Daniel was in an upbeat, positive and optimistic mood last night, but he told me at the beginning of our conversation that he could not share information with me that was not already known to the public. He said he could only speak in general terms.
The first thing that impressed me was that he was returning my call and a message I had left the day before, on Monday afternoon. He also remembered me from the April 23rd meeting in NYC, probably because I sat directly opposite him at the board meeting table. We spoke in French and he was very comfortable throughout the 45 minute conversation.
I brought up many questions that have been discussed here,
but he had to evade most of them because of rules of confidentiality. I wanted to find out the reason for the delays in production, and he would only say that it was not
the fault of the Chinese government. He spoke about the chain or sequence of events in growing the company from the supply
and manufacturing end, saying that there had been delays at different points in the chain.
He said the team of Paul, Marco and Mr. Tang is still in place and functioning harmoniously. They are all working every day and throughout the day to bring the business plan to fruition. Daniel also mentioned that they have a plan to improve the website, but for now there are many other aspects of the business that are more pressing and which demand his full attention.
Mr. Sauve said he did not see the point in spending $500 on a press release just to let people know there have been delays. When there is definite news, there will be a press release. When I asked if we could expect a PR in a month, two months or three months, he said "in less than a month." That was probably the best piece of information that came out of our conversation from a shareholder's point of view.
Daniel knew about the company in New Zealand that carries the same name, Aquagold, but he said he did not feel it was worth the expenditure to seek trademark protection on a global scale while there are so many other financial demands he is trying to meet. When I mentioned China's need for water, he recognized the level of competition saying, "there is water everywhere."
He reaffirmed their plan to enter the market in other Asian countries, and sooner rather than later in the event that they encounter serious obstacles in China. I thought that sounded pretty resilient.
We talked about how the officers and their family members
are heavily invested in the company. Concerning the current pps, he said he had no control over the share price and pointed out that we are back at the original pps when his company took over ONMC. I have to say that he didn't seem too worried about the share price, and the reason was that he is just concentrating on building the company. He believes that the share price will follow as the company grows by executing its business plan.
I would say that all of the points raised in our conversation wirth regard to the business model showed consistency with what was discussed at the April 23rd meeting. Daniel was much more comfortable on the phone than he was at the meeting, and he sounded confident and sure of himself.
I asked about Iroquois, and he would not say that another company would be replacing them as his bottler. He did say however that Aquagold has not bought Iroquois. He knew of the
Canadian company that is supplying bottled water at the Beijing Olympics, but he said their contract was for the Olympics only. We talked a little about the Shanghai Bottled Water Expo, and he said Aquagold was not involved because his final product with the new bottle design was not ready.
He also did not want to divert funds away from basic production costs to that kind of promotional event, especially since their distribution network is already in place.
We talked about financing, and he said that to get someone from the Chinese side (like Wolong or the Bank of China) to fund their operations was easier said than done. One good thing he mentioned was that purchase orders are already coming in from retailers, so all they have to do is get their finished product over there and things will start to roll.
His attitude seems to be "to work hard and grow the business at the pace allowed by whatever funding is available now."
That is the mentality we find among CEO's of many, many honest start-up enterprises.
If anything else mentioned in our talk comes to mind, I will add to these comments, but for now, let me conclude by saying that the situation calls for patience, and an understanding of the headaches commonly encountered by any business in the developmental stage. Some board members will stay invested in AQUI but most others will probably want to return to AQUI when it looks like a PR is imminent. Let's keep in mind, though, that "less than a month" could mean in four weeks, but it could also mean in just a week or two. GLTA
Lochan
AI
