Urban Spring Case

SIMON LAM
INGRID PIPER
URBAN SPRING: BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE

SOCIAL ENTERPRISE
We envision a world where using a single-use bottle water is not a norm.

- Ada Yip, CEO, Urban Spring
As Urban Spring prepared to launch its second-generation water fountain Well 井 the social
enterprise’s CEO Ada Yip reflected that the company she had built over the past five years had
reached a point where her team, in terms of opportunities to grow, had more to offer than the
Hong Kong market provided.
The company’s water fountains were based on a simple premise—they provided chilled, filtered
water free of charge to consumers who carried their own reusable water bottles. This
significantly reduced the volume of single-use plastic water bottles sent to landfill, and it also
meant that Hong Kong citizens, of whom around one in seven lived below the poverty line,1
had access to clean, cooled water, even in the tropical, hot and humid summer months.
Disposal of plastic bottles was a serious environmental problem in Hong Kong. Every day, an
estimated 2.5 million plastic bottles filled with water were sold locally;2 many contained water
imported from such exotic locations as the Himalayas3 and the Scottish Highlands. Because
plastic recycling options in Hong Kong were limited, most plastic bottles ended up in landfills.
Of the 5.48 million plastic bottles buried daily in local landfill sites,4 20% once contained water.
1 “Hong Kong Poverty Situation Report 2018,” Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region,
https://www.statistics.gov.hk/pub/B9XX0005E2018AN18E0100.pdf, accessed 11 May 2020.
2 Urban Spring, “Well 井 Smart Water Station – A new way of accessing drinking water,” https://www.urbanspring.hk/, accessed 1
June 2020.
3 I. M. Sara, “Bottled water from Tibet: How Hong Kong consumers are contributing to an environmental disaster,” Hong Kong
Free Press, 17 September 2017, https://hongkongfp.com/2017/09/17/bottled-water-tibet-hong-kong-consumers-contributing-

environmental-disaster/, accessed 1 June 2020.
4 World Green Organisation, “Hongkongers’ attitudes divided over plastic bottle recycling World Green Organisation supports
increasing number of recycling bins and offering incentives to cultivate recycling habit,”
https://thewgo.org/website/eng/news/recycling-of-pet-bottles/, accessed 1 June 2020.
Ingrid Piper prepared this case under the supervision of Professor Simon Lam for class discussion. This case is not intended to
show effective or ineffective handling of decision or business processes. The authors might have disguised certain information to
protect confidentiality. Cases are written in the past tense, this is not meant to imply that all practices, organizations, people,
places or fact mentioned in the case no longer occur, exist or apply.
© 2020 by The Asia Case Research Centre, The University of Hong Kong. No part of this publication may be digitized, photocopied
or otherwise reproduced, posted or transmitted in any form or by any means without the permission of The University of Hong
Kong.
Ref. 20/676C
Last edited: 14 December 2020
This case is for use in the HSBC/HKU Hong Kong Business Case Competition 2021 only.
20/676C Urban Spring: Building a Sustainable Social Enterprise
Even though the city’s water supply was potable, its citizens persisted in the purchase of bottled
water for both convenience and concerns about water quality when they used public water
fountains.
Urban Spring had reached a point where its units were established in the local market, and Ada
realized she needed to make crucial decisions about the social enterprise’s future. Her team was
built to meet significant growth, and going forward, she questioned how she could meet her
ambitious growth target. She wondered if she should join forces with another like-minded
international investor and expand into the international market or whether there were
unexplored opportunities in Hong Kong that would deliver the growth she sought locally.
Creating a Social Entrepreneur

