our story

Echo was founded in 2009 by Michael Balyasny and Isaac Traynis, two high-school friends who hadn’t seen each other in years. It just so happened that they reconnected through Facebook and realized that they were both living in LA and in search of a challenging project to work on.

Although the beverage industry was something neither had any experience in, they were both interested and found a lot of innovation taking place. They started kicking around some ideas, but couldn’t settle on a concept because of concerns that packaging would have to be elaborate and the resulting environmental impact too great. They decided to shift focus and start thinking about beverage innovation “in reverse”… instead of complicated ingredients and packaging, why not get back to basics? Simple products that are good for people, sourced locally and easy on the environment.

Our instincts told us that people want simplicity, a convenient product that doesn’t take a big toll on the environment. Bottled water seemed to be one of the beverage products most out of sync with what people need. Instead of offering a simple product with low environmental impact, it seemed that bottled water companies couldn’t help themselves but offer water from exotic places, in elaborate (often inconvenient) packaging. At the end of the day, isn’t water just water?

We felt that we could do much better, so we started working on our own bottled water. Where our journey will take us next no one knows, but one thing is for certain…echo will stand for simple, healthy, local and environmentally friendly.