Will you buy something you can’t see? Well, for some, the answer is “yes” as a young entrepreneur from Medellin, Colombia has been making dollars every day by selling bottles of air to tourists.
Living in Medellin, one of Colombia’s largest cities, Juan Carlos Alvarado thought of selling air from his hometown, which is also known as the “City of Eternal Spring” because of having a pleasant climate all year round. According to El Universal, Alvarado saw a business opportunity on the fact that thousands of tourists flock to Medellin to visit and enjoy the Flower Fair, and now, he has been manufacturing 100 to 200 bottles of air a day.
“I saw the need to undertake, to search for it, I have very crazy ideas, this is just one and when I look at the product as such, it is crazy. Everything can be achieved, nothing is impossible, and I went to Europe and saw that they were selling air to the Chinese for 160 dollars and I said: Medellín is the city of eternal spring and that is where the idea was born,” read the translated quote from the aforementioned report.
While many tourists love his unique souvenir and a lot of people online find it hilarious, some have been doubting his product, thinking that it is either fake or simply a social experiment.
The seller, however, firmly stood by his creation, saying he has always been very serious about it from the time the idea was born to the moment that idea led him to begin creating products with a system that uses a device that encapsulates the air.
“I created an efficient 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,”Alvarado explained.
As for the price, the young business owner did not want to reveal anything publicly and stressed that those who want the product must go to two distribution points located in El Poblado and 70.
“We cannot disclose the price as such of this jewel that is aimed at tourists, those people who like originality, who like the exclusive, who are actually very few,” he noted.
“Bottled air can make you laugh at first, but this is a ready-made product,” he further emphasized. “People criticize me as a scammer, but it’s a tougher business than it looks. It’s never easy to fill a bottle with air.”