I’ve always been quite environmentally friendly, but I wasn’t an activist or very
extreme. I guess my family background, and actually Chinese culture, is about
not wasting stuff. I lived in Japan and Canada for a while. So again, there was
that culture of recycling.
After growing up in Hong Kong, Ada studied economics at the University of London’s School
of Economics and Political Science before she returned home to work for Goldman Sachs.
Although she worked for the bank for 14 years, she did not follow the career path of a typical
investment banker. Instead, Ada specialized in the bank’s operations, infrastructure, new
products, workflow, risk management, and control. Her Executive Director role meant she
gained valuable management and leadership skills as she moved to different departments every
few years.
“I never thought I’d be an entrepreneur and build and run a small company. But I think that
experience helped me a lot in terms of the development of skill sets for what I do today,” Ada
said about the experience she gained at Goldman Sachs.
After she left the bank in 2013, Ada originally aimed to set up an organic food business. While
she explored this option, she began to build a network of social entrepreneurs and started to
work with incubation programs for social enterprises.
Ada met the founder of Urban Spring when she volunteered to help with social enterprise start-
ups in Hong Kong. She was attracted to its simple mission—to reduce the number of single-
use plastic bottles—and the vision of its founder, who wanted to teach the community about
sustainability and waste reduction by giving people access to free water via a series of water
fountains placed at strategic points across the city.
The simple concept and the logistics needed to create Urban Spring appealed to Ada both
personally and on a professional level, and she decided to accept the offer to become the
company’s CEO. The social enterprise was officially launched in September 2015.
Western Ideas
Ada regarded the social enterprise’s founder as a business partner, mentor, and friend and
admitted their visions were closely aligned. She consulted the founder and the board, but
managing operations was solely her responsibility. “I think what I bring is a slightly more
modern international management style as opposed to a very local Hong Kong family style,”
Ada said.
“I am still surprised—the Hong Kong company management style is quite backward. It’s still
very parental, which means people don’t think. Hongkongers are very smart, but they just
follow orders, unfortunately,” she said.
Urban Spring operated in a flat management structure without hierarchy. It endorsed teamwork
and creativity and encouraged staff to contribute ideas. Feedback from clients and stakeholders
was relayed to the board and founders in an interactive process. The team consisted of 20
members, which the CEO considered was higher than needed, but Ada chose to invest in people
as the business was still growing. “We invest in people because we need to build a product,
build business development, and build a good service team. One day, if I decided for some
reason the opportunities are probably not as rosy or whatever, I might need to scale back the
operations,” Ada said. [See Exhibit 1 for Urban Spring team]
If she maintained her scale of operations in Hong Kong, Ada estimated it would take another
two or three years to break even. Since she aimed to make the social enterprise sustainable, she
needed to seek investors to continue to grow.
New Take on an Old Idea

Public water fountains were a centuries-old concept. In Hong Kong, community fountains were
located in parks, sports centers, and transit locations such as airport lounges.
Unlike the old traditional European concept of a community water fountain, these individual
units comprised stainless steel water spouts above a bowl that were operated by depressing
either a foot pedal or a lever beside the bowl. These were connected to the city’s public water
supply. Individual offices and recreational centers often provided water “coolers” either using
bottled water that water sellers supplied in large plastic containers or connected to the city’s
water supply [see Exhibit 2].
“There’s a reason why people aren’t refilling bottles and are buying water instead. It’s because
they don’t trust water fountains,” Ada said. This concern followed several pandemics in Hong
Kong that included Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003 and N1H1 influenza
in 2009.
Another reason why Hongkongers continued to buy bottled water was because they were deeply
concerned about the city’s water quality as a result of an incident in July 2015 when lead levels
three times higher than World Health Organization’s recommended level for human
consumption were discovered5 in the drinking water delivered to certain apartment blocks in
housing estates. Although the city’s water supply was not contaminated, individual pipes that
connected some water mains to residents’ apartments contained lead. Another such incident
that occurred in 20186 further eroded the community’s confidence in its water quality.
5
B. Westcott, and S. Chan, “Hong Kong’s lead-in-drinking-water crisis: Everything you need to know,” South China Morning
Post, 16 July 2015, https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/1840021/hong-kongs-lead-drinking-
water-crisis-everything, accessed 1 May 2020.
6 D. Mok and E. Kao, “Hong Kong lacks truly independent water quality watchdog, lawmakers says after lead scare at new
housing estate,” South China Morning Post, 19 July 2018, https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-

environment/article/2155910/excessive-lead-levels-found-tap-water-new-hong, accessed 1 May 2020.
Well 井 Innovation
Urban Spring realized that to encourage people to use its water fountains, it needed to rethink
the design of traditional fountains, and it embraced technology and data collection via ke y
design elements. Urban Spring decided to name its fountains Well 井 with 井 being the Chinese
character for the word “well.” Anyone who carried their own reusable water bottle could fill it
with chilled water, free of charge from any of its fountains.
With Urban Spring’s award-winning design,7 water was filtered via a commercial grade NSF
internationally certified filtration system 8 and monitored via smart technology. Although
fountains were connected to the city’s water supply, water was also privately tested by Urban
Spring. The unit was also self-cleaning and included microprocessors; wireless Internet
capabilities monitored maintenance systems; and smart sensors tracked each unit’s filter
efficiency, while also monitoring temperature controls and energy-saving modes. Smart
technology allowed Urban Spring to constantly monitor each individual unit’s operations and
deal with faults or potential risks promptly. The design also included a hidden contact-less
nozzle that prevented contamination via the hands of an individual user.
Urban Spring also made another key decision—the Well 井 fountains delivered chilled water
only—a break from cultural traditions in Hong Kong where people traditionally drank warm or
tepid water. Ada said the temperature at which water was delivered affected its taste. She noted
that chilled water tasted crisper, and users felt it was more hydrating than water served at a
warmer temperature. Chilled water also retained its appeal longer in Hong Kong’s hot and
humid weather.
Ada’s innovative units relayed information—such as operational problems—to the company

through 24-hour monitoring. Ada said this information was vital because customers expected
an Urban Spring fountain to be fully operational at all times. If they found that it was faulty,
they would not return to it to fill up their bottles.
Each unit collected valuable data in real time that revealed user numbers, trends, and peak
demand times in addition to water temperature, flow rates, filter operations, and service
warnings—all monitored by Urban Spring. When she approached a new client, Ada offered to
run a pilot program for the new client, and the user trends helped to prove the units’ worth—an
important strategy that helped the social enterprise gain market acceptance. Data collected by
the units could also be shared with clients, allowing them to incorporate relevant information
gathered by the Well 井 fountains as part of the clients’ corporate social responsibility (CSR)
reporting.
An interactive LED screen gave users information about how many single-use bottles they were
helping to save by using water from the fountain. The screens were also able to relay community
messages or to be used for marketing. For example, clients like SOGO department stores used
the unit’s interactive LED screen to relay sales information and promotions, while other
companies used the screen to showcase their commitment to green and sustainable practices
and to raise community awareness of their efforts to “do good.”
“Nobody is going to read your sustainability report unless you are in the industry. But having
your message on display shows you are supportive and you care, not just about customer service.
7 Urban Spring, “Well 井 Smart Water Station – A new way of accessing drinking water,” https://www.urbanspring.hk/, accessed
1 June 2020.
8
NSF International, “Water,” https://www.nsf.org/testing/water, accessed 26 July 2020.
[It says], ‘I’m giving you water. But look at this, with this station here, together we’ve saved X
number of plastic bottles,’” Ada said.
Although the development team at Urban Spring designed the fountains in Hong Kong, the
units were made in China due to limited local expertise and capacity. Hong Kong–based
technicians maintained and serviced the units.
The social enterprise decided to retain overall control of its fountains to ensure high standards
of hygiene and optimum operations. To do this, the company offered clients a three-year full-
service leasing model. Leasing fees were HKD24,000 (USD3,100) per unit per year. Between
2015 and 2020, the dropout rate (opt out) from the scheme averaged less than 5%. Each unit
had an expected working life of 10 years; software upgrades were carried out remotely.
The combination of interactive communications with users and Well 井 fountains’ smart
technology differentiated these units from others in the market [see Exhibit 3 unit usage data
for client].
Building the Market

