In 1995 Marquis Forge graduated as the valedictorian of Autaugaville High School in Autaugaville, Alabama. In his graduation speech, he promised the people of his hometown he would never forget where he came from if he went off and became somebody.
After high school, Forge attended the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa on an academic scholarship and was a walk-on for the Crimson Tide football team playing defensive tackle. Although undersized for a lineman, he worked his way from the scout team his freshman season to the travel squad two years later. After funding for his academic scholarship ran out, Forge got a full-time job working the graveyard shift at a Tuscaloosa auto parts plant. Getting by on three hours of sleep a day, he managed to attend classes, play football, and work. It taught him a valuable lesson never to give up.
It was during that time Forge met his future wife Nannette Gray, who also worked at the plant. She gave him a ride home one day after his car broke down, they later started dating and married in 1999. A decade later, in 2010, Forge started his own company, Ingenuity Automotive Quality Solutions, representing manufacturers who did business with a nearby Mercedes-Benz assembly plant.
In 2015, a series of divine events led Forge to start a bottled-water business, and in 2018 Eleven86 Real Artesian Water held its grand opening. The water is now available in more than 500 locations in Alabama, including Food Giant, Piggly-Wiggly, and some Winn-Dixie stores, as well as independent grocers and mom-pop stores. It’s also found in Texas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Mississippi, and Minnesota stores.
N’DIGO sat with Marquis Forge and thoroughly enjoyed learning about Eleven86 Real Artesian Water, the obstacles he overcame, and his perseverance. Although this interview is long, it only scratches the surface of the journey that led to his success.
N‘DIGO: Please tell our readers where you were born and about your upbringing.
Marquis Forge: Well, I’m a country boy, born in Autaugaville, Alabama, a tiny, predominately Black rural town. The town has fewer than a thousand people, and another 500 to 600 people live in the surrounding rural area. So there are probably less than 2,000 people in the rural setting.
My mother, Jessie Adkins, was a single parent of four girls and three boys. I’m number six of the bunch. She raised us the best way she could through a lot of hard work, never taking a vacation. We never went on vacation; there was never such a thing as a vacation. My mother taught me at an early age how to just work, work, run things, and do hard work. She instilled in us that nobody was going to give us anything.
What high school did you attend?
Autaugaville High School. The high school was very small, and the student body was less than 300 students in grades 7th through 12th. Today the school (Autaugaville School) is combined with classes kindergarten through 12th grade with less than 200 students. So it’s even smaller now.
In 1995 during your valedictorian speech, you made a promise to the people of your hometown. Did you ever think you would be called on it?
To be honest with you, one of my advisors helped me with my valedictorian speech, which was very true to the heart. I noticed a lot of great people have come from Autaugaville and went on to have very successful lives. I knew that one of the reasons why the population of the town decreased instead of increased was because people would leave Autaugaville and never come back. So it would have been a great honor for those who had gone on to see the world a little, come back and give the next generation a roadmap, a GPS to follow. Perhaps telling them to go down to the stop sign and don’t make a right, make a left. I’ve already gone down that path. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, so every class had to figure things out themselves. My speech was centered around “I will not forget where I come from,” and I won’t leave and become a permanent resident of Atlanta, Birmingham, Chicago, Detroit, etc. I promised to come back home and help my town.
I attended the University of Alabama on an academic scholarship and played football for four years. In my small mind, I was going to play in the NFL, return to Autaugaville, and give back to the town. That was my total mindset, but God had something different in mind.
Who taught you how to persevere?
My mother instilled in her children the importance of working if you wanted something. She never took a sick day, was paid by production, and made $135 a week. When she retired in the early 2000s, she still made $135 a week and raised seven children!
