Wringing out an overseas water sale.

• Author: Hill, Robin Mackey
• Position: Alaska Mountaintop Spirits Co. sells glacier water to a Japanese cosmetics company - Includes related article on international trade; Special Section: Small Business

After painstaking scrutiny, Anchorage small- business owner Mark Wilson has sealed a deal to supply Alaska water to a Japanese cosmetics firm.

The television camera spans the lush greenness as birds sing in the background. Very Zen-like. Very Japanese. Scattered hither and yon throughout the ferns and tall grasses are bottles of men's cologne. All of a sudden, the tempo increases and the music becomes dramatic. Blue-white calving glaciers fill the screen. The Japanese narrator talks of "Denali," a new line of men's toiletries. The ad's closing tag line, printed on a blue background, reads: "For Beautiful Human Life."

The Japanese trading company Toyo Menka Kaisha was looking for the most perfect water on Earth, and it was willing to spend millions of dollars to find it. The water was to be the basis for a new line of mid-priced men's toiletries that would be manufactured in Odawara, Japan, by Kanebo, that country's second-largest cosmetics firm and the fifth largest worldwide.

Eventually, Toyo Menka's exhaustive international search led the firm to Alaska's Mark Wilson and the modest Anchorage office of his Alaska Mountaintop Spirits Co. The Japanese weren't looking for just pure water. They could find that at home, says Wilson. And they weren't looking for just natural water. What they sought was perfect water. Water that was old. Water that, as their marketing campaign stresses, would not only refresh the Japanese man, but also renew his spirit.

Wilson late last year began supplying the Japanese firm with glacier water for its Denali line of shampoos, skin bracers and colognes - an entire product line based on the integrity of its water content. The water could have come from many sources and the toiletries could have been marketed under any number of names. But Wilson convinced the Japanese search team that Alaska just happened to have what it wanted, and the name Denali was selected by the Japanese cosmetics company.

"What they're after is a water that's as old as possible. A water that has not been exposed to any other chemicals, and a water that is soft," says Wilson. "It has a specific limit on mineral contents. They don't want a water that's been exposed to cyanide. They don't want a water that's been exposed to iron. They want a water that came from the sky, that landed with no minerals in it, that hasn't been exposed to minerals or manmade chemicals."

Wilson, who also is a principal in Anchorage-based Wetco Inc., has been trading with the...