Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Mauryell Smith El. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, Mauryell thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard.
At Vessel Spring Water we put what’s best for our customer over our cost of production. At the end of the day Vessel would be making killer profits if we switched over to using plastic bottles but we would also be killing the endocrine system of our customers as well. Plastic chemical BPA makes the human endocrine system become deficient. Even though you may see BPA free plastic bottles they are often replaced with BPS bottles which are just as bad.-term exposure to plastic particles and associated chemicals has been shown to exhaust thyroid endocrine function by weakening its driving forces in regulating growth, development, metabolism, and reproduction. Plastic bottles estrogen-like activity makes it a hormone disruptor, like many other chemicals in plastics. Hormone disruptors can affect how estrogen and other hormones act in the body, by blocking them or mimicking them, which throws off the body’s hormonal balance.
So when we use glass no matter the price it’s showing our customers Vessel is committed in giving safe and healthy drinking water starting with our glass bottle. With all the data and science and dangers of plastic bottles it’s good to now glass is the safest thing to store food and liquids in. The combination of our glass bottle with the best spring water supplied by the rocky mountains it’s no wonder that Vessel is the healthiest and best quality bottled water brand out right now.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My name is Mauryell Smith El I I’m from the South Side of Chicago, Illinois. I went to school at the University of Missouri in Columbia where I majored in Mass Media Communication. In 2018 during my junior year of college I started my own sports blog it was called Concrete Sports to give voices to the voiceless in sports who more than likely came from impoverished areas where they had to play on concrete. So that experience amongst others I had in college like working with ESPN, SEC network, NBA, NBPA, TNT and more led me to working with the Denver Post months after I moved to Denver in 2019 after I graduated college. So, I’ve always had an entrepreneur spirit. However, at this same time around 2018/2019 I was going through a spiritual awakening and was starting to learn more about my Moorish cultural heritage. This sparked me wanting to move away from working in sports journalism and sell a product that would be more beneficial to my community. As I aim to teach other people of my race about their Moorish heritage so that they know they are not negro, black or colored and these names was only born out of the enslavement of the inhabitants of Africa during the Atlantic Slave Trade. Me starting Vessel Spring Water was a symbol of me contributing to uplifting my race because I know the community places a lot of value on the economic empowerment of our leaders. Vessel Spring Water is an impactful business because we are attacking a problem in our country that rarely gets talked about and that’s drinking water quality. The case of Flint, Michigan is probably the most known, but there’s other situations like, Mississippi, Baltimore, Texas plus numerous of other advisory boiled water warnings across the country. So the first problem Vessel is solving is giving fresh spring water from the rocky mountains and you immediately taste the quality of our product. All of our bottles come in glass and we have many different sizes, 16oz bottles, 750 ml bottles, and we’re looking to introduce our 5 gallon subscription & refill plan. We also offer gallon and half gallon jugs. Down the line we want to get into selling ice, non-plastic ice trays, water filters for sinks and showers. We also want to branch off into flavored and seltzer water in the future. Vessel will be an entity to be reckoned with when it’s all said and done. it’s been said that water is the new oil and I would say that we got the best oil at Vessel. The main thing I want potential supporters of Vessel to know is that we truly care about cleansing your inner Vessel and the best way to do it is by investing in Vessel Spring Water as your favorite bottles water company.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
When I first started the company I didn’t realize logistically what it meant to ship Vessel Spring Water. Water in glass is heavy and I had over 100 orders to ship out when we first launched. The day it was time to ship I went to FedEx and UPS and they both was charging me about $60-$70 per case to ship bottles out to Chicago, LA, Kansas City, St.Louis, Minnesota, Atlanta and New York. This would have cause me to lose money instead if profit. Thankfully I was able to rent a pick up truck from Enterprise s/o my guy Benhur Desta who assisted me in that to deliver packages across the country myself. So I personally delivered the first bottles of Vessel out to people in Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City and Denver. I was also able to get cheaper shipping in once I got to Chicago to ship things further out East. This story really affirmed in me how much I believed in the vision of Vessel Spring Water because that was 2-3 days worth of driving to get those packages out. If you got a business you want to push you actually got to push it.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
I have made some pivots with Vessel Spring Water but the main pivot is switching my water source. When I first started Vessel I use to get my water from Eldorado Springs but after some thought and complications with stores I decided to change up water source. Vessel is sourced on a private ranch in Black Hawk, CO from a natural spring.
Contact Info:
- Website: vesselspringwater.com
- Instagram: Vessel Spring Water
Image Credits
Mauryell Smith El