The biggest challenge is human behavior, whether it’s users bringing their
own bottles, the people you work with, or customers. It’s to really get that buy-
in to make it happen.
To raise awareness of Urban Spring and to reach a target market in the business sector, which
was interested in sustainability and the environment, Ada used her network of social
entrepreneurs and firms interested in CSR that she established after leaving her banking career.
Local media were also very interested in the social enterprise, which helped to raise the
fledgling start-up’s profile in the community [see Exhibit 3 for customer testimonials and
recognition received].
Ada concentrated on placing drinking fountains in areas of high public use but were privately
owned such as shopping malls and community centers. This ensured that the units were
protected by private security.
One of the social enterprise’s first customers was the Hysan Development Co., Ltd, a major
property investment, management, and development company based in Causeway Bay, one of
the city’s most important shopping and business hubs, where it operated an upmarket shopping
mall.
“I was very appreciative of them actually taking a risk to try a new product. Apparently they
were looking for like a nice water refilling station for a long time. But they couldn’t find a
model that was modern and stylish to place in the shopping mall. We met at an event, where
we were on a panel with their sustainability officer.” Ada added that the firm’s senior
management was also very supportive of Urban Spring’s vision.
Hysan and Urban Spring agreed to a pilot project, and the first Well 井 was placed in a mutually
agreed high-use area on its second floor, next to an Apple store. Urban Spring monitored people
who used the fountain and discovered that daily users actually went out of their way to fill their
own reusable bottles. Since the shopping mall was linked to a public transport hub, shoppers
were not its only users. People using public transport links, building tenants from the offices
above the shopping mall, and salespeople became regular visitors to the water fountain.
“It remains our best location. Every single day, more than 300 people use that water station,”
Ada said. When the area was closed for renovations, committed Well 井 users reached out via
Facebook, wanting to know when the fountain would be back in action.
A critical issue for international hotels was plastic waste disposal. Many like the Marriott Group
had plastic waste-reduction targets.9
In Hong Kong, when visitors arrived at their hotel reception areas, local staff traditionally
handed out chilled water in plastic bottles, free of charge, particularly in the hotter months.
Alternatively, complimentary water was placed in rooms. Each guest might receive up to four
bottles of water per night. Hotels found that these were often opened but not fully used, wasting
both water and the bottles, while at the same time they added an additional cost to the hotel’s
operations and the city’s plastic waste-disposal problem.
To encourage Hong Kong hotels to install its drinking fountains, Urban Spring backed its
marketing with its pilot scheme methodology and data.
The Sino Hotel Group, which operated in Hong Kong and Singapore, was one of the first to try
Urban Spring’s water fountains. When it undertook a pilot project with a hotel, Urban Spring’s
research data was provided to the hotel, giving it an accurate estimate of costs saved by the
removal of water in plastic bottles. The social enterprise also provided an estimate of savings
in terms of logistics, handling, and space saving from not having to store bottled water.
Undertaking pilot projects allowed Ada to directly demonstrate the economic benefits to senior
management. It also gave the Urban Spring team the opportunity to talk directly to the hotel’s
employees, including housekeeping, highlighting how the water fountains required no
additional work and would in fact reduce their workload. Customers readily accepted the
change from plastic bottles to obtaining water from Well 井 fountains using a glass flask provided
by the hotel. The change was seamless because the reception staff explained the reason for this
more sustainable approach when guests first arrived at the hotel’s check-in desk.
It also demonstrated interesting human behavior that showed guests preferred to fill their
room’s reusable glass bottles directly from the fountains, rather than be given courtesy glass-
bottled water pre-filled from the hotel’s Well 井 when they first arrived at the hotel. Data collected
by the fountains indicated high usage around check-in time. This demonstrated that visitors
threw away the pre-bottled water that they had been given by staff at reception and chose instead
to refill the bottles themselves, using fountains on their floor. This implied they didn’t “trust”
pre-bottled hotel water but trusted the data screens on the fountains. As a result, Sino Hotel
Group management decided to provide guests with empty glass bottles, together with a
sustainability message about the fountains.
By replacing water in plastic bottles, the Group successfully eliminated a HKD1.6 mn

