Page 13 - IAV Digital Magazine #554

iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine
Colombian Entrepreneur Makes Money Literally Out of Thin Air
By Spooky
Juan Carlos Alvarado, a young entrepreneur from Medellin, Colombia, claims he makes hun- dreds of dollars per day selling bottles of air from his home city.
Medellin, Colombia’s sec- ond-largest city, is known as the “City of Eternal Spring,” because of its pleasant cli-
mate all year round. But you can’t sell climate to someone thou- sands of miles away, now can you? Air is a whole other mat- ter though, and it’s actually a tried-and-true business model. People have been selling cans of fresh air and bot- tles of fresh air to people in polluted countries like China for years, and it was actual-
ly these success stories that inspired Juan Carlos Alvarado, a native of Medellin, to start his own air-selling business.
“Here we store the air of Medellín, which is special, a jewel,” Alvarado said. “We do not pack pure air, but that of the city, as it is. Of course, I make sure that it is of quality.”
The young busi- nessman, who also tried his hand at singing, claims to have created a special method of captur- ing the air and packaging it in small glass bot- tles, which have to be thoroughly cleaned to ensure the absence of any kind of odor.
“I created an effi- cient device, an air collector, that takes between 15 and 30 minutes to trap the particles to generate that feeling of
spring. It is 100% natural,”, the entrepreneur said, without actu- ally revealing the method, allegedly because it isn’t trademarked and someone might steal it...
Juan Carlos Alvarado claims
to have sold 77 bottles of air for $5 each on the first day alone. Inspired by his unexpected suc- cess, he doubled down on his busi- ness, and by the third day, he was allegedly selling around 300 bot- tles to tourists in Parque Lleras, in Medellin’s El Poblado.
“I want to get ahead with my artistic career and this is one of the crazy ideas that have occurred to me given the diffi- culty of getting sponsors,” Alvarado said. “Bottled air can make you laugh at first, but this is a ready-made product.”
Medellin Air has been getting a lot of attention on social media as well as on nation-
al television in Colombia, bring- ing in even more customers for Alvarado. He has since set up social media pages for his unique product to help him sell even more.
Although some have called Alvarado a scam- mer for charging serious money for an empty bottle. He disputes those accusations vehe- mently.
“People criticize me as a scam- mer, but it’s a tougher business than it looks. It’s never easy to fill a bottle with air. It takes 15 minutes at the shortest and 30 minutes at the longest to put the clean air of Medellin into the bottle,” he explained.
iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine