All Wrapped Up

Brand ID equals big business.

After blading in the blazing heat, an incredible thirst hits you. An extreme thirst. What do Xers reach for in this dire situation? If Jamie Humphrey has his way, it'll be H30.

Billing itself as "extreme water," H30 is the first bottled water company to market exclusively to Gen X. "My competition has overlooked a [huge] demographic," says Humphrey, 26, who founded Beckley, West Virginia-based H30 Inc. in 1994. "Everyone was following in Evian's footsteps with the same mountain stream on the bottle."

Humphrey found his niche after looking to the bottled water industry, a fixture in West Virginia's mining communities since the 1950s. By streamlining the bottle and slapping a hyper-colored label on it, H3O has made headway into such grocery chains as Food Lion and Albertson's in 32 states and counting. With meal-replacement beverages and energy drinks in the works, and international markets to conquer, H30 is posed for an extreme increase in its already impressive 1998 sales of more than $2 million.

This article was originally published in the February 1999 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: All Wrapped Up.