Secondly, while building the water plant, I had a successful elder advisor who spoke nonstop to me for 34 minutes about perseverance. He told me when no one was working; I had to work. When no one was looking, I had to keep working. When banks said no, I had to keep going. I had to keep knocking on doors when people wouldn’t buy the water. He said if I gave up, I’d be with the 98 to 99% that quit. The remaining 1 or 2 percent never give up. They don’t care how many times they hear the word no. They never give up. I believe, I was on bank number five or six at that time, and I just kept going.
So tell me the story behind the old water plant?
That story has an introduction to it. In 2015, I had an opportunity to return to my hometown when my mother called me and asked me to return home and pay my respects to a close family friend who had died. He was a mentor to me and was a great public figure. I had a lot on my plate. I was an engineer in the automotive world and had a team of 33 people working for me all around in different states. I told my mother I’d send some flowers and she said no. So I went and paid my respects to the family. It was a celebration.
So afterward, as I was driving back to my mother’s house, I stopped at a stop sign in Autaugaville, and God spoke to me and said, “go see Mr. Ward.” I didn’t want to go do it, but this is where in my life where “obedience is better than sacrifice.” Mr. Ward was the old principal of my high school and a former mayor of the town. The town was destitute and $15 from being bankrupt.
As I talked with Mr. Ward, he told me how much the town needed help, revenue, and job opportunities. When I asked him how I could help, he smiled and said I could run the old water-bottling plant that closed several years before. I told him I was an auto engineer and knew nothing about bottling water.
So we got in his truck, and he took me across town to this old, dilapidated building (maybe about 1,500 square feet) that had not been in operation for about three years. He said you could open it back and hire people from Autaugaville. I told him I had a well-paying job and people working for me. Why would I want to do this? He continued to remind me that he purchased my first suit when I went on a Beta Club trip in high school. You owe me, and let’s call it even. He held a $300 price tag over my head to look into this water plant facility.
Shortly afterward, he put me in contact with the owner. First, the owner asked me what I knew about water, and I told him nothing. Then, he asked why I was calling him? I told him I was honoring the request of Mr. Ward and could he please inform him that I did my part by talking to you. Then the gentleman asked me a profound question “Are you interested in saving the town?” I said yes. He replied, “call me every night when you get off work, and I”ll tell you everything you need to know.” So for the next four months, I would call him and just take notes. I had four four-inch spiral binders filled with notes, and that’s how I got into the water plant. He transferred all his knowledge to me and had me do all the research.
When it was time to make the acquisition did it go smoothly?
Later, I discovered that the owner was a quadriplegic and had been paralyzed from the neck due to a car accident. He was actually giving me all this information while lying down. His wife would hold the phone to his ear while we talked, and when he fell asleep, she would tell me to call back the next day.
In 2015, a week before Christmas, while talking, he abruptly said, “that’s it. I have no more information to give you. You’ve been a great student. I think you’re going to do the town well.” I’m just an old man trying to get everything straight before I check out. My checkout time is soon.” My nephew has power-of-attorney of attorney for all my belongings. I talk to him every day, and I look forward to the two of you making a deal. He gave me his phone number and wished me well. I never held from him again. I never spoke to him again.
The next day I called his nephew and inquired about buying the old water plant. He and his uncle were like night and day. He was cold and money driven. He asked to see my taxes for the past three years, bank statements, and credit reports. It was just money, money money. It was just a business transaction, and he wasn’t interested in getting to know me. He stood me up three times, constantly doing so while I had people waiting to take a look inside the plant. Finally, when we talked, I asked him about the plant’s selling price, and he said four million dollars. I asked him for what? I told him that I did not have it, and for that amount of money, I could buy the entire town and all the houses in Autaugaville.
He told me that was the business price and suggested he finance the plant and we work in a partnership. He wanted me to start the company up, split the profits 50/50, and buy him out for four million dollars when I got to four million dollars. I told him that was eight million. He said my uncle said you were smart. I told him, “you have lost your mind if you think I’m that ignorant.”His last words to me were, “if you think you’re so smart, build one.” He hung up on me, and that was the last time I spoke to him.
