At the age of 29 Duncan Goose quit his job as business-development director
for an advertising firm to travel the world on a shoestring.
He wanted to see if there was more to life than climbing a corporate ladder.
“I had this amazing job working with some great clients but I was not sure I
wanted that as a career,” he said.
Goose sold his house and car to fund the trip, travelling on a dirt bike, a
Honda Africa Twin. “I had always had a bike, ever since I was old enough to
fall off one. My inspiration for the trip was a book called Jupiter’s
Travels by Ted Simon.
It was about his trip around the world on an old Triumph.”
During his eventful, two-year odyssey Goose survived an earthquake, crashed
his bike into a deer, got shot at and was rescued by police after being held
by a tribe in Afghanistan. Surviving Hurricane Mike in Honduras in 1998 was
Goose’s most formative experience on the trip. “It was the largest recorded
hurricane in history. It was fascinating to see a country being devastated
and then pick itself up again. The community I was staying with was
destroyed.”
Goose and some fellow travellers helped with the reconstruction and started an
appeal in Britain with the help of his actress sister, Claire. They soon
raised enough to rebuild the village they were staying in as well as another
12 villages in the region.
“What really struck me was that to make a difference we did not need a lot of
money, just a little money spent in the right way.”
Back home, Goose and his friends sat in a London pub one night talking about
how they could use their skills to make a difference. One of them suggested
they launch a consumer product as a business and plough the profits into
charity.
One of the biggest global problems they had discussed was the fact that a
billion people did not have easy access to clean drinking water and that 2m
people died from water-borne diseases each year. “The more I looked at the
issue of water, the more interested I became,” said Goose.
In 2005 he set about launching One Water, with the intention of giving the
profits to charity.
In a moment of inspiration Goose spotted an ideal way to launch the new brand.
“We were in Wales watching the first bottles of water come off the
production line and were listening to Bob Geldof on the radio talking about
the Live 8 appeal,” said Goose. “We realised we had to make it the official
water of the event.”
Goose found out where the top organisers were — Geldof, Harvey Goldsmith and
Richard Curtis — took a taxi to their offices and delivered bottles of One
Water. “They soon agreed to buy it.”
Despite this coup, Goose was soon brought down to earth. The key to success
for any mass food brand is to get it stocked by the big retailers,
supermarkets and petrol stations.
“The retailers I met told me there were 200 brands of bottled water already
and asked how much would I pay to get my bottles on their shelves,” said
Goose.
He struggled to convince them that a charitable consumer brand would sell
well. By late 2005, after dozens of meetings, he was running out of money
and time.
“I had spent my life savings and remortgaged my house and I became very
despondent. It’s difficult to sell a product when you are feeling like that.
It reached the point where I realised I would have to give up, so I decided
to give it one more week.”
That week Goose won over his first customer, Total. “The chap at Total, Ian
Mackie, signed us up and said he would help with a national PR campaign and
promotions. Total was incredibly supportive.”
Goose then signed up Waitrose, Wm Morrison and Tesco, and sales took off. In
One Water’s first year of trading it donated £70,000 to charity.
All profits go to buying and installing Play Pump systems in Africa, simple
devices that pump fresh groundwater and are powered by children as they spin
playground roundabouts. This year it should raise £1.4m and the plan is to
donate £2.5m a year directly through sales of One water, which will enable
it to install one Play Pump system every day.
Sales continue to grow, and the brand has been launched in Ireland, America
and Australia, with Malaysia and South Africa to follow. Goose also aims to
create new consumer brands, including One Condoms, the profits from which
will be ploughed into HIV projects in Africa.
There was still huge potential worldwide, he said. “Ethical brands are a
growth market, worth £15 billion in the UK and growing at 23% per year. It’s
an easy thing for the consumer to do to make a difference.”
Goose makes a living by fitting in consultancy work round One Water, but says
that, as a professional who could be earning a big salary in advertising, he
has given up a lot financially.
For now, though, job satisfaction keeps him going. “Running my own business
was something I always wanted to do and getting that chance and improving
lots of lives along the way is incredibly exciting,” he said. “I don’t think
I could get a better job than that.”