(USD206,000) annual cost from its bottom line with an estimated return on investment in 2 to
3 years. By 2020, 30% of Urban Spring’s business in Hong Kong was funded by leasing
agreements with hotels. The city’s hotels faced a significant economic downturn in 2019, and
further disruptions to visitor numbers were caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Being able to
provide exact data on savings to corporate clients also helped differentiated the social enterprise
from others in this space.
9 “Marriott International to Eliminate Single-Use Shower Toiletry bottles from Properties Worldwide, Expanding Successful 2018
Initiative,” Marriott International, 28 August 2019, https://news.marriott.com/news/2019/08/28/marriott-international-to-
eliminate-single-use-shower-toiletry-bottles-from-properties-worldwide-expanding-successful-2018-initiative, accessed 1 May
2020.
Five years after Urban Spring entered the market, it had leased 300 units in Hong Kong, but
Ada’s planned expansion into such high-impact public spaces as the MTR Corporation,10 the
city’s mass transit system, met with difficulties.
Corporate Resistance
Not all Hong Kong corporations regarded sustainability or the need to reduce plastic waste as
their priority.
A logical location for Urban Spring’s Well 井 water fountains was the city’s public transit system,
known locally as the MTR. Ada believed a logical network of units located at a specific location
within the MTR, e.g., at Exit A at every station, would mean that commuters who wanted to
fill their own bottles would know exactly where to locate each fountain at every station and
would not need to search for a unit within a complex maze of station exits.
When Ada approached corporates, she encountered bottlenecks within their operations and
engineering departments. “It’s always these guys who slow everything down, telling you all the
reasons not to do it because of all type of risks,” she said.
She discovered that in Hong Kong, unless corporate leaders led the way for sustainability
initiatives—like the leadership at the Sino Group—and made a decision at an executive level
that those below them needed to implement, greener initiatives would always be placed behind
day-to-day operations. “Unless a company leader says, ‘We’re going to do this, on this date,’
it’s not an option,” Ada said.
Ada believed this type of resistance was behavioral rather than limited by any physical
structures, i.e., connecting plumbing to the units or for a financial reason.
“It’s probably not the top priority. Imagine if you’re the senior manager and your staff is telling
you it’s very difficult, you’d probably put it aside. So we need to be very patient, as well as
very persistent, and to go back and offer them an easier solution or process, to make their life
easier,” she said.
“When people ask me about the challenges in my business, yes, it’s very painful going through
the manufacturing or the technical issues, or being worried about the customer service processes,
but those issues can be overcome. The biggest challenge is human behavior; it’s really about
getting that buy-in, to make it happen.”
Unexpected Bottlenecks
When she created the social enterprise, Ada prioritized needs, e.g., the units were not
manufactured using the most environmentally positive manufacturing because her priority was
to get them to market. However, she placed an emphasis on the need to ensure that the
manufacturing process and the choice of components did not harm the environment.
Lengthy and unanticipated production delays affected the development of Urban Spring’s first
unit and also delayed the rollout of its new second-generation version.
As Hong Kong was no longer a manufacturing center, to produce the units to Ada’s
specifications, the units needed to be built in China where Urban Spring had a contract with a
10 MTR, “Corporate Profile-Our Business,” https://www.mtr.com.hk/en/corporate/main/index.html, accessed 27 July 2020.
company that had a joint venture with a Canadian firm. In hindsight, she believed the mainland
manufacturer did not see such a small production run as a priority. This resulted in a 40%–50%
delay in the unit’s product development phase and significantly delayed its market debut.
The six-month delay in the initial production run meant the social enterprise had a negative
cash flow due to the unanticipated delays; this impacted the social enterprise’s cash flow and
affected how aggressively Ada was able to market the unit.
“I guess we’re lucky we have not yet failed. But there are many things that we definitely have
learned the hard way,” she said.
“I think this failure was partly because we’d underestimated that time. We thought a water refill
station had been around for a long time. It’s just mechanical engineering. How difficult is that?
From a business perspective, it totally messed up my time to market. Version one took 18
months. We hoped that it could be done in a year or less, at least as a workable prototype,” Ada
said.
Ada’s second-generation Well 井 unit was three months overdue when the global coronavirus
pandemic occurred in 2020, which also delayed its production and launch schedule.
Further delays were caused by difficulties in finding suitable industrial designers and engineers,
and supply chain issues post-production. She discovered that technical expertise needed for
repairs and maintenance was limited in Hong Kong because of a lack of local skilled technicians.
In the long run, she felt Hong Kong’s education system needed to address its lack of local
technical, mechanical, and engineering expertise to overcome this significant issue and that
people needed to value these skills more highly.
Like Carrying Your Phone

