Meet The Winner Of Walmart's Get On The Shelf Competition

Walmart has announced the winners of its Get On The Shelf competition, an "American Idol"-like contest that attracted more than 4,000 products from inventors, entrepreneurs and small businesses across the nation.

Decided by fan votes, three unique products, including grand prize winner HumanKind Water, took the top spots and will now be featured on Walmart.com and in stores. The competition, launched in January by @WalmartLabs, the company's social and mobile commerce leg, called for inventors to submit videos demonstrating their product. During two voting rounds, over 1 million votes were cast.

"Get on the Shelf has brought out the best in American ingenuity and creativity with products that are clever, fun and useful," Joel Anderson, president and CEO of Walmart.com, said in a statement.

Despite being just two years old, Philadelphia-based HumanKind Water is backing a huge cause: clean drinking water. The company, founded by Christian minister T.J. Foltz, donates 100 percent of the net profits of its bottled water to organizations that help supply clean drinking water around the world. "When we found the competition, we knew it was a perfect fit for us," Foltz said. "All the other products are great, but you can either put one more gadget on the shelf or save 10,000 lives." According to HumanKind, if every American bought 10 bottles of HumanKind water or directly donated $10, the shortage of clean drinking water would be eradicated.

Foltz, who partners with other organizations to help dig wells, build filtration and chlorinization systems and harvest rain water, said the most vital part of his company's efforts is sustainability. "We want local, indigenous people to take ownership of the project, so once the organization moves out, the water systems are maintained and stay in place."

As far as his big win, Foltz and his team aren't quite sure what to expect over the next few months. "It's ridiculous, really," he said. "A year ago, I was peddling bottled water out of my '96 Jeep, and now it's going to be sold all over the world. It's a wonderful ascension, but the challenge is going to be scaling up that rapidly."

The competition also named PlateTopper and SnapIt Eyeglass Repair Kit to its second and third place spots. PlateTopper, founded by Princeton alum Michael Tseng, is an airtight cover that can be placed directly on a plate to help save food. The SnapIt Eyeglass repair kit, developed by Washington resident Nancy Tedeschi, eliminates the hassle of dealing with tiny eyeglass screws. Also a socially responsible company, SnapIt donates proceeds to the anti-bullying campaign Jaylen's Challenge.

"This competition was crowd sourcing at its best," Walmart spokesman Ravi Jariwala said. According to Jariwala, Walmart will work closely with all three winners to help them manage and meet production needs and increase the visibility of their products to Walmart's 200 million weekly customers.

Comments

[Vopeee]

10:10 AM on 05/09/2012

How does Walmart have a contest and even allow bottled water in it. The sent out press release looking for the next best new invention, what a sad disgrace this is. Walmart wanted press and they had all the contestants get if for them. I feel sorry for the people who really worked to win this contest and got beat by bottled water. The president of Walmart said they never expected bottled water to win but the votes are what the votes are. Well I say to Mr. Walmart president how about you should have never let bottle water in the competition to begin with. How about this the bottled water doesn't even have a supply to buy through Walmart.com their package isn't ready. What a waste and a waste for the people who entered and didn't win. Walmart should be ashamed of themselves.

[Another Random Guy]

04:01 PM on 05/04/2012

Waste of a contest.

[fortressfountain]

01:35 PM on 05/04/2012

I do not understand 100% of profit donated? Who works for free in production and what cardboard box does this person live in? Water is not new or innovative has been around since the beginning of time. Corporations and politicans should consider themselves failures if they can build a walmart in any corner og the globe why cant their citizens have access to water?

[mattkoshko]

04:36 PM on 05/04/2012

No, not "100% of profit"...100% of NET profit. They can pay all their employees, overhead costs, investors, executives, etc., and what is left would be the NET profit. While it sounds great to see 100% donated, it's certainly not what people may believe. If their manufacturing costs of each bottle is $.10 and they sell each bottle for $1.10, it doesn't mean $1 of each bottle is donated. They have to cover their OTHER costs first. It may be $.08 of each bottle when all is said and done. It's a common misconception of "Non-profit" organizations - they can pay their executives huge salaries so long as at the end of the year they really have nothing left in the bank.

[Katy Comber]

11:07 PM on 05/04/2012

If you research the company, you'll see that the President of the company pays himself minimum wage (so far the rest of the staff are volunteers) so that more money can go to the cause.

Also, what's innovative about this product is that it is taking a chunk out of what our culture already spends ($22B) on bottled water per year world wide to attempt to resolve the entire "water crisis" which experts estimate could be solved permanently for only $6B.

[aosborneh2o]

08:23 PM on 05/03/2012

So, let's get this straight. This guy is selling bottled water at Wal-Mart to help provide clean drinking water??? How about this, maybe if we weren't selling so much bottled water in the first place, in bottles that pollute the environment when for the most part tap water is just fine, there would be more clean drinking water available???

[Natalie MacNamara]

10:16 AM on 05/04/2012

The water bottles are made from recycled plastic. They are building filtration systems in countries that don't have clean drinking water and can't access clean tap water like we can.

[aosborneh2o]

07:36 AM on 05/05/2012

Sure. But even recycled water bottles end up in landfills and use resources. Bottled water across the board is among the most absurdly wasteful and damaging things to our environment. How about we get rid of bottled water entirely and use the hundreds of wasted dollars per person that is spent on the industry to build a few thousand times the number of filtration systems, eradicate a few diseases to boot, and feed the world's hungry children???

0.000001% of the profits (he's a small player in an enormous industry) on the one of the most harmful and unnecessary industries in the world seems like pretty lousy bang for the buck...