Offering personal dispensers a world’s first
Wendy McLellan
Province
Oxia’s Bryce Margetts imagines a world where the subtle pick-me-up of oxygen is as available as the ever-present bottled water. Photograph by : Sam Leung, The Province
It sounds a little crazy, but Vancouver entrepreneur Bryce Margetts imagines a world where people carry around personal oxygen dispensers to give themselves a lift or to ward off a headache.
Futuristic? Maybe. But then again, it wasn’t many years ago that buying bottled water from a pop machine was inconceivable.
“We may be a few years too early, but it will happen,” said Margetts. “We’re really trying to be what Evian is to the bottled-water market, or like Red Bull is to the drink market.”
Margetts and his three Australian partners have developed Oxia, a portable, refillable oxygen canister about the size of a small bottle of water. The idea of sucking on concentrated oxygen as a health booster has been around for several years.
But Margetts said Oxia is the world’s first personal-oxygen dispenser that can be refilled.
Currently, the company is selling most of its products to luxury hotels and high-end spas. But Margetts said he is negotiating with a national U.S. chain to push Oxia into wider distribution.
It is also sold in several countries worldwide as well as online.
After two years on the market, he said the company now has 35 employees in Canada and the U.S. and has doubled its sales this year. About 80,000 canisters are now in circulation.
“It’s not rocket science — it’s just oxygen,” said Margetts, 31, chief executive of Oxia, which has offices in Vancouver as well as Las Vegas and Australia. “We just figured out how to package it and make it refillable.
“A lot of people say there’s no benefit, or it doesn’t work, but we’ve had a great response. It helps you feel better. It doesn’t get you high, it just increases the oxygen in your blood and give you a subtle pick-me-up.”
Several NHL teams have Oxia on the player’s bench and the head trainer for the Dallas Stars has endorsed the product as an effective boost for flagging energy during the third period.
One U.S. hotel offers the canisters along with the coffee and tea served to conference delegates, and the exclusive New York department store Bergdorf Goodman has started selling Oxia in its beauty department.
Vancouver’s Pan Pacific Hotel signed up this week to offer Oxia to guests. The canisters are being placed in each room and cost $15.95 for about 35 deep breaths of 90-per-cent oxygen.
Guests leave the canister behind when they check out, or, if they like the effects, they can take the canister home for $79.95 and refill it through Oxia’s online service.
“I remember when we put bottled water in hotel rooms, people thought we were stark-raving mad,” said Steve Halliday, general manager of the Pan Pacific. “Now we’re putting oxygen in the rooms. It’s not about air quality — it’s just about feeling good, and this is a unique item we can offer our customers.”
© The Vancouver Province 2006