high, et cetera. But everyone needs water. And so I had this passion for water for a long time. During the pandemic, I started a company with my co-founder called American Bottling. And we were selling the excess capacity of factories in America to do sanitizer deals. And at first I thought, oh, look, I'm part of the solution. I'm doing something. You know, my background, as I said, I was a DJ. I have a record label. I was in music. And all of a sudden I didn't feel too inspired to make music. And it felt kind of hedonistic and ephemeral in nature at the time when the world was in an uncertain place. And so American Bottling was forming my co-founder. And then I had an existential crisis. I said, wait, I'm not in the sanitizer business or a solutions business for the pandemic. I'm in the plastic business. Oh, no. I'm solving one problem, but worsening another. Correct. And so initially we were having conversations of, well, how can we maybe find a biodegradable plastic solution? We start talking to groups around the world. We've got technology. We realize that biodegradable plastic is not actionable yet because the cogs are too expensive. So plastic is essentially here to stay for the foreseeable future, 10, 15 years. We were looking at glass. Glass is too heavy. Glass breaks. So glass doesn't work. And then through a series of unforeseen events, I started developing a greater passion for water. It's a much longer conversation. Sure. But ultimately when aluminum seemed like a really actionable receptacle. So we knew we want to do a water product in aluminum, but we didn't necessarily have a product market fit. And so when it comes to Web 3, I got into Bitcoin in Ethereum in 2017, early but still late. And then NFTs come out first with CryptoPunks. And I was introduced to CryptoPunks when they were at $40,000. I said $40,000, oh man. I missed the boat on that one late again. And I was dismissive about NFTs. But I recognized since that was the first PFP project that that was here to stay. Everyone remembers Neil Armstrong. No one remembers the fourth person on the moon, right? It's like, OK, that one has- I didn't even know there was a fourth person on the moon. Exactly. Exactly. And then Board Ape Yacht Club comes around. And I start to see that has a lot of enthusiasm. At this point, maybe Board Ape Yacht Club was at now $40,000, $50,000, $60,000. And CryptoPunks was now hundreds of thousands, if not several, trading at a million plus. And again, I was dismissive. And I was like, hmm, I just don't get it. And that's where I had to humble myself and say, wait, there's something here I don't understand. I need to take a look at it. And that's when I recognized that the key mechanism for why Board Ape Yacht Club was having so much enthusiasm, beside it just being a cool project, was the ability for the individual holders of the PFP to exploit their likeness of their character for commercial use with no limitation. And that's when a light bulb went off. I said, ah, there's a community component here. And finally, the concept of community in Web 3 really resonated with me. And because I was trying to figure out beverage, I just kind of, as, again, being a DJ, you blend things together. I blended everything that I knew. And the opportunity that my co-founder and I identified was to trademark the word Ape in the category of beverage non-alcoholic, specifically products derived from water. So when we trademarked the word Ape, that was January 22nd of 2022. So almost a year ago to the day, and it felt like a lottery ticket, we couldn't cash quite yet. Because the insight was, if it was Board Zebra Club or Board Beaver Club or Board Giraffe Club, I don't think it necessarily would have resonated. But the word Ape, I think, had this final level of truffle salt seasoning on the IP. And to me, the word Ape in Board Ape Yacht Club was just another one of those. Ten years ago, there was bathing Ape. Before that was Planet of the Apes. There's other derivative type of Ape projects that are very successful in the zeitgeist, like Donkey Kong, King Kong, et cetera. So I'm like, wow, this is a really great opportunity to really focus on the value proposition of the word Ape. And beverage, you have Gatorade Gator, you have Red Bull Bull. So we just saw a really interesting opportunity to propagate the word Ape, leveraging the Board Ape Yacht Club community. I didn't own an Ape at the time, nor did my co-founder. And that was an interesting decision too. We said, well, should we go buy an Ape? And then again, playing to the sensibilities of the community, we said, maybe better if we feature the most thoughtful community leaders in Web 3 that own Apes and feature them on the can. So we start to license some of the most famous Apes on our can. And that's how the business started. So this is a licensed Ape? This is a licensed Ape. And I didn't have to look far. This is my next door neighbor. There you go. That's nice. Yeah, his name's Luke and Nets. He's an incredible entrepreneur and thought leader in the space of Web 3. His background, he started doing drop shipping, self-made millionaire when he was 18, 19 years old. And he's also the CEO of Pudgy Peng Wednesday, which is a top PFP project. Oh, there you go. Yeah. And at this point, have you developed or figured out the solution of the water or is that later in the story? Oh, great question. And I love the Ape thing, by the way, like the trademarking of Ape. I