What happens when you follow the lead of a bold leader like Michael Del Ponte, founder of the San Francisco –based company Soma. By filtering tap water using Soma’s filtering water pitcher, customers become part of Soma’s commitment to provide clean, safe drinking water worldwide.
In 2013, Del Ponte launched Soma, founded on four values: design, health, sustainability, and giving back. An attractive, glass carafe with a plant-based fiber filter is both the byproduct of and the vehicle for promoting those values. Soma donates 1% of its gross revenue to charity: water, an international clean water non-profit.
Del Ponte saw a practical need for an attractive water filtering pitcher and combined designing, manufacturing, and marketing a new product with his bold commitment to give back. In fact, the commitment is at the heart of the company. Del Ponte puts it this way, “The [bold] idea is that we’re not put on Earth just to have jobs and make money. We’re here to do something impactful and meaningful.”
Del Ponte sees millennials as a prime target market. “Millennial customers want to have an impact and having some form of give-back program is a great way to do that.” Del Ponte believes that the brand loyalty generated by getting to be a part of something bigger than you far offsets the reduction in profitability.
Through Del Ponte’s bold action, Soma is reinventing water for millennials—the simple act of having a glass of filtered tap water has a bold impact on meeting the global need for clean water.
