When I was a little girl, I never thought my passion in life would be Sparkling Water Filtration Systems!
Hi to those who know me and to those who don’t, my name is Heidi & I’ve recently started a writing course with the lovely Liz Campbell. My first homework task is to write an intro about myself – eeekkk – definitely not something I feel comfortable with but here goes…..My sparkling water story…..
I’m Heidi, mother of 4 human kids and 2 Shiatzu X puppies (1 Conora puppy), wife of 1 and a passionate small business owner & control freak. I live in beautiful Toowoomba QLD, which to me, is the perfect size & has a fantastic, supportive community. I grew up in Brisbane and studied Early Childhood Teaching at QUT. I absolutely loved teaching because the kids made me laugh every single day but unfortunately other parts of the job didn’t. Maybe because I had 4 of my own at home as well? Who knows? All I can say is that I take my hat of to teachers, they are amazing humans.
I am a lover of Merlo coffee, a good book and fine food, in fact, I am obsessed by good food. I’m one of those annoying people who thinks about lunch at breakfast, dinner at lunch, you get the picture. I love cooking food, eating food, reading about food – it’s utterly exhausting and is probably the reason that I’ve spent the last 20 years trying to lose ‘that last 5 kg’.
My absolute favourite thing in the world (other than being on holiday with my family) is to combine good food, wine & coffee with some of my best-loved people on Earth, my close girlfriends. Before Covid hit, you could often find me in a coffee house catching up with a close friend – the best & cheapest therapy ever. I am also obsessed with travelling and literally ‘fell’ into the sparkling water industry while we were having a ‘gap year’ in France 4 years ago.
My Sparkling Water Story
For those of you that know my husband and his entrepreneurial nature, you won’t be surprised to hear that after he fell in love with the sparkling water that is offered in every café/restaurant in Europe, he made it is personal mission in life to find an affordable way to bring it back to Australia with him. As soon as we got back to Australia, he imported his first shipment, started another business and left me to it – OMG.
I was terrified, although I absolutely loved the product, I had absolutely NO idea what I was doing. Over the past 3 years I have taught myself accounting, marketing, sales, staff management, customer relations and things about plumbing that I don’t think I ever really needed or wanted to know. It has been a huge learning curve and I will be forever grateful for those other female business owners that I have met along this journey that have given such honest & heartfelt support along the way.
Fast forward 3 years and would you believe that I now LOVE owning my own business? Huh! I love meeting people from all walks of life and really enjoy the challenges (most days) that small business brings. I love the fact that I am the master of my own ship and the flexibility that being my own boss brings.
But by far the best bit, is seeing the joy that our products & service bring our customers.
I totally get how time-poor parents are and how difficult & expensive it can be to always provide healthy options to your family. That’s why one of our main objectives when starting the business was to be able to offer our products at an affordable price and offer a user-friendly service.
This is why we lease our systems. There is no huge initial outlay (similar systems retail in Austria for upwards of $5500) and all servicing, filter replacement & repairs and included. This make our systems extremely cost-effective (particularly compared to buying bottled water) and don’t even get me started on plastic pollution 😡!!
In the long term, leasing saves you money as we also automatically upgrade the systems to a new model as they age, at no additional cost. Winner winner, chicken dinner!
Although this kills my husband, I have made the decision to only offer our service to Toowoomba & surrounds as I really want to maintain a high level of personal customer service. Basically, I’m bit of a control freak and I don’t trust anyone to do it as well as me.
Anyhoo, that’s MORE than enough about me, hopefully I’ve passed my first homework task. I’m off to see what I can make for lunch….take care & stay safe, Heidi x