Forty years ago, David Reaves realized there was a huge need in Marion County for better water, which started his quest to educate the county’s citizens and provide them with filtered, pure water. Now, in 2022, David and his son, Jason, are celebrating the 40th anniversary of their homegrown business, Reaves Pure Water, that has become a staple throughout homes and businesses in several cities throughout Mississippi.
David used to be an investigator for the state’s welfare department and faced a choice whether to stick with the department or do something else. At the time, the water in Columbia was pretty rough with most households having mud or rust in their pipes, according to David. He looked into filtering water, which was not something anybody really considered at the time — bottles of water were not even around yet. There were several communities within Columbia and Marion County advertising their water was bad, so David decided to take the plunge and began Purified Water Systems.
He found a company based in California that sold filters, which is how he stocked his inventory. Once he had the filters, it was time for him to go door to door and make his best pitch.
“I’d call people or knock on doors and sometimes just leave a card or a brochure,” David said. “It all worked out.”
Jason marvels at what his father was able to accomplish because he said David is more of a shy, soft-spoken guy and that he had to leave his comfort zone to go knock on doors and pitch his product to complete strangers.
“I know how hard it’s been for me — I’ve been doing it for 15 years myself — but starting out when nobody thought they really needed filtered water — they thought they were OK with drinking tap water,” Jason explained. “Bottled water wasn’t around, and people weren’t getting filters in their fridge like they are now. For him to get really uncomfortable going out knocking on doors or just picking up the phone and saying I have a product, that is a really, really unnerving process.”
David’s pitch included what both David and Jason realize now was a very corny video on a VHS. He’d bring along a little monitor in a bag, which Jason remembers from when he sometimes joined his dad on house calls, and show them the video in their den.
“Looking back on it, it was really cheesy. It was a marketed thing that had a song saying it was cool, clear water, and it showed a mountain stream,” Jason reminisced with a laugh. “I remember sitting in many people’s homes and talking about why they needed to filter their water. The video worked.”
It wasn’t just the video at work. David dove in deep to understand the chemistry of it all and would explain in detail why it was important for people to filter the water in their homes. It was a novel concept in the early 1980s, but he was ahead of the curve. Nowadays, children grow up without ever drinking unfiltered water, and David was the pioneer of that in Marion County.
Jason finds it fascinating that someone in Columbia, Miss. was able to find a distributor in California that sold what at the time was an obscure product without the luxury of the internet. David doesn’t recall all the logistics of how it all came together, but as they brainstormed about how it went down, they came to the conclusion that it must have come from an ad in a magazine.
David started out in just Columbia, but he had relatives in Jackson so he went up U.S. 49 and began making his pitch to the state capital’s residents. Although he didn’t know anyone in Hattiesburg, he started going door to door in the Lake Serene area and ended up branching out throughout Hattiesburg as well, which is where Jason primarily operates out of now.
In the early days of the business, David installed filters under the kitchen sink of homes and occasionally on refrigerator lines. Then he started installing filters on the main line running into people’s homes so that all the water in the house was pure and fresh.
“He would dig into the ground this great big hole, cut into the main line and assemble these systems, and the majority of them he did by himself,” Jason said. “He’d take eight to 10 hours, sometimes two days. I remember helping him sometimes, and those were very, very involved. I have help now, so I really have an appreciation for what he did by himself.
“Not only growing (the business) and selling it, but we’ve always done everything. We sell it, promote it, install it and also service it. We’ve always been full service, from A to Z, we do it all. I’ve always admired his work ethic.”
The more traction he gained, some of his customers began asking him to install filters in the break rooms of their offices. Now the business is about 50-50 between residential and commercial clients and provides many local restaurants with filtered water.
Prior to getting into the water business himself, Jason worked for Community Coffee. He would often go into various offices selling and setting up coffee. Everywhere he went, he saw water coolers with the five-gallon water coolers that were all the rage at the time. Yet again, David somehow found a distributor in China that sold coolers that were much more pure and efficient than the big five-gallon jugs.
“You would filter the water and send it to the cooler. You didn’t need the (five-gallon jugs) anymore, and it was very efficient. It’s much fresher water, too. He had ordered some, and I thought, ‘I think I see a need for this,” Jason recalled. “So I left Community and started my business, Reaves Pure Water. That was something that we added, and I really, really pushed that. Half of our business now is that. We’re in a clinic or an office or a break room.”
The water gets filtered from the main water line, and a line runs directly to the cooler, with cold and hot water available. There is no need to worry about refilling jugs or storing them. Reaves offers these coolers for a flat rate per month, and Jason said it can cut the cost for businesses down upwards of 75% from what they paid previously to have the water cooler with the jugs of water.
Jason ran Reaves Pure Water separate from his dad’s business for quite some time, but David got really sick and his business somewhat stalemated as Jason’s continued to grow. The two businesses somewhat started to merge, and they considered selling Purified Water Systems as David was concerned about not being able to get to his customers and Jason not being able to get to them all either because he had so many on his end. Then David went to the esteemed Mayo Clinic, got the treatment he needed and went from hardly being able to leave the house to being in good health once again.
Ironically, it was when Jason officially bought out Purified Water Systems and it all became Reaves Pure Water, that David began to get better.
“His medicine regulated and he officially retired, and it was like, ‘OK, the pressure is off,” Jason said. “But he laid such a good foundation, and I’m reaping so many benefits of what he did. He just got so much outside his comfort zone for his family.
“He’s always believed, and still does, in the need and the product. I can always remember him saying, ‘We’re quality first. We have a quality business, and we have a need.’ There were times you would doubt like, ‘Do people really need this? Should I really be doing this.’ We all doubt sometimes. But he would always come back to, ‘We have a quality product, and there’s a genuine need for what we do. There will always be a need for water.’ We have grown into the largest full-service water filtration company in South Mississippi, and we're very proud of that.”
Even with the rise of bottled water and big brand water filters available at stores everywhere, Reaves Pure Water has continued to thrive primarily because it provides just that — a quality product that is needed. But beyond that, especially here in Marion County, that service is provided by people like David and Jason, who have worked diligently and provided quality and expertise for decades while genuinely caring for people and what they were putting in their body and building longstanding relationships along the way.
Those relationships are a big reason why Reaves Pure Water is celebrating its 40th anniversary, and David and Jason thank all of their customers for helping make that profound accomplishment a reality.
