Seychelle Environmental Technologies Inc (SYEV)

[Rager]

Inventor dives into water again
(recent article I just found)
Unable to stay retired, Carl Palmer starts his third water-filter firm.
Carl Palmer is the first to admit that he doesn't retire well.



AGAIN AND AGAIN: Carl Palmer has started and sold several companies. His new venture is built on the hope of providing portable water filtration systems to Third World countries.


At 72, he's building his third water-filtration company. The previous two sold to major corporations for millions of dollars each.

In between, he tried his hand at real estate development, horse ranching, sales training and van conversions. He always came back to water. Clean water.

His latest venture is Seychelle Environmental Technologies Inc. in San Juan Capistrano.

He pulls out report after report estimating 25 million deaths annually from contaminated drinking water, higher cancer risks for women who drank chlorinated water, thousands of illnesses from drinking water in the United States each year. Lead. Arsenic. Mercury. Cadmium. Herbicides. All in drinking water somewhere.

Then he dumps several teaspoons of dirt into one of his water-filtration bottles, shakes it and squeezes out water clear as crystal. It tastes almost too clean. But clean water is what Palmer knows how to make. It's what he believes in. He has invented the filtration processes that have been the basis of all three of his companies.

In the 1970s, Palmer's company, Aq-ro-matic Inc., sold reverse osmosis filters for home and office use. Coca-Cola Co. bought it in 1973 for about $4 million in stock and cash.

Then he started PurWater International and International Membrane Laboratories, which he sold to AMF Cuno Corp. for about $6 million in 1986. The company distributed its products through direct sellers like Shaklee Corp.

After other business ventures, Palmer came upon reports and books about worldwide water contamination problems in 1996.

"The water business has been so good to me that I thought I could invent something to affect the health of mankind," Palmer says, explaining why he waded back into an industry he left twice before. "I started messing around with a little bitty filter that people could carry around. And it had to be affordable."

Ground coconut is one of the ingredients he came up with, but he won't discuss the others.

Years ago, he stopped patenting his filters, preferring to keep them as closely guarded trade secrets so that he doesn't have to disclose his methods in a patent application to the highly competitive $1 trillion water industry.

His water-filtering bottles sell for $29.95, the straw filter for $24.95, the pitcher with filter for $49.95.

Again using direct sales organizations and little advertising, Seychelle has sold 2 million water-filtration bottles to the U.S. Marine Corps, International Red Cross, La Cruz Roja de Mexico and the Kenya Wild Life Service.

"Twenty-five percent of our business is with missionaries," he says, not mentioning that he has donated thousands of bottles for humanitarian aid and church groups abroad and for areas affected by Hurricane Katrina.

Although Americans' thirst for clean water makes the United States Seychelle's most lucrative market, Palmer sees his greatest opportunity for impact in foreign countries.

In January, Seychelle signed a five-year distribution agreement for China and Singapore. In June, it announced strategic alliances to manufacture and distribute its products in China and India. Final assembly will continue to be in San Juan Capistrano.

Overseas manufacturing will cut costs, something Palmer continually works on. He recently redesigned the water bottle to be two parts instead of five in order to cut costs.

Despite 120 percent sales growth to more than $752,000 last year, Seychelle lost almost $1 million because of efforts to qualify for NASD's Electronic Bulletin Board and discontinuance of some products and technology. Palmer has put in more of his own money to finance growth.

To compete with international corporations, Palmer says he needs to create more products. The straw filter and hiker hydration pack should be on the market within weeks, he estimates. He's also working on filters for pet water dishes and baby bottles.

Palmer says he thrives on building yet another company. "I will probably work the rest of my life. As I said, I don't retire well."

YGNACIO NANETTI, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/money/abox/article_1227510.php