In short: Since Fluye's European launch, we have sold 1,650 bottles. That's 8,910 liters of drinking water funded per month through the fog catcher project with Los Sin Agua in Peru. This article documents the real numbers: sales, impact generated, what went well, and what didn't go as expected.
Many brands publish their achievements. Few publish their mistakes alongside them.
This is the first of what will be periodic impact reports for Fluye Bottle Europe. It is not a press release. It is an honest review of the journey since we started in Europe.
We publish this because we believe that transparency cannot be selective. If we are going to show the liters of water when they are good, we also have to show what hasn't worked. Otherwise, this becomes exactly what we are trying not to be.
Sales numbers
Since the European launch until May 2026, we have sold 1,650 units of La Fluye.
It's not a viral number. We know that. To put it in context: a consolidated bottle brand like Chilly's sells that volume in hours during its high season. It has taken us months.
But those 1,650 bottles are real. They are in the hands of people who chose them knowing what they fund. And each of them is continuously generating impact from the day it arrived.
Sales distribution has been mainly direct through the online store, with a smaller portion through marketplace channels. The customer who buys directly is the one who best understands the project. That is also a data point.
Liters of water funded
Each Fluye sold funds 5.4 liters of drinking water per month through the fog catcher project we manage with Los Sin Agua.
1,650 bottles multiplied by 5.4 liters is 8,910 liters of drinking water per month.
8,910 liters per month. Every month. It was not a one-time donation. It is a continuous flow as long as those bottles are in use.
To give that number more context: a standard-sized fog catcher produces between 200 and 400 liters of water per day depending on weather conditions. The 8,910 monthly liters funded by the current Fluyse fleet represents the equivalent of between 22 and 44 days of full production from one facility.
The numbers are not perfect. The calculation of 5.4 liters per bottle is an estimate based on the production capacity of active projects divided by the bottles that fund them. If the project grows, the efficiency per bottle may vary. We will document it when it happens.
The project on the ground: Los Sin Agua
Los Sin Agua is the NGO with which we manage the fog catcher projects. They work in communities in Lima that do not have stable access to piped drinking water. The mechanism is simple: install mesh structures that capture moisture from the fog and convert it into usable water.
Peru has a geographical peculiarity that makes this possible. Lima is one of the driest cities in the world in terms of direct rainfall, but it is surrounded by coastal fog almost all year round. The hills surrounding the city concentrate this moisture. A well-located fog catcher can capture water where it almost never rains.
If you want to understand the mechanism in more detail, this article about fog catchers explains it from scratch. And if you want to see the context of the problem they are trying to solve, here is the article about access to drinking water in these communities.
Monitoring the project from Europe is one of the real operational challenges of this model. Los Sin Agua does not have an automated reporting system. The flow is manual: we contact them, request updated numbers and photos, and publish what we receive. This creates a time lag between the reality on the ground and what appears on our pages.
We are improving it. But we publish the data with the actual lag because inventing a perfect reporting system that doesn't exist would be worse.
What didn't go as expected
This is the part that most brands don't publish. Here it is.
The growth rate was slower than planned. The original plan for the first European semester was more ambitious in volume. We reached 1,650 units, which is a real starting point, but not the initial goal. The European bottle market is competitive and building brand recognition from scratch takes longer than business plans usually admit.
Organic acquisition was slow to start. We invested heavily in SEO content from the beginning. We have been publishing three articles weekly for twelve weeks. Organic traffic is starting to move, but SEO results are seen in months, not weeks. We continue.
The B2B channel is below expectations. The corporate sales we projected for the first semester have not materialized at the expected rate. We have advanced contacts, but decision cycles in corporate purchasing are longer than we anticipated for our current size.
That said: none of these points change the 8,910 monthly liters. That happens regardless of the commercial growth rate.
What's next in the coming cycle
Three concrete things we are working on.
More frequent project updates. We want to move from ad hoc updates to documented quarterly tracking with photos and numbers from the field. The first real quarterly update is planned for summer 2026.
Activate the B2B channel more structurally. We have the proposals. We have the material. What is missing is consistency in follow-up. That is a resource decision, not a product decision.
Reach 3,000 bottles before the end of the year. 3,000 bottles are 16,200 liters of drinking water per month. It is a concrete goal with a concrete number behind it. We will publish it when it arrives, or when it doesn't.
If you want to see the updated status of the project in real time, the data is available on the impact page.
We are still here.
Written by the Fluye Bottle team