2025 IAC Award Application – High Sierra Showerheads

Online Newsletter Campaign - Small Business Category

How do you build – and retain – an engaged, e-mail-connected community of customers for your water- and energy-saving shower heads …

  • When people typically only buy the products you sell once every 3-10 years?
  • And when there are few, if any, obvious touchpoints after purchase? (Unlike cars and many other “bought only infrequently” products, shower heads generally don’t need ongoing maintenance and parts service from a dealer or third party. Or consumable supplies and accessories.)

In December 2023, High Sierra Showerheads, a small, family-owned manufacturer in California, launched a monthly e-mail newsletter.

High Sierra Droplets regularly covers our company, our products, and sales promotions. Yet as well, between 25% and 50% of every issue’s content is of general interest: focused far more on helping inform, entertain, and engage our readers, rather than on the pursuit of sales. We also include links so our readers can go off and learn more on their own.

In part through placing a significant focus on such general interest content, alongside a 10% one-time discount offer for newsletter signups, we’ve built our newsletter mailing list to nearly 9,000 subscribers. And have typically retained 98.5% to 99% of our subscribers (after bounces and unsubscribes) following each newsletter mailing. (Even though many of our subscribers might not buy any more of our products for years to come!) We’re also seeing evidence that our newsletters are being shared, and that new subscribers have learned about us in that way.

With such content, we’ve often spotlighted others doing meritorious work in fields such as water and ecology, whether or not they have any direct connection to our company. And we’ve also proudly shared highlights about our partners (such as student-athletes), customers with interesting stories of their own, nonprofit organizations we support, and fellow small businesses. (Cherishing and maintaining those relationships is a key secondary purpose of the newsletter!)

Here are some examples of content published during 2024, below. We also encourage you to look through many or all of this newsletter’s monthly issues throughout 2024.

General Interest Content

Four examples of general interest content published in High Sierra Droplets during 2024.

1. Spotlighting researchers working on important water conservation issues, from the February 2024 issue of High Sierra Droplets:

Can We Replenish Groundwater?

In the face of rapidly depleting groundwater, here in California and the American West – as well as in other places worldwide – is there anything we can do to replenish it?

Researchers at UC Davis, not far from High Sierra’s factory, are exploring one possible solution. By flooding tree orchards and some other agricultural fields during heavy rainfall, rather than letting that water run off into ditches and canals, and flow out to rivers and oceans, it’s possible to have much of it percolate into the soil and recharge groundwater.

There are plenty of challenges. For instance, will flooding hurt trees or crops? (Early indications suggest at least almond trees can handle such flooding.) As well, how can farmers best coordinate with water agencies and neighbors to be allowed to flood their fields, in places where water rights are complicated?

While acknowledging these challenges, we’re heartened by this work, and support the researchers, farmers, and others exploring this possibility!

UC Davis Professors Helen Dahlke and Ken Shackel discuss their research on recharging groundwater by flooding tree orchards and other farmlands during times of heavy rainfall.

2. Spotlighting one of our nonprofit organization partners, from the March 2024 issue of High Sierra Droplets:

Photo of a Cleansing Hope Shower Shuttle event in Modesto, California.

Hot Showers Give Hope in Modesto

For a time, Dean Dodd was living on the street.

That experience led him to create Cleansing Hope Shower Shuttle, a nonprofit with two vans providing mobile showering facilities for homeless people in Modesto, in California’s Central Valley. (They’ve also added a Laundry Shuttle van.)

With their staff and volunteers, from Modesto’s Church in the Park and across the community, including formerly homeless clients who’ve since found housing, their mobile showers and laundry services provide hope and lift spirits. When you’re clean and look and feel good, that helps in turning your life around, finding work, getting housing, and connecting with relatives.

High Sierra Showerheads is a proud supporter of Shower Shuttle. We’ve also partnered with nonprofits with mobile showering units and residential rehab facilities across California, Texas, and North Carolina, via donations of durable shower heads that save hot water, thus helping them serve more clients.

Mike: “I’d been homeless for close to 10 years. I started coming here to the showers. I got my own place now. And now I come back to give back what I was given.”

3. Spotlighting a fellow innovative small business, from the June 2024 issue of High Sierra Droplets:

Preventing Fire Hydrant “Geysers” and Saving Water

It’s a summertime tradition: temporarily opening up fire hydrants to spray cool water on hot days. Kids, in particular, love playing in the sprays and splashing in curbside puddles!

To make those sprays safe, so they don’t just knock people flat, fire departments fit the hydrants with special spray caps. Those caps typically release around 20-35 gallons of water per minute.

But what happens when a car or truck runs into a fire hydrant, shearing it off at the ground? Or metal fatigue causes a valve failure?

That can result in a geyser of high pressure water, sending out hundreds, or even thousands, of gallons per minute. And it can frequently take 45 minutes or more, sometimes even many hours, before repairs can be completed.