mean, that's special. That's a secret sauce that is really interesting as you execute. And I assume this is the one iteration of, I don't know, 30, 40, 50. It's limitless, right? It's limitless. But also, thank you for that. To me, why we really like the word Ape with this particular project is we're also a sustainable company, right? We're anti-plastic. And so the idea is to create the messaging where someone associates with being an evolved ape versus a de-evolved human. That's funny. Yeah. So we kind of are winking with the audience. It's a great story, also, branding sticky. Yeah. And so we really want to create community and culture. And so where are the people who drink ape water identify as an evolved ape along with us? And we're aping into the future. Aping is an adjective, right? You ape into Bitcoin. You ape into Web3. You ape into sustainability. You ape into Apewater. Aping into sustainability. Yeah. And that just means like you're going all in, right? You're going all in. Yeah, you're taking a leap of faith, basically. Positive leap of faith with an outcome that is one that benefits the collective consciousness, right? It's not a selfish endeavor to ape it. So in respect to the water, maybe a month prior, I'm usually not good at dates. But for some reason with this project, the dates stick out. It was probably December 23, December 24, 2021. I'm getting ozone therapy because I have COVID light. I have some symptoms, but it's nothing that severe. And I'm at this shamanic person's house. It's strange because it's deep in the mountains of Malibu. It's like a cabin. It has a farm. And you're just sitting at this picturesque thing. I'm sitting there. I'm just making small talk with the facilitator. And I see she has a five-gallon jug of water. I say, oh, yeah, I know that brand. That brand is Mound Valley Spring, which is a popular spring from Arkansas that's delivered in glass here in California. And the facilitator says, Mound Valley Spring, that water's shit. I spent 120 bucks a month getting Mound Valley Spring and I thought I gained the best water in the world. She says, no, this water is special. It comes from Mount Shasta, California, which is the root chakra of the earth. I almost died on a vision quest, by the way. On Shasta? On Shasta, maybe two years prior as well. So there's a lot of like- So there's a connection between you and that mountain already. Already, yeah. In the form of a near-death experience, literally. And that's another comfort story as well. There's many layers to this stun pack. And so I go, oh, that's interesting. I'm in a Shasta, yeah. And she's like, I know a person. She has a private label business. She goes up in a truck once a month. She has about 100 clients. She fills it up in five gallon jugs and I'm one of her clients. I said, oh, I like to talk to her and I call her up. I realize it's a one-man band. I said, oh, man, I don't wanna depend on my water on one person. But it was interesting to learn about the water and how incredible this water is. People from all over the world, they have a program to Mount Shasta specifically to see this water and drink this water because they believe this water is the fountain of youth. And they just bring whatever they can. Oh, yeah. Any sort of bottle. Free fill, yeah. So if you go there. And it's like a waterfall. It's like coming off the rocks. Yeah, so what's actually happening is the water goes through a 60-year filtration process where it goes from the top of the glacier through these crystallized caves where it's exposed to no sun during that period of time and naturally filters through the cave to create the perfect alkalinity, pH, and mineral profile and then it shoots up the ground like oil shooting out of the ground in Texas. And the efficacy of the spring of how it goes through this particular process, natural filtration, so I guess you can call it organic water. There's no additional processing. It just, you know, what you get in ape water literally just comes out the ground. We do hit it with UV light when it goes in just to kill any bacteria. And then that's it, and then we seal it. How do you get it though? So you literally go up there with this individual? That individual who had the private water business, she calls me out the blue like a month later and says, Andrew, I really want you to help me with my business, et cetera, et cetera. And I said, I'm a record label guy. I'm not, still, this was, I was just, you know, playing with the idea. This is not something I was, You're getting a calling here, okay. Something's happening, right? Something's happening, yeah. And I say, you know what? My co-founder's a CPG guy. Let me just, you know, hand it off to him because I don't just want to turn her away. And he had a talk with her and so all of a sudden she gets a sense, she's had a sense of me. She has had a sense of my co-founder. A couple more weeks go by, she calls me late one night and says, Andrew, I had to pull off the side of the road. I'm just coming down from chess. I just had to download. And the vision is, you need to buy this water. Somehow you need to involve this water. You need to get involved, et cetera, et cetera. I had a vision basically from spirit, God, whatever you want to call it, like some energetic insight. I was dismissive at first, even though I'm into all of those things. I, you know, for me, when I receive kind of pings, if you want to call it that, and I need to have it