Family selling fresh air to China for £80 a pot!
what luxury product can be ‘harvested’ for free simply by striding across a field with a jar in a fishing net?
the answer is pure fresh air — and now a British family is selling it to China for a gaspinducing £80 a pot.
the elite of smog-choked Beijing and Shanghai are snapping up jars with nothing inside but 580ml (just over a pint) of country air from Dorset, Somerset, wales, wiltshire or Yorkshire.
the price is 400 times the cost of bottled water in China.
hong Kong-based Leo De watts, 27, sends friends and family members as far from sources of pollution as possible, where they leave jars open for up to 10 minutes to capture the area’s aroma — and make sure that no grass or bugs contaminate his ‘organic’ product.
In just a few weeks since launching the venture — called aethaer after an ancient Greek word for pure air — he has sold 180 pots.
Once unsealed the air can be inhaled for just seconds, but wellheeled clients are snapping them up as a novelty gifts which will never be opened.
‘Each area has a unique aroma,’ says Mr De watts, an ex-public schoolboy who also works as an events manager. ‘Dorset air seems to pick up a few more scents of the ocean, whereas air f rom the Yorkshire Dales tends to filter its way through much more flora.’
Defending his high prices he adds: ‘It is a luxury item and not for everyday customers. think of us as the equivalent of Louis Vuitton or Gucci. there is a serious point, though, as Beijing, Zhuhai, and Shanghai are the major places where pollution is quite bad.’
a Canadian firm is already sending bottled Rocky Mountain air to China, but Mr De watts is thought to be the first from the UK.
‘I saw a few reports of people importing bottles of air and thought it was a bit ridiculous, but then I thought about it,’ he says.
‘when someone bottled water everyone thought it was ridiculous. Now you have Evian and Volvic — why not bottle air?’