I was disappointed and felt like a fool. By this time, I’d got a lot of people involved and wasted a lot of time. I was at home one night praying and studying in my bedroom/office, and I told God that I didn’t ask for this and to show me a sign. Suddenly I had a burning bush moment. The spiral binders were illuminated, and the spirit said to me, “you are smart enough. You can build your own water plant. I’ve given you the roadmap and the manuscript.”
I got on the phone and called my partner Kevin Brickhouse and told him we were going to build a water plant. Everything I needed was in those binders. Technically I knew what to do from my automobile dealings. I’d built a plant before. I knew manufacturing, production, and machinery. So Brickhouse agreed to go into business with me.
In March 2016, we formulated the company. First, we bought a few acres of property on County Road 165 in Autaugaville, cleared the land, and dug a well. The water we tested was pretty good, and then we sent the water out for testing at the state lab. They told us that it would test like all the other water. Two days later, they called back and asked if we were sitting down. They said not only is it good, but this water is ten times better than any water we’ve tested on file in the least 35 years. They said this is “liquid gold” and you need to figure out how to put it in a bottle.
What is “real artesian water”?
First, Autaugaville is blessed with an abundance of artesian water. It comes from a confined aquifer that is stored well below the surface. It is untouched by contaminants and is a type of free-flowing spring water that comes from underground wells and naturally moves to the surface due to pressure. The good thing about them is they run without any power.
How did the name ‘Eleven86’ come about?
One night my partners and I were having a meeting, and we kept calling it liquid gold, and my marketing agent said you can’t call it that; you need to figure out a name for the water. I said God hasn’t told us what to name it. So he said if you are going to be biblical about everything, pray about it.
I prayed about it for a couple of days and came up with an idea. How many chapters are in the bible? I searched an app on my phone and came up with 1,186. One thousand, one hundred and eighty-six doesn’t actually roll off the tongue, so Brickhouse suggested that we call our water ‘Eleven86′ instead.
I took it upon myself to go back and count all the chapters in the bible and discovered I’d made a mistake. There were 1,189 chapters, not 1,186. Rather than change the name, we decided to live with the mistake. We like the sound of “Eleven86” better than “Eleven 89“. It had biblical significance since God recreated man on the sixth day.
We took off and never looked back.
Did you face any roadblocks?
Most definitely. After digging the well, it took us almost two years to ship out our first shipment. Eighteen banks denied us, and no one believed in us. Investors that had the money to lend laughed at us and even showed us the millions they had in the bank. They told us we would not be able to compete with Coke Cola, Pepsi or Nestle. We had different banks do feasibility studies, and we sat in boardrooms and were told that it was a waste for them and for us. Finally, they showed us a feasibility study showing us we would not be successful.
So in 2016, the four partners, including myself, Kevin Brickhouse, Darrick Baylis, and Dr. Tabitha Fortt, liquefied everything we had. So on Nov 1, 2016, I said let’s get started. Actually, we started before we facilitated the company.
We took the money we had in the bank, purchased the land, dug the well, cleared the land, and brought in hundreds of loads of dirt to make the foundation for the 22,500-square-foot building. Finally, we poured the concrete and had enough money to buy the building but ran out of money to erect it.
So by 2017, the building was fully erected with no windows or doors and sitting in the middle of a field looking like it’s been abandoned. And we were broke.
In June 2017, after a political scandal in Alabama, Governor Kay Ivey stepped in, and the first thing she talked about was helping rural Alabama get back on track. A $166,500 grant was awarded to the town and was put toward our water bottling plant. One of her initiatives was to help bring sewer, water, and fire hydrants to the facility we were building.
My recently deceased brother Glen Forge introduced me to a local bank that he was dealing with, and they had heard about us on the news. They went over our investments and equity from June 2017 through October 2017. And on October 27, 2017, we inked a deal to finish the deal and purchase the bottling equipment.
