Kirk Wilson, who heads Gulf Vending and who currently serves as president of the Automatic Merchandising Association of Florida, reports that the company entered its current growth phase early in this decade when it began placing Crane National Vendors equipment, and expanded its coffee service sales activities by adding OCS routes. And this growth has accelerated in 1997 and 1998, with the company's pioneering expansion into point-of-use water treatment by taking on the Pure 1 line.

Pure 1's "POU Coolers" are plumbed-in water treatment systems designed to replace conventional bottled-water coolers and their attendant five-gallon water jugs. While point-of-use treatment systems have been around for decades, most of them are black box type units that deliver filtered tap water from a featureless cabinet. When Wilson set out to find solutions to the growing demand for high-quality water, he came upon the Pure 1 system. This combines state-of-the-art POU water treatment technology with a "self-filling bottle" that looks like the conventional five-gallon containers that have sat atop coolers for most of this century.

The Gulf Vending president recognized that this system made sense for vending and coffee service operators. "First of all, bottled water is more popular than ever before," he told V/T. But end-users hate the high cost of bottles, lifting and storing heavy bottles, and then running out of water - only to find ugly slime growing in their cooler tanks. POU coolers avoid all of those problems.

"What's more, for the operator, they can be purchased, installed, maintained and leased just like conventional equipment," Wilson added. "There's nothing new or different about handling these machines."

Especially appealing to operators is their ability to add filtered or purified water to their service mix without the tremendous investment in infrastructure required to become seriously involved in bottled water. "They aren't labor, space or capital-intensive," Wilson .explained. "In fact, they are extremely inexpensive when compared not only to traditional vending equipment, but even when compared to coffee brewers and the like".

"Best of all, they can be leased to your existing customer base," the industry veteran pointed out. He has found that they offer a very fast (six to nine month) payback, and their popularity means that one good vending account can accommodate dozens of them.

Wilson believes that developing a company's existing account base by meeting a wider range of client needs is an easier, and more profitable, growth strategy than the more usual one of expanding the operation's geographic coverage. It increases the return from each account without significant additional delivery and cost; it differentiates the operator from competitors; and it builds account loyalty and retention.

The AMAF president chose the Pure 1 system after considering quality, cosmetics and practicality. "First of all, Pure 1's 'Everfull' bottle looks like a regular bottled water. that's not meant to fool customers," he explained. "They fully understand that it's a treatment system," However, it does build patron confidence by allowing the consumer to see that the water is crystal clear. "That makes it much easier to get people to try it," Wilson said; "and once they try it, they're hooked."

While this cosmetic appeal is important, quality is even more so, the Florida vendor emphasized. " Pure 1 was the only company that could show us both NSF certification and a variety of other independent laboratory results," he said. "After 13 years as a Crane operator, we understand the tremendous advantage of offering only top-line equipment."

And, of course, price is a factor too. After pricing several alternatives, Wilson concluded that Pure 1 was not only less costly to buy, but also more economical to service and maintain.

Ken Bible of TKO Brokerage introduced the Pure 1 system to Gulf Vending. "Kirk was one of the very first operators in the Southeast to fully appreciate the market potential for POU coolers," Bible said. "While other operators initially looked at it as a nice little add-on Kirk was the first to recognize how outrageously profitable it can be.

" When I first approached Gulf Vending, I knew that Kirk had an impressive reputation as an innovator, and I knew that he was going to be the next AMAF president," the veteran broker added. "That made him an important target customer. What I never imagined was that he could turn what seemed like a relatively small niche into such an expansive market for Pure 1."

More than midway through 1998, Gulf Vending is projecting another record year of sales growth, led by a rapid increase in the placement of the Pure 1 coolers. "By this time next year, we could have more Pure 1 coolers in service than vending machines."

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