Such high pressure geysers not only waste water, they’re also dangerous. They can flood streets; damage nearby vehicles, homes, and businesses; and even endanger first responders. Plus, the ensuing mess can take a lot of time to clean up, as well as resulting in insurance claims and even lawsuits.

Hydrant Guard, a small business in California working with a manufacturing partner in Michigan, offers a solution: a check valve that quickly cuts off any accidental flow, leaving just a small “signal” spray to detect the leak. Cities and water agencies have increasingly been installing these, and some of their experiences are shared on the company’s blog.

Introductory video showing how Hydrant Guard works. Includes tests where fire hydrants are sheared with, and without, Hydrant Guard installed.

4. Spotlighting one of our student-athlete partners, from the July 2024 issue of High Sierra Droplets:

Group photo of Women's Decathlon athletes on a grass field at a stadium, with a sign at left for the Heaven to the Yeah organization. Photo credit: Collin Brewer

Women Decathletes Aim for LA 2028 Olympics Debut

The world’s eyes will soon turn to the Summer Olympic Games, opening in Paris, France on July 26th.

Yet some athletes are also looking ahead by four years. They’re seeking to introduce the Women’s Decathlon to the Summer Olympics for the very first time, when the games are next held in Los Angeles in 2028.

For over a century, men have competed in the modern Decathlon, the marquee 10-event track and field contest. Its winner is often lauded as the World’s Greatest Athlete.

But it was only beginning in 1984 that women were finally eligible to participate at the Olympic level in a similar but shorter contest, the 7-event Heptathlon.

Outside the Olympics, however, women athletes are actively competing in Decathlons. As a milestone, the first-ever Women’s Decathlon World Championships will be held in Ohio in early August 2024, in parallel with the Paris Olympics.

Organizations like Heaven to the Yeah and Let Women Decathlon are spearheading the quest to bring the Women’s Decathlon to the next Olympics. They offer multiple ways to support their efforts, including a public petition, themed merchandise and wine sales, and corporate sponsorships.

High Sierra was honored to recently work with Corinn Brewer, a track and field athlete at Lehigh University, and holder of the American women’s Under 20 Decathlon record. In this video, she talks about the joy of competitive challenges, along with her involvement in activities to introduce the Women’s Decathlon to the 2028 Olympics. And she mentions how her High Sierra’s shower head “feels like rain, and I love standing in the rain.”

Corinn Brewer shares her athlete’s perspectives on competitive challenges, the Women’s Decathlon, and her High Sierra shower head.

(She also just launched her own line of Women’s Decathlon-themed merchandise.)

Product-related Content

Even when discussing our company’s products, we seek to make that coverage interesting. (And give props to our suppliers, as well!)

An example here, from the February 2024 issue of High Sierra Droplets:

Grip It! Grip it Good!

Did DEVO, the 80s New Wave band, also slyly write an unpublished song about the non-slip grip available as an option for High Sierra’s Handheld shower heads?

If they had, they would have marveled at the comfort of its closed-cell foam. And how it gives you a confident, firm grip on your handheld shower head even during your wettest and soappiest tasks.

Very few shower heads today, from any brand, are even available with a non-slip grip. None are remotely like ours.

High Sierra’s super-durable, non-slip grip is manufactured by EEZER Products, an hour’s drive from our factory. Made from a phthalate-free PVC vinyl closed-cell foam, they’re most often used on products like hand tools, shop tools, and hand trucks. (Their subsidiary, EZR Sports, makes gun grips from the same material.) They stand up to extremely heavy use under demanding conditions, don’t absorb dirt or oils, and stay on securely.

These grips are just one example of how we’re always looking around for the very best materials when building High Sierra’s products. We want you to have a great experience, not just out of the box but for years to come.

High Sierra Handheld Shower Head with non-slip grip

Every Issue of High Sierra Droplets

Quick links to each issue of High Sierra Droplets to date, so you can evaluate these newsletters in their entirety:

About High Sierra Showerheads

About High Sierra Showerheads and its products:

  • A completely unique way of making a shower head spray, colliding water to make large droplets. (In contrast, conventional shower heads drop water through small holes.)
  • A stronger and more natural-feeling spray, while saving up to 50% on water and energy, using as little as 1.25 gallons per minute (gpm).
  • Guaranteed not to clog, even with the most challenging hard water.
  • Chosen by Ohio State, Purdue, Penn State, Yale, Fort Bragg (the US Army’s largest base), the US Air Force Academy, and Planet Fitness (now in 200+ locations).
  • On Best Pick lists (currently or at various times) on 14 major websites, including CNET, Treehugger, Bob Vila, Popular Science, CNN Underscored, and Wirecutter.
  • Loved in customer reviews, with an average of 4.5-star ratings across thousands of reviews on Amazon. (Despite using much less water and energy than competing models!)
  • Built in America, from domestic and imported parts.

Since 2010, our small, family-owned business has been manufacturing shower heads in Coarsegold, California, a small mountain town in the vicinity of Yosemite National Park. In recent years, High Sierra has averaged between $2 to $3 million in annual revenues, and between 5 to 10 full-time employees.