On April 27, 2018, about two and a half years after I had the conversation with Mr. Ward, my former principal, we had a grand opening. We showcased to the world that we were about to bottle ultra-premium artesian water, and Budweiser was our distributor.
Tell me about the year 2020. What event helped surge your business?
I remember vividly on March 13, 2020; businesses were shutting down due to Covid-19. At the plant, we were wondering what that meant to us. We couldn’t afford to shut down. Suddenly the phones started ringing, asking us if we had water. Finally, we were able to ship all the water we had, and we were able to hire people and team members. Shortly after, people were afraid to go to the grocery store during April and May.
After the death of George Floyd in May, support for Black Lives Matter was incredible. People of all colors were buying Black-owned products. And once people discovered we were a Black-owned company; they started buying Eleven86 water like crazy. One of the big avenues for us was a local restaurant in Houston selling our water, and Black products live on social media, and it went viral. Things exploded for us, and we could not stop shipping it.
It was the first time in our history that we sold 1 million bottles of water in one month. And 2018, we only sold 632,000 bottles in the entire year.
In 2019 the Alabama Legislature designated Eleven86 as the official state water of Alabama.
In July 2020, as the late Congressman John Lewis laid in state at the Alabama State Capitol Building, Eleven 86 was asked by his team to be the hydration source for the occasion. It symbolized what he stood for in the past and showed how far a Black man had come today – owning his own water bottling company in the state of Alabama.
In 2021, the surge continued, and we sold 13.1 million water bottles. We also started developing additional distributors; currently, all our distributors outside of Alabama are Black. For example, we met S&R Distributors at Cigar Week event in Houston, we were the water sponsor. Sheldon Grady is the President, and Boykin Gradford III is the Vice President. They left with a pallet of water in their truck/SUV back to Minneapolis and Chicago. I knew everybody they gave a bottle of water would be addicted to the all-natural, no chemicals, additives, or preservatives, with an average pH balance of 6.9. They called me the Nino Brown of water, and I never sold drugs! (LOL) They were asking a week later, “How can we get a truck”? S&R Distribution, LLC., is responsible for getting Eleven86 Real Artesian Water in 17 Pete’s Fresh Market locations in the Chicagoland area.
What advice would you give an entrepreneur starting their business?
First of all, I would tell them to stay off Instagram. Avoid social media and stop making comparisons to what everyone is doing. It’s okay to share, but don’t compare because those platforms only show you the end result of a thing. The struggles of sleeping in your car, borrowing money from your friends and parents, not eating for days, or getting your vehicle repossessed are not shared.
Commit 10,000 hours to your job or business. That’s eight-hour days, six days a week for four years, to surpass 10,000 hours of commitment to your business. I consider that to be your education for your business. That’s what it takes to get to the next level.
And lastly, keep your business to yourself. Nobody out there will believe in your business more than you. Why are you sharing your business if they’re not adding to it? Nine out of ten people you share your business with don’t believe in you.
Are there any affirmations that you live by?
I’m cautious about taking any credit for the success of Eleven86. When people pat me on the back and say, “you’re so smart,” I say no, I’m just an obedient servant, and obedience is better than sacrifice; all the glory and honor go to God.
I want everyone to know the real reason behind us doing this. Yeah, we have great water and a great water company, but it’s about revitalizing a small town. A promise I made to keep, to give a new generation hope for a future.
What are your future plans for Eleven86 Real Artesian Water?
It’s our goal and aspiration for Eleven86 to be a household name. Not just in your house but at family reunions and family functions. We also plan on tripling our production. We have sold 31 million bottles of water in four years without spending marketing dollars. It’s all been word of mouth and social media.
You can read about Eleven86 Real Artesian Water and find out where it is sold by visiting https://www.eleven86water.com. Follow us on Twitter @Eleven86water, Instagram, and Facebook.
Sylvester Cosby is Digital Content Editor and Contributing Writer for N’DIGO.
