Meet Liberty Bottleworks, a small American company that employs veterans to manufacture custom water bottles. According to their website “at Liberty we create sustainable, recyclable, custom-designed bottles that help you share a bit of your personality with the world.”
Co-founder Ryan Clark cares about his products and the people who manufacture them. For decades businesses have been taught to put the customer first above all else, but Clark disagrees. Clark believes his employees deserve the same rights, privileges, and respect. When an angry customer published an online complaint about his company, Clark decided to stick to his principles.
The furious customer posted this message to Facebook after she had trouble contacting the company over the Thanksgiving holiday:
Clark decided to respond to her directly with a message of his own,
Ryan Clark, Liberty’s co-founder and COO here. I normally do not hop into Facebook rants but this one needed addressing. First of all, Ms. [NAME REMOVED], thank you for your order and your desire to support American companies, job creation, green manufacturing, and the hiring of vets. We did receive your numerous voicemails and emails. The buck stops with me.
This will I am sure upset you but…my customer service team will not be helping you on the weekends. Your voicemail stated, ‘It’s the holidays, you should be working’ and your email stated, ‘Instead of doing my Christmas cards and enjoying the holiday spirit, I was dealing with this.’
Perhaps you need to spend a bit more time embracing the holiday spirit. You see, my employees were home with their families doing their cards, baking cookies, etc. Family first, product second. If you want immediate service on a Saturday, try supporting your local retail establishment, such as Bill and Paul’s Sporthaus, People’s Food Co-Op, or Barnes Ace Hardware.
As to your original complaint, we emailed within 24 hours of your order concerning the Paypal issue. Second, we called you first thing this morning in response to your angry voicemails, but you hung up on us when we introduced ourselves, saying, “I never want to speak with anyone from your company.” Ms. [NAME REMOVED], we pride ourselves on doing things well, we pride ourselves on doing things right, we pride ourselves on doing things the American way. Not instant gratification, 24-hour shopping on Thanksgiving type of American way, but family and country American way. The way our grandparents did things American way.
I am sorry you are upset and I will gladly give you your money back, but I am not sorry our employees were enjoying the holidays. That right is not exclusive to you.
If you would like to discuss this, you may call my personal cell phone. If I do not get back to you right away, understand I may be eating dinner with my wife and kids. Please be advised we will not be shipping you your order, you will not be charged. I will not do business with anyone that threatens my employees the way you have.
Merry Christmas.”
Clark’s message was absolutely incredible. Consumers in the 21st century have grown so accustome to the instant gratification of Amazon Prime and 24-hour Wal-Marts that they have forgotten that real people are responsible for those luxuries. In the case of Liberty Bottleworks, many of those people spent a portion of their lives actually fighting to protect such freedoms.
Tim Andis, another co-founder, discussed the philosophy behind the Liberty work ethic with the Yakima Herald “You’re competing against people like Google who have live support 24 hours a day. Being a small manufacturer we’re not going to have live support 24 hours a day.”
Andis was thrilled to see a wave of support following Clark’s public response. “You can’t trade that for a bottle,” he said. “You can’t trade that for 100 bottles. You can’t trade that at all. We have this silly belief that you can do well by doing good. To see the number of people reaffirm [the idea] is kind of a neat thing.”
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