Yep that's right, the world is officially broken. We are now selling air. And even worse than that, people are buying it.
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I honestly feel like I'm in a movie. In Dr.Seuss's The Lorax, the world was destroyed because someone decided to commidify nature. And now it's happening in real life. I must be dreaming.
It kind of breaks my heart to see this happening, but at the same time koodos to the guys who were able to make a business out of thin air. Literally.
Let's learn a little bit about them, shall we? To start, their names are Moses Lam and Troy Paquette and they run Vitality Air, which produces pressurized cans of Banff air. They used to work in real estate, but when the market started to dip they decided to change careers. When they got the idea during a hike one day, they figured they should give it a shot.
Each can costs $20 (which is kind of crazy), but yet people are buying them all over the world. Vitality Air brings is predicted to bring in $500,000 in 2018. One thing that really doesn't make sense is that they aren't even being charged for the air they're taking. So, they take something natural and sell it for a profit. That's capitalism for you.
The weirdest part is that the is actually nothing special about this air. It doesn't smell like the Rockies or get you high. It's just air. And people are totally fine with spending their hard-earned money on something that should be accessible through simple inhalation.
The cans contain 160 one-second "shots" of air and are marketed to the upper-class as provoding a better quality of life. Basically, I think it's something to make you feel special. When normal air just isn't good enough, you can get canned air.
The ingredients are as follows: 100% Pure Rocky Mountain Air. So people from China to India to Mexico to the U.S. are spending money on something they can get for free.
The way that Lam and Paquette have done this is that they transport all of their equipment to Banff (over a four hour drive) and use a trailer and a "clean room" to fill up and complete the air bottling process.
When they first thought of the idea, they figured they should probably test it out first. So, they went to EBay. They decided to sell bags of air. The first sold for 99 cents, but luckily they didn't give up and the second sold for $168. And that's when the phenomenon began.
I can see it making sense in densely populated places like China and India. But I definitely don't think it's a solution to the problem. Finding quick "band-air" fixes for pollution is only going to make things worse. People won't be thinking about how to make it better long-term. They'll just be thinking about how to fix their current situation.
It's quickly becoming a fad even though it's well, ridiculous. The company is being sponsored by Olympic medalists and athletes, claiming (I guess) that it makes a difference.
Given their success, they've even started selling different versions of their air including essential oils and "Green Tea Myst". So, they're really taking advantage of the situation.
@vitalityairI think things have gone a little bit too far with this one, but what can you expect? It seems as though people will buy anything these days.