Interview with Duncan Goose – Founder of One Water
By Claire Bagnall
Monday 2nd November 2009
Monday 2nd November 2009
Why are you here in Scotland at the moment?
I’ve come up for a few days to spend a bit of time with our [One Water] team, to meet some of our new customers, and to find out a bit more about what people think of One Water and what we’re trying to do. As well as this I wanted to come up to support all the guys in St Andrews on the One Water team who organised the golf day - or rather the rain day with a bit of golf on the side!
Is One Water just in the UK or is it worldwide?
No, it has started to really spread its wings internationally. So we now sell bottled water in the UK, Ireland, South Africa, Malaysia, Australia, and the USA. But it’s really the UK and Australia that seem to be the pretty big markets for us at the moment.
What made you decide to start One Water?
I got drunk in a pub many years ago, with some friends and one of them asked me if I knew there were a billion people in the world who didn’t have access to clean water - and I said no. We were a whole bunch of marketers and he said, “Look, we should launch a bottled water brand and give all the profits away.” And of course, everybody said that’s a wonderful idea and we shouldn’t just stop at that, we should look at other problems like HIV, poverty, poor nutrition, education and lots of other similar things. So while it started with water and One Water has given all the profits away to fund water projects, it’s gone on from there really.
You said you were a marketer, do you ever regret your decision? Do you ever wish you were back in the office?
No. For anybody getting into the marketing thing it’s a fantastic career and I absolutely loved it, but I did it for 15 years, and it was a good time to go into something different. All my skills were about making millions and millions of pounds of profit for big companies and now I’m making millions and millions of pounds profit and giving it all away. It’s much more fun, but the challenge is the same.
What has been your most rewarding moment so far?
My most rewarding moment was probably making the first million pounds profit and giving it away. It was such an enormous goal and to have achieved that was quite amazing. Then we did 2 million this year, and we’ve just passed 3 million - it’s just getting faster and faster. But the first million was tough - well it’s still tough…
Have you been out to Africa to see the projects?
I have, I’ve been a couple of times. I don’t tend to go; my time is better spent in the UK and overseas talking to people about what we do. I have been down there a couple of times, but you go, you see the problems, you understand that, and you don’t need to go back to do stuff to solve it.
You’ve already got One Water, the vitamin water and the condoms. Is there anything else in the pipeline?
Yes, there are a lot of other things going on. We’re just about to launch an investment fund in November called the One Fund for Africa, and the profits from that will be used to fund microcredit and microfinance projects. We’re also launching One Loo Roll, One Soap and One Sanitizer in the spring and they’ll all fund sanitation projects. There’s so much else in the pipeline too.
Do you think that generally governments and organisations do enough to combat the sort of problems that One Water is addressing?
I think it’s a collective responsibility for everybody to do whatever it is that they can do to try and alleviate some of these things. Governments do it in one way; we do it in a different way. However, I think the reality is that if everybody does a bit, if everybody takes a little bit of responsibility, then actually the world accelerates a lot faster together.
Who has inspired you?
For very different reasons, a journalist called Ted Simon who wrote a book called Jupiter’s Travels and probably my grandfather. My dad’s dad was an amazing man, one of those people who just fights for the rights of people, and was an real inspiration to me from a very young age. They’re probably the most inspiring two, but there’s a whole bunch of them.
I’ve come up for a few days to spend a bit of time with our [One Water] team, to meet some of our new customers, and to find out a bit more about what people think of One Water and what we’re trying to do. As well as this I wanted to come up to support all the guys in St Andrews on the One Water team who organised the golf day - or rather the rain day with a bit of golf on the side!
Is One Water just in the UK or is it worldwide?
No, it has started to really spread its wings internationally. So we now sell bottled water in the UK, Ireland, South Africa, Malaysia, Australia, and the USA. But it’s really the UK and Australia that seem to be the pretty big markets for us at the moment.
What made you decide to start One Water?
I got drunk in a pub many years ago, with some friends and one of them asked me if I knew there were a billion people in the world who didn’t have access to clean water - and I said no. We were a whole bunch of marketers and he said, “Look, we should launch a bottled water brand and give all the profits away.” And of course, everybody said that’s a wonderful idea and we shouldn’t just stop at that, we should look at other problems like HIV, poverty, poor nutrition, education and lots of other similar things. So while it started with water and One Water has given all the profits away to fund water projects, it’s gone on from there really.
You said you were a marketer, do you ever regret your decision? Do you ever wish you were back in the office?
No. For anybody getting into the marketing thing it’s a fantastic career and I absolutely loved it, but I did it for 15 years, and it was a good time to go into something different. All my skills were about making millions and millions of pounds of profit for big companies and now I’m making millions and millions of pounds profit and giving it all away. It’s much more fun, but the challenge is the same.
What has been your most rewarding moment so far?
My most rewarding moment was probably making the first million pounds profit and giving it away. It was such an enormous goal and to have achieved that was quite amazing. Then we did 2 million this year, and we’ve just passed 3 million - it’s just getting faster and faster. But the first million was tough - well it’s still tough…
Have you been out to Africa to see the projects?
I have, I’ve been a couple of times. I don’t tend to go; my time is better spent in the UK and overseas talking to people about what we do. I have been down there a couple of times, but you go, you see the problems, you understand that, and you don’t need to go back to do stuff to solve it.
You’ve already got One Water, the vitamin water and the condoms. Is there anything else in the pipeline?
Yes, there are a lot of other things going on. We’re just about to launch an investment fund in November called the One Fund for Africa, and the profits from that will be used to fund microcredit and microfinance projects. We’re also launching One Loo Roll, One Soap and One Sanitizer in the spring and they’ll all fund sanitation projects. There’s so much else in the pipeline too.
Do you think that generally governments and organisations do enough to combat the sort of problems that One Water is addressing?
I think it’s a collective responsibility for everybody to do whatever it is that they can do to try and alleviate some of these things. Governments do it in one way; we do it in a different way. However, I think the reality is that if everybody does a bit, if everybody takes a little bit of responsibility, then actually the world accelerates a lot faster together.
Who has inspired you?
For very different reasons, a journalist called Ted Simon who wrote a book called Jupiter’s Travels and probably my grandfather. My dad’s dad was an amazing man, one of those people who just fights for the rights of people, and was an real inspiration to me from a very young age. They’re probably the most inspiring two, but there’s a whole bunch of them.