Today we’d like to introduce you to Joe Knopp.
Hi Joe, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
From an early age, I knew that I wanted to start a business. I started my first business as a sophomore in college called Pet Time Plus. It was an ecommerce pet supply business that connected suppliers to consumers. I made enough money to support myself, but I felt like I wasn’t making an impact. So, I stopped all the money-making and decided to start something that matters.
I always grew up hearing my mom say eat your green beans and drink your water before you get up from the table because there’s kids on the other side of the world that don’t have that luxury. So, I looked over to my college roommate whose name is Chip, and asked if he thought I could solve the water crisis. He called me crazy and said someone would have already solved it by now, but I’m a competitive person, and I don’t like when someone tells me I can’t do something. So, I researched and learned that we could drill a borehole well with a nonprofit partnership for about $8,000. Initially, I didn’t want to start a nonprofit because I didn’t want to ask people for money. I wanted to leverage a product with a purpose to provide an equal exchange of value with the consumer. What I landed on was water bottles. I was able to backtrace the same manufacturer as industry leaders who sell their bottles for $45 and $50 in the 32 oz size and learned that it costs much less than that to produce. There was enough margin to leverage solving a problem with. So, I spent all my money I had saved up from an internship on the first 2,000 Ripple bottles. In March of 2021, our bottles arrived, and we turned our dorm room into a distribution center. Six months later, we had sold enough Ripple bottles to build our first well, and we ended up building the first ever modern solar-powered clean water solution for a remote village in the country of Uganda through our nonprofit branch of our organization. After returning home, our team grew, and we’re now at 20 wells drilled and more than 50,000 with access to clean water in about a year and a half.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
At first, one of our biggest struggles was how to drill the well in a low-income country once we sold enough bottles. We tried to partner with other nonprofits, but this was in the middle of a pandemic, and a lot of the organizations had limited staff, and communication was slow and sporadic. It just didn’t feel right. Over a three-month period, I networked with an alumni of my university who is a Ugandan citizen that had been working with poverty-stricken communities already. His name is Michael Bulumba. We worked together to build a team on the ground in Uganda along with infrastructure to screen community applications and put maintenance processes in place to ensure our wells would be used indefinitely. This process also involved learning how to start and operate a nonprofit through YouTube videos and with help from within my network. It was a bit of a rocky road getting to this point, but I believe that it’s been necessary for us to start our own nonprofit so that we could take more control over the impact we are making in order to create more sustainable solutions.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about We Are The Ripple (WATR)?
We leverage high-quality products to solve real-world problems. Our first product was our Ripple bottle. Our Ripple bottle is 32 oz, BPA-free, made of 18/8 premium gauge stainless steel, and keeps your water icy cold for 24 hours and your coffee or tea hot for up to 12 hours as well. On the backside of every Ripple bottle is the village name and coordinates of the community that your bottle supports because for every 2,000 Ripple bottles sold, a well is built in a low-income nation.
Since our first product line, we’ve grown to offer apparel that’s helping build schools in Uganda as well as stickers that provide a reusable menstrual pad to girls at schools we support in order to complement our WASH (Water Sanitation and Hygiene) programming.
Do you have any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
One of my favorite childhood memories is fishing with my grandpa Joe who I was named after. He taught me from an early age how to respect and lead others, as he was a former CEO of our family’s business Kiko Auctions. Kiko Auctions was a company built by my great grandfather Russel Kiko who was the first absolute auctioneer in the United States after he arrived here in the 1940s as an immigrant from Germany.
Pricing:
- $40/bottle that’s building wells
Contact Info:
- Website: www.wearetheripple.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wearetheripple/