happen in multiple ways. Otherwise, you know, I just dismiss it as, you know, me kind of trying to color what I'm seeing with a degree of subjectivity. But when it happens in ways in which there is consistency and replication, then I'm like, oh, maybe there's something, a greater intelligence that's guiding me somewhere. And that's my, that's my knowing system. And it's just, we kept getting drawn back to Shasta. And ultimately we decided to get into the water business. We didn't even consider Shasta initially. Some of our investors were dismissive about the quality of the water. It doesn't matter about the water. Most waters municipal tap water. It's crap, it's quick, it's fluoride. It's written right on the side of the packaging. Yeah, so when you see pure water, that's actually fake news. Pure water is municipal tap water that's in process. It's not, you want to see spring water. Huge difference. Pure water bad, spring water good. Correct, okay. And then also there's other variables when it comes to water that are misnomers or marketing. For example, when you see high alkalinity, like 9.5 pH, that's actually terrible. You don't want to be overly alkaline. You want to be Goldilocks alkaline. Because too much alkaline creates calcium buildup in lead pipes, for example. Who knows what it does to humans. It's not like any. So what's the Goldilocks number that we should be looking for? 7.7 is the number. Anything in the zone of 6.7 to 7.7 is kind of the zone. That would be considered like balanced alkalinity. You want to be balanced. Water tends to go through these cyclical cycles of trends. So we've been in a pH trend cycle. And again, it makes sense. You see 9.5, like, oh, 9.5 out of 10. That sounds like an A. I'll take that, right? It's just, it's just- It's out of 14. Exactly. And then- It's just a science class that they slept through. Yeah. That's how I think about it. Right. And then before that, box water was a trend. But box water is terrible. It's not sustainable. It's still lined in plastic. It's cutting down trees. It changes the profile of the water. There's trace elements from the plastic that we kind of leeches on. Plastic water is terrible as well from the leeching. That's now becoming objectively true if you Google search microplastics and just press the news button. Right. You'll see something- It's on every level of the food chain. Yeah. But specifically water, right? So when you think about bottled water, it's one thing, because we experience in a very narrow lens, we go into a grocery store or a convenience store and it's just there we grab it. But where was, what was the journey of that plastic water prior to it arriving right where it grabbed in your hand? It was probably on an 18-wheeler baking in the sun, sitting on pallets outdoors, and it results in the plastic leaking into the water. So we should, as a best practice, avoid drinking out of plastic as much as possible. Were you worried about taste? Did taste matter? Or was it just a function of this is delicious, or not delicious, but it hits all the science, the alkalinity's right, the purity's right, the story's there? My experience, this is one of the best water experiences I've ever had. And how I experience really good water is you can taste in the density, so the weight, or the silkiness, the smoothness, it has a distinct, it gets just water, right? So, but you can clearly A, B, test it. Please, let me know. Is this your first ape water? This is my first ape water. Okay, so, you know, we need a drum roll. Should we do a little thing? You're not gonna try it either? You're gonna try it? I already did. Oh, you did. Yeah, I cracked it forward. Nice. Oh, I didn't know that. Okay. Looks beautiful. Clear. Water being clear is a good thing. Tastes great. How would you describe it? It is a little, the word heavier comes to mind for some weird reason. It's heavier. Heavier, so I guess there's more, it tastes more substantive. Okay. Than other waters that I've had. Yeah, I don't know. You said the word like silky, like, and now I'm, I just like, it's very smooth. Like. Yeah, smooth. Smooth comes to mind, yeah. Next time, we'll have to A, B, test it against other water when I come back. Okay, so you found the source of the water. Found the source of the water. Unlimited source. You're not, you're not prevented from scaling because of that. There, there is a degree of limitation. So this particular water source, if we were running at full capacity, we could produce 300, 400 million cans a year. One of our mandates is we never want to propagate a water nationwide or globally from that, from just the Mount Water, Mount Shasta. We want to use regional springs. So as we expand out, we want to always ensure that we have a key partner in that territory where we're sourcing from a quality spring. That's smart for shipping also. For sure. Because then you're not transporting water that far. There's a lot of brands that, you know, talk about sustainability and that's what they kind of, you know, that's their key messaging. But when you kind of dig into like really what's going on under the hood, they're shipping water, you know. Yeah. Over the Atlantic Ocean and you're like. Peers the same way. I mean, so many, so many of these beverages do the same thing. They're basically shipping companies. You know, they spend $300 million on shipping or moving glass, moving plastic, moving whatever it is, which is ultimately mostly water