In 2022, local startup Boomerang Water didn't walk away with a win after becoming a finalist in the South by Southwest Innovation Awards. But this year, it flipped the script.
Boomerang Water was one of 55 finalists for the 2024 SXSW Innovation Awards held earlier this month, taking home a win for the Product Design category on March 11. SXSW is held every year in Austin, Texas, and includes a variety of festival showcases, keynote speakers, conferences, celebrity appearances, innovative companies, participation from over 300,000 people and more.
Boomerang was one of two winners for the Product Design category, with the other company based in Paris, France. There were 12 other winners for various categories, including a People's Choice Award.
The Product Design segment focuses on the the world's best new tools, products, devices, gadgets and appliances.
Founded in 2020, Boomerang is a bottling and delivery service that sanitizes, fills and caps sustainable and reusable glass and aluminum bottles with ultra-pure water. The startup, co-founded by Jason Dibble and Jason Freund, aims to eliminate the need for using plastic water bottles through its products.
Freund told CBJ that Boomerang partnered with the city of Austin and the Austin Convention Center, where the SXSW event is held. It designed custom SXSW water bottles to sell at the event, which helped promote sustainability.
"It was such a different feeling because we saw our bottles everywhere," he said. "We were sort of part of the event."
Dibble said, after its run as a finalist two years ago, that Boomerang vowed it would come back and win. Its collaboration with the venue helped manifest that reality.
"It wouldn't have happened without the support of the Austin Convention Center," he said, noting excitement at winning an award "as prestigious as South by Southwest on innovation."
Boomerang's win comes on the heels of major growth for the company. Freund said the startup's revenue has grown 10-fold over the last year. It outgrew its former headquarters in Davidson and is now operating out of a 58,000-square-foot space at 13570 Broadway Ave. in Midland. The Davidson building, which it still utilizes, is about 15,000 square feet.
Meanwhile, the company has more than doubled its employee base, going from 10 workers to around 25 in the last year.
"We're actually at a point where we're looking for more space within the facility, just because of our growth trajectory," Dibble said. "It was well needed, and it's a great place for us to grow for the foreseeable future."
The startup has about 15 bottling systems on the market and plans to grow that to 60-plus this year, then to about 300 to 400 in 2025. They are used by major partners such as the Grand Bahama Shipyard, the Boca Raton Resort and one of the largest manufacturers in Austin. Freund said that facility, the company name for which he couldn't disclose, will save more than $2 million a year by using Boomerang's machine.
"It sort of proves out our thesis — that we can do better than single-use plastic water bottles, and it doesn't necessarily come at an extraordinarily high cost to do so," he said.
Dibble added, "We are the only ones right now that are proving out this business model commercially and successfully, to show the world that this is possible. It just takes companies to take that first step in the right direction to do something like this."