People who carried their own water bottles, such as gym members, sports people, and those
working outdoors, were early adopters of the scheme. Ada believed this was the simplest group
of users to capture since they had already developed a sustainable habit and only needed to
know where each unit was located. “If I knew that there is a network within 10 minutes
wherever I go, I will always carry a bottle, like I carry my phone,” she said.
As a start-up, Urban Spring promoted itself by sponsoring events for charities, where it gained
community awareness through social media. Rather than targeting a narrow view that just those
interested in the environment would use the water fountains, the company positioned its
fountains as a “lifestyle” choice.
Education and Sustainability

In our founder’s mind, it’s not just an environmental problem; it’s a social
problem too.
The social enterprise also used the success of its fountains to highlight how each individual
could personally reduce plastic waste. It hosted events and ran education programs at schools
and universities to publicize its fountains and highlight the growing problem of plastic waste.
“The original idea of the founder was to focus on schools because he wanted young people to
develop a lifetime habit of reducing the use of plastic. But, in practice, if we only focused on
schools, the business would be really slow,” Ada said. She realized that although students used
water fountains while they were at school, once they left school, without a network of easy to
access water fountains, they returned to their old habits and bought bottled water. For Urban
Spring to achieve its goal of sustainable social change, it needed to expand its network.
In addition to the environmental goal, the social enterprise’s founder also wanted to tackle a
social issue. The cost of bottled water affected the city’s less-well-off citizens. With more than
1 million of its 7.5 million residents11 living below the poverty line,12 the cost of a bottle of
water created a choice—to either buy food or something to drink. “For someone from a low-
income family or a student, lunch costs HKD30–40 (USD3.80–USD5). A bottle of water—the
cheapest you get is HKD4 (USD0.50); it’s a big percentage of their lunch. If they can save that
money, maybe they can buy a piece of fruit,” Ada said.
To encourage the adoption of its fountains, the company marketed units to local schools at
reduced fees. “Schools are heavily subsidized. It’s to just cover our costs, so it takes more time
for us to break even with schools,” Ada said. Reduced fees meant the social enterprise’s break-
even point also took longer, up to 18 months.
The social enterprise’s schools program involved principals, teachers, and students. Rather than
presenting a one-off lecture about the size of the plastic waste problem in Hong Kong to an
individual class, the company ran workshops, took students on excursions to plastic recycling
facilities, and asked students to design their own solutions for plastic waste. It encouraged
students to invent a product and helped them produce a video to market that product.
Ada’s approach to universities differed from that taken with schools. To locate its units on
university campuses, Urban Spring worked directly with sustainability officers and student
groups.
Adding the Cool Factor

Ada believed very few social enterprises used branding effectively, because traditional Hong
Kong enterprises saw marketing and branding as “nice to have” rather than an essential part of
business. Urban Spring relied strongly on the “cool and stylish” factor of users carrying reusable
water bottles that emphasized the message that these individuals acted in an environmentally
responsible way, and whose attitude and lifestyle was considered by others to be admirable.
The success of this branding was gauged by the numerous selfies that users posted on social
media and feedback.
“We have been thoughtful about our branding and communications to ensure that our product
is well-positioned. Having a strong and unique brand is critical to success. And also it’s easier
to go from high end to a mass market,” Ada said.
Ada had considered partnering with a reusable bottle brand for marketing purposes, but she had
not found a model or brand that align with the vision and value of Urban Spring.
11 Hong Kong Population 1960-2019, Trading Economics, https://tradingeconomics.com/hong-kong/population, accessed 1 May

