WaterPulse,Inc.
Corporate and Product Backgrounder
December2015
For more information:
Tiffany Ramsdell
Crazy Good Marketing
720.325.2517 x 603
Overview
WaterPulse, Inc. has created a suite of products that cut water use in nurseries, greenhouses and retail stores by70 percent or more using advanced irrigation technology. The Colorado-based company’s technology provides unparalleled efficiency that improves plant life, saves millions of gallons of water, and also drastically reduces production and labor costs.
“The benefits go well beyond just extending the water supply,” said MikeCroy, WaterPulse Chief Operating Officer. “We consider ourselves stewards of the land. Our products reflect a companywide vision based on sustainability and water conservation across the horticulture industry.”
WaterPulse is the first company to create commercial grade capillary action mats for retail garden centers. During extensive testing, numerous retail outlets have reported massive reduction in water use when WaterPulse’s mats are employed to deliver water to plants precisely and with minimum waste. Typical results indicate a reduction in water usage from 4,000 gallons per day to only 400 gallons in a large retail garden center.
Concern over water shortages has become even more urgent at the federal, state, local and corporate levels. Water costs have risen to extraordinary levels in key grower markets, making reduced water usage an economic concern as well as a matter of conscience.
With drought conditions in California triggering mandatory cutbacks, and most of the Westand Southwest experiencing an extended period of water shortage, it’s exciting to consider how this American-made technology can help sustain the horticulture industry and perhaps the planet.
WaterPulse Company Facts
Headquarters:Denver, CO
Executives:
Jim Heffernan, Chairman and CEO
Jay Greenwald, Chief Revenue Officer
Shannon Hawbaker, VP Finance & Administration
Pat Beare, Vice President, Strategic Accounts
Steven Hundley, Vice President of Field Support
Website:
Phone: 800-376-7161 or 303-772-9884
Email:
Mission
As a steward of environmental sustainability and responsibility, WaterPulse’s mission is to reduce water use in the horticulture industry by providing powerful and innovative irrigation solutions that improve efficiency, reduce costs, and increase profitability for growers and plant retailers worldwide.
Industry Overview – Water Conservation and Plant Health
Horticulture represents a multi-billion dollar industry that involves the growing of container, bedding and garden plants. From a water-consumption perspective, the current system is broken and in need of drastic change. WaterPulse has re-engineered an overlooked irrigation system, the capillary mat, to provide a timely solution to the needs of this market.
Conservation
WaterPulse’s products draw on technology first developed in the1990s.The mats on the market at that time had limited success with large growers due to issues of durability, availability, and the lack of real urgency to conserve water. Drought conditions have worsened across the western half of the United States over the last couple of decades; there has never been a greater need to examine new methods to preserve water.
Plant health
Plants are fragile. They can fail prematurely through over- or under-watering, disease, incorrect light exposure, heat, cold and other environmental factors. Plant loss from exposure, inaccurate watering, rot or disease can add up to more than 33 percent of the volume of a grower’s crop or a retail outlet’s inventory. Growing and maintaining plants is also labor-intensive. Plants must be watered, turned, fed, sprayed and groomed.
Keeping plants watered correctly and consistently is a large part of any horticulture operation. The “irrigation efficiency” of much horticulture watering is fairly low. Water rolls off leaves, particularly when the plant canopy is heavy, or it flows between the pots and onto the floor. Standing water contributes to the proliferation of water-borne disease and root rot. Water left standing on leaves can cause burning or encourage mold.
Watering by hand is labor intensive, wastes water and frequently leads to uneven plant growth due to uneven watering. Overhead sprinklers are notoriously inefficient—most of the water misses the plants entirely. Both methods can lead to plant disease from water hitting the foliage. Along with those factors, temperature, humidity and recent rainfall (for outdoor settings), makes standardizing the watering process nearly impossible.
The WaterPulse Solution
WaterPulse was founded in 2012. The company’s newly engineered capillary action mats help improve plant quality dramatically by providing consistent watering during the growth cycle of the plants. WaterPulse’s impact on the wholesale and retail markets through increased yield and reduced markdowns, can be in the hundreds of millions of dollars in a growing season.WaterPulse capillary action mats have been tested in production environments over the last few years with consistent positive results and dramatic savings for users. WaterPulse is now ready to move into full production mode.
WaterPulse Technology
WaterPulse mats are designed to support the capillary action of soil, which draws water up into the roots of the plant, where it can be put to best use. A key feature is capillary action is that soil will only draw up as much water as it can use, protecting plants from root rot and other associated problems.
The capillary action mat delivers both water and nutrients uniformly, resulting in healthier, more consistent and more attractive plants. The mats are constructed with three separate layers: An impermeable backing layer, a patent pending geo-textile capillary fiber layer, and a pervious top layer. The geo-textile material wicks water evenly through the mat. As water is drawn into plants via the soil, the remaining water in the soil continues to be evenly distributed.
Traditionally, capillary action mats for nurseries and greenhouse growers are cut to size and left open at both ends. WaterPulse’s Mass Flow™ Mats are designed to provide both irrigation and drainage cycles. These drainage cycles allow oxygen into the soil, improving plant growth and reducing salt buildup, and ultimately promoting healthier plants and more uniform growth.
Products
The WaterPulse suite of commercial-grade products uses patent-pending technology to mimic the natural capillary action of soil to move water to plants in the most efficient manner possible. The Mass Flow Mats are irrigated by a straightforward system of a header feeding drip tapes running the length of the mat. This approach minimizes plant waste and improves overall plant quality. It also reduces the labor associated with inefficient hand or overhead watering. WaterPulse’s capillary action mats lead to healthier plants, more sales and ultimately higher profits for WaterPulse customers.
