While still on active duty for the U.S. Navy, Integrity Bottles Owner Zach Lewis and his wife Jamie began a small business in Santee by sand carving quality wine and liquor bottles as military retirement gifts, Change of Command presentations and other special occasions.
Beginning in 2016, Zach Lewis was still heading out for deployments and training operations as the company quickly began to grow. It was Jamie’s idea to turn to online sales, and the success of the business started growing rapidly from there. On Amazon, San Diego ranks number seven in handmade in America items. The move to a hybrid style of retail business took this small business to new levels.
Lewis said Integrity Bottles is operating as a retailer/manufacturer. With the creative direction of Jamie, “the real rock star” said Lewis, it has done all of its engraving and sandblasting in its small facility in Santee. Lewis, now a Navy veteran, and his wife Jamie is a former sheriff’s deputy.
With 15 employees, Lewis said that the most important aspect of its success is the people that work for them and the partners that they have created over the years. And today is not different for this company as it has partnered with local businesses and created products to give back to the local community during the COVID-19 epidemic.
“I really want to recognize the team effort. Our people that are working for us, we didn’t stay home during all of this,” said Lewis. “We were busy. Our entire staff was able to come into work every day. They essentially put them self at a higher risk bracket in doing that. They sacrificed a little bit of that to help out the community in what we are doing.”
“Our team does all of the packing, cleaning, and patented blasting masking for our glasses,” said Lewis. “It is an in-depth process. We do wholesale order, but that is a small portion of our company. The largest portion of our company is definitely Amazon sales and online market-based sales directly to the consumer.”
Lewis said it created a partnership with Liberty Call Distilling Co. when the FDA approved local distilleries and local companies to produce hand sanitizers according to their guidelines.
“They were getting such massive orders from large cities like New York City and Los Angeles,” said Lewis. “They also had a lot of smaller orders. They really couldn’t manage it, but we are set up for that. Integrity Bottles is excellent at packing bottles and shipping them out and managing those smaller orders. We took that off their plate and we sourced the hand sanitizer from Liberty Call. Now, what we are able to do is that we are able to donate the proceeds to a non-profit in support of COVID efforts and we are able to give away free bottles of sanitizers to first responders and local medical staff.”
Lewis said they created the COVID-19 themed glasses to bring light to a hard time and to try to put a smile on people’s faces.
“When we created the kind of happy coronavirus glasses theme we had to make sure that we are giving the proceeds away, making sure that we are supporting the actions too,” said Lewis. “So we have a little uplifting product as well as the give back.”
Integrity Bottles is donating 100% of proceeds from all COVID-19 products to ZTActive Hero Project, a non-profit in support of first responders, medical personnel, military veteran and their families affected by coronavirus during this national emergency.
Over the years, Integrity Bottles has created a wide variety of hand etched glassware for any type of occasion and added many other products to its selection such as mugs, tumblers, water bottles, personalized liquor bottles and custom products. To learn more about Integrity Bottles, visit www.integritybottles.com.
