What a year! The holiday season is always a good time to take a moment and reflect back on 2021 and think about our plans for 2022.
It’s been another very busy and exciting year at Futurepump, building on the opportunities and challenges of last year and developing our work even further.
Here are some highlights…
We built a global community of over 1,000 supporters
We started this year with an amazing equity crowdfund, smashing our target by 233% and bringing on board 1168 supporters from over 60 countries. In less than a month, this community helped us raise over $900,000. It was a whirlwind time for all of us here, chatting with so many of you, building connections and support around the world.
“It means so much to us that Futurepump is now owned by over a thousand customers, distributors and advocates”, said Helen Davies, our Marketing and Communications Manager. “Plenty of our new shareholders are offering us business opportunities, media connections and even technical guidance”.
If you are interested in buying shares in the future, you can register your interest to be notified if we open another equity crowdfunding round here.
Setting a new industry benchmark with our 10-year warranty promise
We strongly believe that agricultural products (and everything we buy) should be durable and easy to maintain.
Another big step we took this year was doubling our warranty promise from 5 to 10 years across our range of solar water pumps.
All our solar pumps have been designed and built to last. So we wanted to make a promise to our customers that they will benefit from a decade of irrigation. Along with our warranty, every customer gets a free tool and spares kit, access to extensive online video and after-sales support resources.
“Too many impactful devices for off-grid customers are not built to last. As an industry, if we are serious about serving low-income customers in the global south, we should not be distributing poor-quality, throwaway products” said our Managing Director, Toby Hammond. “We should also be making solid arrangements for future servicing rather than just hoping that breakdowns won’t happen. I therefore challenge our friends and competitors in this nascent industry to match our ten year warranty”.
We hope to see many more matching this commitment in 2022.
Global access to solar irrigation
Access to reliable, affordable and sustainable irrigation is a global issue. Our original focus was on Africa but we’ve seen demand from all continents (except Antarctica).
It has been fantastic this year to see our solar pumps helping grow trees and offset emissions in Italy, restoring landscapes in Canada, supporting community projects in Malawi and helping farmers grow all year round in Cambodia.
To make our pumps more widely available, this summer we launched our global online store. This has made it easier to explore our range of products, find your nearest distributor and buy solar water pumps from anywhere in the world.
Our network of global distributors continues to grow – our solar water pumps are now in stores in over 25 countries as well as supporting projects in many more.
It has now been over a year since we moved into our purpose built factory in India designed to serve a global market. In this time, we have been able to step up our production, R&D and despite serious flooding earlier this year, the site continues to flourish.
Most popular blog articles
Our blog continues to grow in popularity this year. Our aim is to share best practice for getting the most from your farms and gardens and profile some of the great work going on across our industry.
Here are some of our most popular reads:
- Advantages and disadvantages of solar water pumps
- How to decide between the SF2 and SF2H
- Why use solar energy to power your water pump
Our most recent blog looks at the rise of popularity in small scale, market gardening in the wake of covid and lockdowns.
Most watched YouTube videos
On top of our 10-year warranty, we want to make sure our products are easy to use and maintain. So we have an ever-expanding range of product and support videos available for free, and readily accessible wherever you may be. From unboxing and installation to replacing parts from your spares kit we will have you covered.
Here are some of our most popular watches this year:
Over the next year, we will have even more videos appearing on our YouTube channel. To make sure you don’t miss out, you can subscribe here.
Here’s to 2022
Looking forward to next year, we are very excited about the road ahead. We have some exciting announcements and new resources coming soon.
From all of us here at Futurepump, we wish you a healthy and prosperous 2022.
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We’ll be taking a break over the holidays from Thursday 23rd December to Tuesday 4th January and we will respond to all comments and messages then – thank you.