Our Story

Like all great stories, this one started in a pub.

In 2003 a group of friends were watching the Grand National in London when one of them happened to mention he'd read an article about the 1 billion people who didn't have access to clean water. He thought we should do something about it. More specifically, that we should launch a not-for-profit bottled water which would give all its profits away to fund well-building programmes.

Needless to say, the resulting discussion was somewhat 'creative' and the more beer we consumed the more passionate we became.

In June 2004 Duncan Goose quit his job to work full time on getting the project off the ground. It wasn't easy, but with the support of the original group of friends, One became more and more of a reality, until on May 30th 2005 the first bottles rolled off the production line - at exactly the same time Bob Geldof announced Live8. It must have been a sign!

It's been a challenging, but sometimes quite magical, journey for the team behind One. What started off as three men and a dog working late into the evenings and every weekend suddenly started to snowball into a team of like-minded people who wanted to help out in any way they could. Wives, friends, former colleagues, companies, friends of friends, friends of friends of friends. It seemed like whoever heard about the project wanted to make a difference too.

They are all heroes in our books and we are incredibly grateful to all of them - check out our corporate heroes page to see who they all are.

And it's not just water anymore. Now we have One Vitamin Enhanced Water, One® Condoms, One Toilet Tissue and One Handwash all raising more money for the biggest humanitarian issues.