clean-air
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The Company That Sells You Peace of Mind, One Filter at a Time
AirDoctor and AquaTru turned invisible anxieties - what's in your air, what's in your tap - into a nine-figure consumer business. Here's how a direct-response veteran built it.
The Company That Rents You Cleaner Air
Coway spent three decades convincing Korea to lease its water purifiers by the month. Now its Los Angeles office is testing whether Americans will pay a subscription for cleaner air, softer water and a bidet that cleans itself.
The Buffalo Company That Turned One Sick Wife's Bedroom Into a 480,000-Square-Foot Air Empire
Richard Taylor built the first one in a leased garage to keep his wife out of the hospital. Thirty-five years later, Austin Air still bolts every machine together in Buffalo - and refuses to make them prettier, smaller, or cheaper.
The Austin company that put a lifetime warranty on the air you breathe
Alen sells air purifiers that look like furniture and carry a lifetime warranty - as long as you keep buying filters. Twenty years in, that trade has built a two-million-customer business out of Austin.
Clarity Movement Co.
Clarity Movement Co. is a Berkeley-based climate-tech company that builds solar-powered, internet-connected air quality sensors and pairs them with a cloud analytics platform sold as 'Sensing-as-a-Service.' Founded by UC Berkeley graduates in 2014, Clarity makes it cheap and easy for governments, schools, communities, and companies to measure pollutants like PM2.5 and NO2 at street level - data that has historically come from a handful of expensive, sparse reference stations. Its flagship Node-S device has been deployed across 250+ cities in 85+ countries, powering networks like Breathe London and Open Air Chicago.
Carepod
Carepod makes the world's simplest and cleanest stainless steel humidifiers - filter-free, three-piece units with hospital-grade interiors that can be sterilized with boiling water. Invented by dentist Dr. Hyung Joo Kim after he found conventional humidifiers were impossible to clean and breeding bacteria, Carepod sells doctor-designed, award-winning humidifiers direct to consumers. After becoming the top-selling humidifier in Korea, the brand launched in the U.S. in 2021 and has shipped hundreds of thousands of units worldwide.