also. Yeah, and the pandemic informed, you know, that global supply chains when they break down can really affect, you know, a local economy. So we want to also benchmark against that as a learning from COVID as well. Once you had this, so once you had, let's call it the brand, you have the trademark, now you have the water, at some point do you guys go out, like you enter a CPG world to some extent, which is difficult in the sense of, they'll say most CPG companies need like $20 million to make it or to become profitable, to find out essentially. Are you guys, did you guys raise capital out of the gate? How did you go about marketing or did you go right into the community? What was kind of the first move around moving it into the market? Yeah, so technically we haven't officially launched. We're launching February 17th online. And basically everything that we've done up until now has been just seeding the market and just creating awareness and just seeing if it's viable to even go to market, which we feel like we've proven that in many ways. So initially we just friends and family. We did a seed round. The seed round technically still open. And our first investor was Pink Dot. Pink Dot is an iconic liquor store on Sunset Boulevard. Saul Yamini is the owner and he's been a dear friend for 15 years. He is considered a taste maker, like incubator for a lot of brands. So for example, when Travis Scott launched Cacti with Anheuser Bush, they launched it at Pink Dot. And Saul, the owner, had never invested in 20 years of owning Pink Dot into any CPG brand, beverage brand. He took one look at this and he said, this is the greatest brand I've ever seen. And so we had- The greatest brand he's ever seen. That's a good vote of confidence. And you said, of course it is. Of course it is. You know, at this point- Sign here. Yeah, I was curious. He was really enthusiastic. And these were just little things we had along the way. I do believe at this point now we have a potentially a big hit on our hands. It comes down to execution. And the only reason I can say I feel like we have a hit on our hand is I have these third-party feedback loops where people are giving these words of encouragement and they're the ones who've seen thousands of different brands. And so they're able- They're not looking at 8th Water in a vacuum. They're looking at it based upon the entire marketplace over periods of time. And we're not the only can water out there. The one that is most well-known is Liquid Death. Liquid Death is the number one selling water on Amazon in America. So timing is also a key component too. And certainly the success of that brand I think we gain a lot of goodwill as well just because of their success. Is it worry you all these lawsuits right now against Ugo Labs or even the crypto winter just in terms of- Obviously Board 8, I think they're gonna withstand time. I think the brand is strong enough. But does it worry you that maybe some people have become disillusioned with Web 3, with NFTs? And so the timing might be a little off? Great question. Because I honestly don't know but I'm also not launching a business in this space. Where you are, right? And I think if I would have said the perfect season was probably last year when there was nothing but enthusiasm and now that's kind of turning. But I don't know, I don't know. Yeah, well I mentioned earlier we're still in our race. So a year ago we would have been oversubscribed. Oh for sure, yeah. Right, so certainly the timing, the macro economy has had an impact on our business. When you're the number one PFP project people are always gonna take shots at you. And so it's expected that people will be going at Board APA Club because they are such a dominant player. Ultimately they have so much buy-in and so much money behind them. I feel that they're here to stay. So I feel comfortable in continuing to support the Board APA Club community. However, we're IP agnostic and that's where the business gets a bit more interesting. So we have protective measures in place where it's not always gonna be a Board AP right there. Where in the center of the can. There's gonna be other IPs. So if the Weedies box features athletes who are Olympians and the Weedies box ends up becoming that CPG kind of trophy. Whether you're Michael Phelps or Michael Jordan, if you end up on the Weedies box as an Olympic athlete, it's like that's maybe the equivalent of the highest level of honor next to the gold medal itself. And we are positioning ourselves in a similar way where we wanna highlight the best IP in the world on our can. It's something that impacts culture of some kind. Yeah, so we view ourselves a bit like the Supreme of Water. So Supreme, the clothing brand will feature partnerships with everything from LVMH to Nike to lesser brands. And Supreme ends up gaining a degree of market awareness from all those partnerships they do. So partnerships is a huge component of our company. And how are you guys pricing this? Yeah, great question. So we sell by a 12 pack right there as well as single and our price points around $1.99. It's priced slightly less than Evian or Fiji while giving a better delivery system. And we believe the water efficacy objectively is better. And then it's again, we're launching domestically domestic supply chains, et cetera. And when you do that, so where can people find you? Pink Dot obviously sounds like the first place to go if you're in LA, but are there other