Pure and simple

Pure and simple

COMPANIES by Dave Szymanski | Tampa Bay Editor

Clearwater-based Clearwater Enviro Technologies uses electronic signals to improve the quality of water and the paths it flows through.

After owning a Gulfport bar for four years, then producing and selling television commercials for cable companies, Jeff Conway, a marketing guy, decided to become an entrepreneur in 1988.

Conway didn't build a new mousetrap. He just improved on existing mousetraps.

Clearwater Enviro Technologies Inc. is a 19-year-old private company with 10 employees that builds electronic water conditioners. It posted revenues of $2 million the past year and it is global. Customers include McDonald's, Holiday Inn, Arby's, public schools and an overseas brewery.

About half the sales are residential and half commercial. It has about 300 dealers that sell the product in the United States and 70 other countries. About 65% of its business is overseas. Trucks pick up product daily. The Chinese and Mexican governments have used the water conditioners for geo-thermal wells.

Clearwater Enviro's plant, offices and warehouse are under one roof on Kapp Drive in Clearwater, where it moved from Largo 11 years ago. It is expanding into another building next door which will boost its footprint to nearly 10,000 square feet.

Conway, 52, graduated from Florida Southern College in 1978 with a marketing degree.

"I'm not a scientist," CEO Conway says. "I figure out ideas. I tell the engineers to build them. I've taken other peoples' ideas and improved on them."

The company started by building conditioning units to eliminate chlorine for swimming pools. Conway, and his brother, Doug, an attorney in California, kept gathering ideas about the industry.

One of his brother's clients was Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin. That famous space mission used ionization systems to condition the water on board. That jump-started Jeff Conway's diversification into residential and business applications. He put up a Web site in 1995.

The company did trade show presentations, joined swimming pool associations and advertised in a couple of magazines. But after the Web page debuted, faxes and emails increased from in and out of the country. An appearance on HGTV's "I Want That" in 2005 also drew attention.

"It was not as hard to reach people after that," Conway says.

The company's pool water product, MineralPURE, emits a signal to a wire wrapped around a water pipe. In this copper and silver ionization process, the copper kills algae in the water. The silver kills viruses and bacteria. But the device actually never touches the water.

Untreated, water leaves a calling card. Hardness in water can fill pipes with scale, impeding water flow, and discoloring fixtures. About 85% of the United States has hard water and Florida is among the worst states for this phenomenon.

For the company's other conditioning product, Scale Blater, the product sends a signal charge to a coil wrapped around a water pipe. These inaudible sonic pulses change the electrical and physical properties of the limescale-forming calcium molecules causing them to repel, rather than adhere to water pipes and fixtures. The calcium deposits are dissolved and never return.

This eliminates the scale, which partially clogs pipes (Hence, the term, descaling.). It is supposed to purify the water and lower electricity bills.

All of this happens without any chlorine or other chemicals, which can cause red eyes and affect the environment.

The company's six production workers build products from scratch, stuffing and soldiering circuit boards. The big industrial units take about a week to build. The residential units less than a day. The industrial units can cost from $1,000 to $50,000 each.

Dealers buy the units from the company, resell them at retail prices.

There are dozens of competitors worldwide. Conway says his products are trademarked and unique because of the signal they release which can scan a wide amount of frequencies.

Scale Watcher, a British competitor, says it developed and patented the technology that has been copied by other companies. After determining the costs to fight this in court would be at least $150,000, it decided to just compete in the marketplace.

"Scale Blaster (Clearwater's product) is one of many imitators of Scale Watcher," says Eduardo Jalles, president and owner of Aqua Genesis, marketing agent distributor for Scale Watcher North America, based in Santa Cruz, Calif. "We have decided to let them be and offer quality and value."

Scale Watcher disputes that Clearwater is the largest of its kind in the de-scaling market, which it claims.

"I'm afraid not," Jalles says. "We have patents for the United States, Canada and most of the world. The product is made in the United States, Holland, Vietnam, Thailand and the UK. Globally, if you put all the factors together, we're much larger."

Companies offer special price cuts and warranties, and there is plenty of animosity in the competitive industry.

Sarasota-based Superior Aqua, which opened in 1985, competes with Clearwater Enviro in the swimming pool market. Along with Clearwater-Enviro, Superior has its product certified with Underwriter Laboratories, a requirement for electronic safety.

"We feel we're the best because of our depth of knowledge in the industry," says Muha, CEO of Superior. "We've stayed focused on swimming pools, where they went to descaling. At the end of the day, we each get our equal share.

"I'm not tearing them down," Muha adds. "They and us spent the time and money to develop our products."

The keys to sales growth in this industry can be traced to technology. Because heavy-duty new plumbing work isn't needed, the units are relatively easy to install - like mounting a box on a wall. Customers need to check if the light is on. The residential box is about the size of a hardcover book.

Like other industries, the Web has opened the industry to the world. As countries like China, India and Mexico industrialize and develop, they search for products on the Internet.

Plus, as environmentalism grows, this signal technology eliminates the need for salt and chemicals. States such as California have outlawed old water softening systems because of the chemicals.

Water softeners add salt to water and remove healthy nutrients, like calcium and magnesium. They discharge brines that pollute the environment. Descaling does not do these things.

While homeowners may delay purchases if the economy tightens, cities and companies sometimes have to invest in the newer products when they build new facilities.

"As tough as the economy is, we're fortunate to be on an upswing," says Muha, who exports to 18 countries and has revenues of more than $1 million a year.

But the industry has also had to fight some negative PR from its past when some systems didn't work properly.

"The products have had a very dubious reputation over the years," Conway says. "A lot of people perceived us as snake oil. Now we're not even touching the water at all."

Conway was raised in Connecticut and moved to Florida in 1974. He lives in Madiera Beach with his wife Pam and their four children.

Downtime

What does Clearwater Enviro Technologies Inc.'s Jeff Conway do when he's not running the company or with his family? He's an amateur jai alai player, something he started in college.

He was instrumental donating $10,000 for and convincing St. Petersburg to build an open-air public jai alai court in Jack Puryear Park, which the mayor is scheduled to open Nov. 10.

It will be open to everyone, including youth leagues and schools.

REVIEW SUMMARY

Company: Clearwater Enviro Technologies Inc.

Industry: Clearwater-based water conditioning systems manufacturer

Key: Market product throughout the world and leverage technology.