You don’t always have to travel to enjoy the fresh mountain air; you can breathe in it even while sitting right inside your room. All you have to do is buy yourself a jar of the luxury.
Purchasing a can of air may sound like an absurd idea to a lot of people, but some people have built successful startups from it. Vitality Air from Canada, Air de Montcuq from France, entrepreneurs from Siberia and a Chinese Billionaire have successfully sold canned-air from caves and mountains. The only absurd thing they did not do is to sell a jar of air for a crazy price of $167.
A startup named “Genuine Mountain Air From Switzerland” is selling sealed jars of fresh air from the Alps of Switzerland. A British expatriate John Green living in the city of Basel, Switzerland came up with the idea of an online business that could deliver its customers fresh, high-quality Swiss air all around the world. Green collects the air from a secret location near the town of Zermatt, which he then bottles, labels, and ships to his customers.
The website claims that a jar of ‘magic fresh air’ is the best gift for anyone. The ‘secret’ not-so-secret location is even mentioned on the authenticity certificate that comes with the jar. They describe the source on the website,
“it’s collected by a babbling mountain stream, fed by melt water from a famous glacier, near a very famous mountain.”
To make the air a bit ‘affordable,’ you can get a half liter jar for $97, or maybe a 3-liter jar for $247. The best air of the world or not, it certainly is the most expensive air in the world. If you want to feel better about your purchase, you should know that 25% of all the profits go to a charity named ‘World Vision.’ Even so, the prices are insane, and Green agrees, but he thinks that the high prices are necessary to keep his business sustainable,
“There are expenses, we’ve got to send the stuff out worldwide. I want to try and make it sustainable and I don’t want it to be a five-minute wonder and make a huge loss. If you try and charge the minimum price you won’t be sustainable, and you’ll go out of business and also don’t forget, it’s Swiss air! Everything in Switzerland is expensive.”
We can not deny that everything Swiss is expensive, though. If you are crazy enough to throw more than a hundred bucks on just a jar of air, all you need to know is that after getting your jar chilled,
“you flick the latch open and there’s a quick pfsst as the mountain pressure equalises and you can take a breath of genuine mountain air from Switzerland,” says the website.
Christmas present, birthday gift or may be just a memory; you sure know how to waste $167. Want to buy some?
Be wary, WonderfulEngineering (WE), this is not technically enlightening or an engaging feat of engineering. This business/marketing material belongs on the websites of less technical themes – read Entrepreneur, Inc, Fortune, or even Buzzfeed as it is not even innovative. Please don’t dilute your site’s brand with this off-topic content. I’d rather have less content but of higher technical quality than high quantity with negligible engineering value.