places? So yeah, we are rolling out LA right now. We're opening up independent retailer stores. We're launching online. That's gonna be subscription model. And then we're gonna expand to Miami, New York and Atlanta is our first four key markets before we go national. So there's a process and you mentioned how capital intensive CPG is. So you have to crawl, walk, run into a meaningful business that can scale. And so the biggest challenge with a business like this is more so the wheels falling off the train as you pick up momentum. So really that's the main thing that we're optimizing for as the market starts to learn about drinking water out of a can and our product in general. People tend to default to what they know. There is various adoption that has to take place. When you think about the rollout from Miami, New York does that mean you'll have sources there? Have you already identified water sources there? For the East Coast, there's an East Coast solution that's up north closer to Maine and then there's a Midwest solution for co-packers. And initially we'll probably end up using the Shasta source. This is more when you scale mass and you're just trying to mitigate all the trucking expenses. But specifically when we do international we want to have international sources that are locally sourced. I've seen your roadmap and I know that your first, one of your first big presentations of Ape Water was at Art Basel in Miami. And for this year, I think it was saying that you're looking to get it into a lot of festivals and events and partnering up with arenas like the SoFi Center and stuff like that. Are you looking at the community aspect of events and being able to scan the QR code and do stuff in VR? Is that going to be your focus for this year or is it going to be expansion into other stores like the Pink Dots of America? Yeah, it's a multi-prong approach and also there's various challenges with some of the questions you just had in terms of locations. So for example, stadiums typically have exclusive pouring rights with Pepsi or Coke. So it's a bit of a mafia of sorts. But as we build up community and build up awareness of how the apes are boxed out, I think that there'll be a meaningful path forward and sometimes it doesn't necessarily have to be sold at direct concession. F&B, we can do custom canned programs and have it be memorabilia. We can do water outside of the stadiums. Stames are hands down the most challenging just because those usually have the most protectionistic like the pre-existing deals in place. Festivals are talking to a lot of really well-known festivals right now and conferences too. So the QR code is really where the magic Web3 happens and that's where it comes full circle. When you scan our can and unlocks Web3 features. And so the problem with Web3 is there's a tremendous friction to onboard wallets, all this like esoteric language, all these various processes you have to go through in order to be onboarded to manage an NFT, et cetera. When you scan our can, you're on Web3. And so your phone number is your wallet and we act as the custodians and we have geofences around some of these locations that you mentioned that we're gonna be at and then you receive an NFT just for being on-premise. So we unlock loyalty through the can. And so really we kind of view the can as that Trojan horse onboarding tool to get the masses onto Web3. So when I talked to Mahonu as an example, who put us in touch, her big thing or the thing that comes out to me is always this, there's a real loyalty play that doesn't exist today that Web3 can enable in more meaningful ways, more like memories, more to what you're saying, the NFT. And so it just becomes really interesting. I don't think I've seen anybody execute it at all yet in a way where it's repeatable and it's obviously early, but they're certainly, it's ripe for opportunity, which I find really interesting. What's your ideal? Like what's your ideal experience someone has your can? Where do they get it? Like what does it look like, right? You as a DJ, you as an entertainer to some extent could create this really amazing experience for somebody. But what does it look like for you full circle? It's your event, it's your water, someone scans it. What does it do for them? Yeah, great question. So we're talking about an on-premise experience. So we have other verticals such as subscription, et cetera. So hypothetically, you go into, do you wanna use a one-off event or like a liquor store? We'll just pick. Whatever like your perfect experience is. Okay, great. So you go to a conference. The conference is a Web3 conference. Let's just keep it really on-brand. And let's just say that conference is, well, here's one coming up that we're gonna be the exclusive water partners for. So I can talk about that. Oh, perfect. So NFTLA is the biggest Web3 conference on the West Coast. We're gonna be the water partners. You walk into NFTLA. There's a geo fence around the event. You're speaking on stage. Apewater is being provided, handed out. And you say, hey guys, anyone right now who scans the Apewater can for the next 10 minutes can get a limited edition NFT, blah, blah, blah, blah. So all of a sudden, someone scans a can. Maybe there's a call to action. Maybe it's a survey. Maybe you have to play a game. Maybe there's an AR experience. It's all powered by Web3. And then as a result of the consumer doing a certain degree of data entry, a very gentle