About Us

Hi, my name is Gillian, founder of Akwa bottles.

At the end of 2018, a colleague left my team and bought myself and another colleague a reusable water bottle as a leaving gift. I was touched that she had thought to buy me a gift and loved the idea of the bottle, but felt it was something I never really needed. I always saw people filling up their reusable bottles at the cooler at work and just thought they were a little pretentious...

The bottle sat on my desk for months, looking pretty.

One day I decided to fill the bottle with hot water so that I could top up my peppermint tea while at my desk and not have to walk to the kitchen to refill every time. I was amazed! The bottle kept the water piping hot throughout the day. From that day, I was hooked.

It was the bottle I never knew I needed! I took this bottle with me EVERYWHERE. I used it for hot drinks, cold drinks, water, tea… it went with me to work, cinema, in the car, out and about and I used it at home. This bottle became my new accessory.

In early 2020, I decided it was time for a new look bottle. I have always loved and admired Ankara wax prints so I decided I was going to get a bright vibrant print for my new bottle, given it had become my everyday accessory. I couldn’t find anything I loved enough to carry around day in/day out. I wanted something bright and colourful but really didn’t want a bottle with avocados or flamingos on… so I set about to create bottles with vibrant colours, and African inspired prints, and Akwa was born!

Bringing colour and vibrancy to your everyday with the accessory you didn't know you needed