For the week of November 5 - 11, 2003

Trinity water
expanding source

New CFO and marketing employees hired

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By MATT FURBER
Express Staff Writer

In the saturated market of bottled water, Ketchum-based Trinity Springs Ltd. has out performed the competition. The company boasts a five-year sales growth of 826 percent and has been ranked 201 on the 2003 Inc. Magazine Top 500 list.

Trinity Springs has brought on CFO Dean Barney to help bring the Ketchum-based bottled water company to new heights. Express by Willy Cook

To help manage the growth it is experiencing, the company has hired a new CFO, Dean Barney, 57, and thee other employees to help boost the company to a new level.

The U.S. bottled water market is a $2.4 billion industry with more than 700 companies. Bottled water is a commodity like gasoline, said Barney, who is a Portland, Ore., native with 20 years experience as a CFO. Barney has worked most recently with several nonprofit arts organizations in Seattle and previously was president and CEO of Rock Associates, which owned and operated cable television systems in the Western United States, including Alaska.

"The brand doesn’t make a difference. The biggest marketing budget wins," Barney said.

But, Trinity is basing its ingredients for success on its special qualities as an untreated product. Unlike most competitors’ water, which must be disinfected with chlorination, pasteurization, or ozonation processes, to be sold as bottled water in many states, Trinity classifies its water as a natural mineral supplement. The natural elements are not removed and because of the purity of the source and the company’s handling techniques, the product has received the first seal of approval as a "certified source" from Quality Assurance International (QAI), an independent organic certification organization.

"Although there’s a lot of water companies, Trinity is unique," Barney said. "And unique things in life are hard to come by. There is not going to be any other water like this."

Sharon Egan, the company’s marketing director was part of the team that launched the Trinity brand of bottled water five years ago to expand the business from delivery in three-gallon water cooler jugs to the more marketable hand held drinking bottles. She said the company is going to continue focusing on domestic sales, but she also said the brand could be competitive abroad because of the quality of the water.

"Some sources in Europe are national treasures," she said. Trinity compares to the best in Europe as the only bottled water in North America that has the German "Naturlishes Heilwasser" designation because of its quality and mineral content, she said.

There is talk in the company about getting strategic partners in place to make sales overseas, Barney said.

"All of Asia is a huge growth area for water," he said. "We have been talking with people who have the clout."

"But, for now we are going to make sure we have done a good job in the states before going overseas," Egan said.

The company fills its bottles at the source, three mineral hot springs in Paradise, located west of Ketchum on the South Fork of the Boise River at the base of the Trinity Mountains.

Under extreme heat and pressure, the water from Trinity Springs flows naturally to the surface from 2.2 miles deep in the earth. It emerges at 138 degrees Fahrenheit and has been carbon dated at more than 16,000 years old. This means that the water fell as rain or snow at the end of the last ice age. It has been boiling inside the massive granite formation known as the Idaho Batholith. The water comes to the surface through fissures lined with silica quartz crystals.

"Our source is literally and figuratively, untouchable," said Trinity Springs CEO Ron Lyoyd. "It has exceptional purity and properties that cannot be taken away and that no water can match."

Selling the water in sizes common to most grocery stores in the bottled water aisle is helping the company gain a national presence in the marketplace, but they have not done as much as they could to market out of state, Barney said.

Barney said part of what brought him to the company is that he believes in the product and the people in the company.

"Everybody is driven," he said. "They have a mission."

From a business standpoint the mission is to get the product more into the mainstream. With that goal comes a belief that the company can become a national brand and get people to think about quality and sources of water.

"The entrepreneurial companies you’ll find on the Inc. 500 have the type of attitude we need to get this economy moving again," said Inc. magazine Editor-in-Chief John Koten. "For them, a tough market is not an excuse for poor performance, but an opportunity to innovate and rise above the competition."

As the company continues its evolution of further growth, Trinity is moving into the Cimarron Building on Third Avenue in Ketchum and has brought in Steve Lee, 40, as assistant controller. Most recently Lee was a controller at St. Mary’s Lodge and Resort in Glacier National Park. He also worked for Ernst and Young as a senior auditor and an accounting manager at the University of Montana.

In the sales department, New York-based Dominick Pernoca, 42, has joined the company and is responsible for sales along the Eastern seaboard. He has 12 years of experience in the beverage industry, most recently as a beverage sales manager with Odwalla. Pernoca holds a B.A. in Marketing from Lehman College.

Chicago-based Russ Stirmell, 38, is Trinity’s new central region manager. He has 12 years of food and grocery sales and distribution experience and came from competitor Fiji Water where he managed sales in Illinois and Wisconsin. Previously he was a sales manager for Evian. He holds a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of Illinois-Chicago.

Trinity Springs, founded in 1990, is a privately held company with 27 employees.

In addition to ensuring that the company has its accounting and information systems in order as it makes its next step to grow as a national company, Barney will also be busy working to help Trinity find the money to leverage their evolution. As Barney talked about his job of raising money for the company, he compared the work and his enthusiasm to his experience with Seattle theater. "I’ve always loved live theater," Barney said. "They don’t just make it on ticket (sales). There is an arm that finds contributions."

The company has managed to fund itself through private sources, he said. But it continues to need more help to get to the "tipping point." "We need to triple sales to generate enough money to get infrastructure in place," he said.

"We’re going to start blowing our own bottles next year," he said.

"We will introduce new product sizes," Egan said. "Bottle blowing technology gives us flexibility to design our own bottle."

Barney is replacing former Trinity CFO Sue Kwapich, who worked for the company for 11 years.

"She held down the fort for many years and through lean times," Egan said. "She is opening a new chapter in her life."

Barney studied finance at the University of Colorado and has an MBA from the University of Washington.

 

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