ask, we reward them for that. And then in the macro, we reward them over time. So on year three of NFTLA, oh wow, you've come three years in a row. Now you get access to this lounge. You get access to this. Apewater by virtue is your key to unlock incentives and prizes as a result of you just participating. And I think that's like the key differentiation between the products of tomorrow versus the products of yesteryear is it was very one-sided, you know, buy the product, consume the product, get nothing else. But why am I incentivized to continue to be loyal to your brand? Because there's always a new brand coming around the corner that's younger, that's hipper, that's what have you. So if we can constantly be this dynamic brand that's growing and evolving with the consumer, well then you're creating a whole different value proposition. You could also sell the ability, right? So if I have a new NFT project and I want to launch with you, that becomes a partnership alley if you guys are interested in doing that. But that's really interesting too, where it's like to your point around the Wheaties box. At some point people, there's an IP and it becomes really interesting or you can launch at an event using your water, but the image is maybe my NFT or something different. Has the Board APA Club, any of the founding team or anybody over there been in touch? Do they want to work with you, collab, or do they kind of stay out of that? Yeah, so we are, I guess, strategic alliance with them. We didn't want to tie our line too heavy onto any one group too early. So I guess you can call it a bit of a dating process. They're really encouraged by our project when they did their party at Art Basel. We were their water partner, so they acquired water from us. And we've had conversations with the senior leadership as well as people who are more in the trenches and they've been nothing but wonderful. So we really are encouraged by what the future may hold, not just with Board APA Club, but with UGLABS. Anything else we should know? Oh man, there's so much to talk about. We have, so the key thing, we're not a water brand, we're a lifestyle water brand. So for example, I'm now shilling our merch. That's our eight drop. So we have a pretty here, okay, eight drop. We have, we have a hat on, which is really cool. We have a water hat. We have a beautiful, cooler, cooler bag. So we're gonna be putting out a ton of different supported merch. And I don't think anyone has really kind of positioned this kind of street wear-ish position with beverage before. And the way that we're doing it. I would agree with you, yeah. So yeah, it's fun and it kind of allows us to constantly think of new ways to be creative and ways to create other inflection points for people to connect with the brand. And that gives us that important feedback loop to learn about the culture and how we can better serve them as we continue to grow and scale the business. I do wanna circle back just to Mount Shasta again. So I know one of your core tenants of the business's sustainability and had we like had this conversation maybe a month or two ago before this atmospheric river dumped all this rainfall on us, I'm curious about if you had ever found out if water restrictions or if the aquifers on Mount Shasta were ever in danger of running low, dry, whatever it might be. And if the, how the erudification of California over these last some years will affect that supply going forward? Great question. And that's one of our core insights was that water we believe in the macro on a 20, 30, 40, 50 year outlook is going to become a much more scarce commodity. In particular with this spring, this is one of the few springs in the world that's actually growing in size. So the ecology I guess for lack of a better word of the spring is very frothy. There's estimated at least, you know, another 30, 40 years of water that's available from this particular source if we went in a drought that just ceased with any additional rainfall. You know, we're dating the podcasts here, but there was just a tremendous amount of rainfall in California that just is unprecedented, right? And so that's encouraging. With this particular source of water, we feel very fortunate. And then there's other layers of protection. With this water, this water is technically on by a foundation that is a religious organization that's had it for over 100 years. And so there's also various levels and they license it out to then be captured and a percentage of that water, sorry, a royalty's paid to the city. So it's really hard if let's say for whatever reason, California to said, you know what, all these other water resources we have are drying up. We're gonna go here where it's incredibly vibrant. It would be very, very challenging for it to unpack and unwind and reclaim the water source and then we have insurance against that. So for this particular water source, we feel quite confident. And then as we partner with other aquifers and springs. Right. We mitigate risk. So diversification is key with anything. So you don't wanna have all your eggs or all your water in one basket. How long do you see yourself doing this? Do you think you'll go back to being a DJ? It sounds like there's a deviation. You went away from music. Are you coming back? What's your personal journey look like? The DJing thing is a whole other thing. So I hit the ceiling, DJing, anything you can do in terms of a high-end event, red