First Commercial-Grade Retail Mats
WaterPulse developed the first commercial-grade retail mats. Open-ended grower mats are impractical in a retail environment. By enclosing all four sides of the custom-sized mats, it is possible to provide the benefits of capillary action in a retail setting.
Mats in retail centers are watered manually or using the WaterPulse Vortex™ Injection System. The Vortex Injection System allows water to be passed through a tube along the vertical side of a mat, with injectors inserted at prescribed intervals. The Vortex Injection System allows more precise watering because water is injected directly into the capillary fabric of the mats and in turn directly to the soil of the plants.
Retailer Benefits
WaterPulse Retail Mats with Vortex Injectors pay for themselves within a single season through a mix of benefits including lower water usage, fewer markdowns due to plant failure, and reduced labor costs. The system not only frees up store staff for other tasks, but it virtually eliminates the hazard of pooling water. This makes for a safer working—and shopping-- environment.
Grower Benefits
Growers will see an ROI of 12 months or less when using Mass FlowTM Mats. Designed for use in greenhouses and nurseries, these mats are available in 4' and 5' widths and can be cut to any length. They offer growers the same benefits retailers enjoy, plus the ability to grow more uniform plants to sell to retail outlets.
Case Studies
Retailer story
One retail chain replaced its hose-based systems in a number of stores during a trial of the mats.The WaterPulse mats hold roughly 100 plants each. Watering today entails adding water to the mat. The mats do the rest; spreading the water out evenly to fully hydrate the plants. A senior manager for the chain says, “The result is better, healthier plants, as well as associates who are now able to spend less time watering and more time helping find the perfect items for our customers.”
Grower Story
A YouTube video demonstrates the effectiveness of the WaterPulse capillary action mats as compared with carefully controlled top watering and individual bottom watering. The results demonstrated similar results in terms of moisture content, but the narratorobserves that the mats recapture most of the water that is put into them – and they reduce the amount of effort necessary to achieve the results. This small sample makes it easy to project WaterPulse’simpact on a larger operation.
Bios of WaterPulse Management Team
Jim Heffernan
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Jim is a finance executive in Silicon Valley with over 30 years’ experience in semiconductors, computers, software and the Internet. He finds in WaterPulse a powerful opportunity to contribute to both water conservation, for an increasingly scare natural resource, and the bottom line for plant growers and retailers. He has served as the CFO or senior financial officer for several private and public companies. As a co-founder of five start-up companies, he has raised over $150M in private funding and over $450M in public funding in four public offerings. Additionally, Jim has also been a member of the Boards of Directors for several public and private companies. Jim has a BS and an MBA from Santa Clara University.
Jay Greenwald
Chief Revenue Officer
Jay is focused on increasing WaterPulse market share in North America by developing and implementing innovative sales and marketing strategies, expanding and leveraging the company’s strong existing partnerships and leading and building on the exceptional sales team that is currently in place. He is a sought-after consultant for building sales organizations and sales operations in all sizes of technology companies, from start-ups to established small and medium businesses and large enterprises. Jay’s sales career spans two decades across the U.S. and 60 countries, including running an $80 million sales operation in 55 emerging markets around the world for Sterling Software, a $1.5+ billion enterprise software vendor. He has physically traveled to 43 countries around the world to sell and drive channel revenue for enterprise software and technology. Jay earned a Mathematics and Computer Science degree, magna cum laude, from the University of Arizona and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
Shannon Hawbaker
VP Finance & Administration
Shannon is focused onbuilding the administrative and financial structure necessary to support WaterPulse’s growth. She is a global finance leader with experience and discipline gained in technology and medical device industries and an entrepreneurial spirit to drive results.Shebrings significant operational finance experience gained from leadership roles at ThermoFisher Scientific and Medtronic, as well as entrepreneurial skills gained from building two startups, most recently NEO Unmanned Solutions. Shannon started her career at PricewaterhouseCoopers. She is a CPA and earned a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting from North Dakota State University and an MBA from IMD in Switzerland
Pat Beare
Vice President, Strategic Accounts
Pat has more than 25 years of sales management experience in consumer goods and the horticulture industry. Pat’s sales experience to large, international retailers includes working with and supporting the needs of Walmart, Home Depot and Lowe’s to accelerate their growth in their lawn, garden and live goods product sales. Before joining the WaterPulse team, Pat held sales management positions with Navajo Agricultural Products Industries and Earthstone/Growstone, where he helped grow the company from a startup to a multi-million dollar operation. He was also the Vice President of Business Development at SPAR Group, Inc., the world’s foremost international in-store merchandising firm, where he worked with leading U.S. big box and grocery retailers. As Vice President in charge of Strategic Accounts, Pat draws on his extensive experience in general retail and garden center markets to build strong relationships and support the needs of the worldwide big box retailers in their lawn and garden center operations and live goods sales.
Steven Hundley, Vice President of Field Support
Steve has more than 25 years of management experience in military, technology, transportation, supply-chain, and big box retail operations. Most recently, he was a store manager for Walmart where he grand-opened one new store and significantly improved store operations and profitability in another. He is a former U.S. Army Infantry officer and was the Iraq Country Manager for transportation operations on U.S. Federal Contracts for over five years. In the latter position, he handled transportation operations with over 800 employees on contracts valued in excess of $6 billion. As WaterPulse’s Vice President of Field Support, he is charged with developing the field support function and managing key account relationships at the senior management level to ensure total client satisfaction. Steve earned a BS in Sociology from Virginia Commonwealth University.
WaterPulse Backgrounder Page 1