2020.
12 “Hong Kong Poverty Situation Report 2018,” Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region,
https://www.statistics.gov.hk/pub/B9XX0005E2018AN18E0100.pdf, accessed 11 May 2020.
Evolving Directions
More machines and more users means I’ve got more business. The two actually
tie together. To me there is no compromise and no conflict between the
financial impact and social impact.
Urban Spring successfully installed more than 300 units in cafés, schools, universities, offices,
hotels, shopping malls, and recreational facilities across Hong Kong. By 2020, Urban Spring’s
fountains had served close to 2.5 million liters of cooled water, equivalent to replacing nearly
5 million plastic water bottles,13 but Ada believed that for the business to be sustainable, she
needed to increase this number to around 3,000 units, particularly after the company’s second-
generation units—scheduled for release in the second quarter of 2021—were ready for
marketing. With the new units near completion, the social enterprise changed directions.
“We want to get strategic investors coming in who actually know about the industry and who
can help us to build a business network to go outside Hong Kong as well,” Ada said. She was
mindful that partners or investors would seek returns or have other priorities apart from those
held by the organization’s founder—to reduce the amount of plastic bottle pollution and to
create a more sustainable way of providing free water to users.
Ada’s goal for Urban Spring was to manufacture 2,000 units within two years of the launch of
the second-generation water fountain, of which 500 would be leased in Hong Kong, with the
rest marketed to overseas destinations through an agent, distributor, or via a joint venture.
“I want to use Singapore as an anchor to go to Southeast Asia. We think that places like the
Philippines and Thailand might be good markets to be in and have an appetite for this product,”
she said. Urban Spring decided not to attempt to market in China due to a lack of knowledge
about that market, but the company also saw potential in the European and US markets where
there were companies with a similar product and vision as hers, although their technology
differed in one key area.
“One European company is thinking of investing in us. My US and European counterparts say
they have got a smart product but their capabilities are mostly around electronic payment for
water refills. In terms of collecting useful data, we are ahead globally because we’ve collected
two years of useful data which helps us do modelling and data analytics,” Ada said.
With a second-generation Well 井 about to be launched, Ada needed to decide on a strategy that
would boost its growth and fully leverage Urban Spring’s resources and capabilities.
13 Ibid.
10
EXHIBIT 1: URBAN SPRING TEAM
Source: Provided by Urban Spring
11
EXHIBIT 2: WELL 井
12
EXHIBIT 3: UNIT USAGE DATA FOR CLIENTS
13

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SIMON LAM

URBAN SPRING: BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE

We envision a world where using a single-use bottle water is not a norm.

Free Press, 17 September 2017, https://hongkongfp.com/2017/09/17/bottled-water-tibet-hong-kong-consumers-contributing-

Last edited: 14 December 2020

Creating a Social Entrepreneur

New Take on an Old Idea

housing estate,” South China Morning Post, 19 July 2018, https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-

Ada’s innovative units relayed information—such as operational problems—to the company

Building the Market

By replacing water in plastic bottles, the Group successfully eliminated a HKD1.6 mn

10 MTR, “Corporate Profile-Our Business,” https://www.mtr.com.hk/en/corporate/main/index.html, accessed 27 July 2020.

Like Carrying Your Phone

Education and Sustainability

Adding the Cool Factor

11 Hong Kong Population 1960-2019, Trading Economics, https://tradingeconomics.com/hong-kong/population, accessed 1 May

https://www.statistics.gov.hk/pub/B9XX0005E2018AN18E0100.pdf, accessed 11 May 2020.

EXHIBIT 1: URBAN SPRING TEAM

Source: Provided by Urban Spring

Source: Provided by Urban Spring

EXHIBIT 3: UNIT USAGE DATA FOR CLIENTS

Source: Provided by Urban Spring

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