carpet, celebrity stuff, anything that you can kind of do that is a vanity metric for success, revenue accolades, et cetera, radio, television, all the things you could do. So I kind of hit a place where I hit the proverbial glass ceiling and that involvement to me starting a record label and that record label evolved into me doing a partnership with Jim Henson Studios, the creators of Sesame Street and the Muppets. And I created the first music producer, DJ Muppet. You created a Muppet? Muppet. That's crazy. Technically, it's not... Who's the Muppet? Technically, I can't use the word Muppet because that's owned by Disney, but it's a sort of puppet. The puppet. It has a very Henson-like aesthetic. Sure. So you fall in love with it as soon as you see it. Could we ever see it on a can of Ape water? On a Muppet water? You know... That's really cool. It's in the works, yeah. It's in the works. And so... That's a cool, fun fact. Yeah, and so this whole thing is still there. However, the good thing about having a character that is not human, it doesn't age. It's not gonna go develop a drug addiction or go date somebody else because I'm ignoring it at the moment. So it's in purgatory, it's on sabbatical and I have hundreds of songs ready to go for that. So at some point, I do see myself going back to music in the form not necessarily so much as just playing other people's music, but more so releasing all this music I've developed under a record label. But in respect to Ape water, Ape water is very complimentary. Ape water, we view ourselves doing partnerships with a lot of artists, record labels, festivals, et cetera. So it's very complimentary. Ultimately, we wanna create a watered-out long-term. So for me, this is a forever play. It's one of those things that's weird, you know, in America, it's always what's next. You know, one of the big questions people ask us because we're Ape beverages company and it says right below Ape water. Right. You say, what else do you do after water? What other beverages? What other beverages, what other things? It's like, why does it always have to be more? You know, this is a very modern or Wall Street 1980s mindset of you need a scale, scale, scale in IPO or exit, right? And that's the benchmark for success. But if you go to Italy, you know, you go to these vineyards that are whether they're producing wine or they're producing olive oil and tell me about your business. Oh, you know, we've had in the family for 150 years and this is what we do and that's how they identify themselves. And for me, that's, I feel much more settled to say I'm a water guy, than to say, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna exit in two years and I'm out of here and I'll go find the next, you know, perhaps, but I never wanna say never but because the IP is so dynamic and allows us the opportunity to be malleable and constantly iterate on it, to me, I think it will always will stay fresh and fun and I feel really good. We have a 5% give back on every can so we help various communities in need. So when we were at our Basel, we had to clean Miami Beach, which was wonderful. Wherever the water's sold, we give that portion back to help nonprofits and NGOs in that area. The licensing deal that we do with IP that those individuals or groups could pocket that royalty or they can redistribute to a nonprofit if they're choosing. So, you know, I really love the give back component too and you just feel really good. You know, if I was shilling a sugar product or an alcohol product or something else that was inherently bad for you, making money's not what's about, it's how you make your money. I think that ultimately lets you, you know, put your head on the pillow at the end of the night and feel really good about how you're, you know, using your time. And so for me, this checks all my boxes. I love it. Where can people find you? Yes, 8beverages.com. Go there now. Also follow us on 8beverages on Twitter, on Instagram. And you have a subscription model already? That's the subscription model's launching and they're Scarcity. So we're only gonna allow, I'm not gonna say how many subscriptions, but not a lot initially. And then there'll be a wait list where you can get in the queue to save your place in line and then every single. All right, put me on there. We'll go in for the podcast studio. Is it every two weeks? Is it monthly? Great question. So there's gonna be three tiers. You either get two cases a month, four cases a month or eight cases a month. If you do the two or four, that will ship once a month. If you do the eight, that'll be every two weeks. I heard it tastes better if you're in a cold plunge while drinking it. I think we have to, we got, I think we got a theory. A theory, yeah. AB testing. Is this where we jump cut? Yes, to the cold plunge. To you in the cold plunge? You see what you just did? So there we go. Maybe, yeah. Well, thank you, brother. This is a great story, Andrew. Yeah, I appreciate it. It's super enlightening. I really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks so much guys for having me. Of course. If you made it this far, I bet you loved the episode. So you should join our YouTube channel membership for only $2.99 a month. This gets you access to one, the whole unabridged conversation. Two, you get the episodes on Monday, one day earlier. Three, you get two additional entries to our giveaways. 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