Bottled water is a huge market dominated by a few large players. That hasn’t deterred gym owner Aidan Roche having a crack at it with his Defiant Water brand, which bills itself as purer than the rest.
Roche (35) is quite the entrepreneur. From Pearse Street in Dublin originally, Roche started in the fitness industry twelve years ago, putting himself through college and working as a self-employed personal trainer in city gyms.
A talented soccer player, Roche (pictured) played with Liffey Wanderers in the 2015 FAI Junior Cup Final.
In 2018, Roche opened his first Feel Fit gym, in the East Wall area of Dublin. The imposing facility is mostly a DIY job, with the fit-out effected by Roche and his family and friends.
A second Feel Fit gym followed in Navan a year later, this one extending to 12,000 sq ft, and Roche turned his attention to a third facility in Dundalk.
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Then came Covid in 2020, and the gym enterprise was stopped in its tracks. Roche had time to explore another business idea that had been bubbling away.
Positioned as the ‘honest alternative’ to existing bottled water brands, Defiant claims that its H20 is purified seven times, and is sourced from a spring in Armagh.
Normal bottled water companies, Roche explains, use two or three filters, ordinarily either charcoal or UV. However, Defiant uses five extra layers on top of these, depending on the flow of water or how much it needs to be purified.
The blend of filter materials used by Defiant is not disclosed.
The production facility in Lurgan, Co. Armagh, can produce 15,000 litres an hour and the Defiant distributor is Hannon Fine Foods.
It is this burgeoning demand that has pushed Defiant to shop shelves, with Tesco, Gala and BWG, as well as a deal with retail giant Musgrave in the pipes.
“I think everyone sees us as competitors, but because we were the first to do purified water, I think we’re going to be a market leader in that section that hasn’t hit Ireland yet,” explains Roche.
Roche is working on consolidating his primary market before any ventures out into lands unknown.
“In the last two years, there’s been a lot of international opportunities being offered to us. But I feel like you’ve to really own your territory first," he said.
The company has also developed the Supervits range, which is fortified with vitamins B12 and C, and there’s also a sports variety coming out shortly, with guarana, a natural caffeine.
Along the way, Roche has been helped by two other entrepreneurs, Tom Gannon and Niall McGrath, founders of Fulfil protein bars and the Cali Cali snack range.
“Before I met them, I was trying for a year to get the product on the shelves, and it was costing me a lot of money because I didn’t know what I was doing. It was hard transitioning from what I knew into a whole new industry. But Tom and Niall have helped me massively - they’re good lads.”
Roche has also teamed up with Dublin GAA star Philly McMahon as a brand ambassador, while the company has also started the procedure of exporting into foreign markets through Premier Brands.
