Mohamad Sam had the kind of job Houston is built on. With a chemical engineering degree, he worked as an engineer in oil and gas, and his first project sent him to the oil sands of Canada. It paid well but the environmental impact to wildlife didn’t sit right with him.
So, at night, after long days at the office, he and his wife, Dana, started talking about something else.
The Sams launched purifyou in Houston in 2015. Dana, a school counselor for 15 years, has an eye for style and trends, and she pushed for a product that was both good for the environment and good for the person using it: a glass water bottle, reimagined so it actually looked like something a person would want to carry. The bottle, in its signature aqua blue, is still the company’s bestseller more than a decade later, said Dana.
“There was a gap in the market for these types of products, but they weren’t available,” she added, “and there weren’t too many that were stylish.”
A brand customers seek out
Purifyou, today, sells across the US, Canada, and Mexico. Their catalog has grown from glass water bottles to glass water tumblers, reusable silicon snack bags, produce bags, handwoven seagrass shopping baskets, and reusable straws.
Purifyou’s growth is part of a much larger Texas story. Texas-based independent sellers sold more than 226 million items in Amazon’s US store in 2025, and the average independent seller in the state generates roughly $250,000 in annual sales. Texas sellers also supported more than $14 billion in contributions to the Texas economy, according to independent research from Oxford Economics.
Mohamad chose to sell in Amazon’s stores deliberately. He first considered purifyou’s own website, then ran into the question every new brand faces: how do you get anyone to show up? Rather than spend years building an audience from scratch, they decided to meet customers where they were already shopping.
Mohamad and Dana Sam quit their jobs after launching and growing purifyou, a sustainable products business, in the Amazon store.
Using Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) to handle the picking, packing, and shipping, Mohamad could keep his engineering job while the business found its footing. FBA also handled storage, removing piles of purifyou products covering the family’s living room and dining room floors. Today, Mohamad ships to Amazon monthly in quantities he can manage.
“In a world where time is even more precious than money, you want to preserve your time as much as possible,” he said, “and Amazon FBA allows you to do that.”
He also taps into Amazon Ads to put their products in front of shoppers on the first few pages of results, working to break through on crowded terms like “glass” and “bottle.” Mohamad bids on keywords he chooses and lets Amazon surface search terms he’d never have considered.
“By allowing Amazon sometimes to show your product to keywords that you’re not familiar with, you will be able to increase your sales,” he said.
Purifyou uses Amazon’s Product Opportunity Explorer tool and customer reviews to refine their product offerings and to get ideas for new product launches.
Mohamad also leans on Product Opportunity Explorer, which lets them “instantly see thousands of data points” to judge whether a market “is worth our time” or something to avoid.
Customer reviews also play an important role in product development. The glass water bottle itself has been revised more than 100 times based on customer reviews, which Mohamad calls “essentially free R&D.”
Family and Texas
For two years, Mohamad ran the business and worked his day job at once, staying up until 5 a.m. and heading back to work at 8. What ended that stretch was his oldest son telling Dana, “I don’t see Baba anymore. He only works and he only sleeps.” Mohamad left engineering and has been working from home for about a decade.
That decision to leave his job and be at home is the whole point of purifyou, said Mohamad and Dana. Both parents drop their four children at school and pick them up together.
The other bonus is that their oldest son, 13-year-old Omar, went from missing his dad to learning how to run an Amazon business from him. Omar bought a 3D printer and tinkers with product ideas.
“Seeing my son launch his own entrepreneurial journey is so fulfilling as a mom,” said Dana, who also appreciates being able to stay at home. “With all the success we’ve had on Amazon, it’s allowed me to quit my job and be with my kids full-time,” she said.
The Sams have four children, including their oldest, Omar, 13, who runs his own Amazon store.
Building wells
Mohamad and Dana also fold giving into purifyou’s model. A portion of every purchase funds water wells in remote communities through a partner organization. Wells have been built so far in Kenya, Uganda, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and Togo is planned next. The logic is hard to miss for a company that sells water bottles.
“While we’re focused on which container to drink from,” Mohamad said, “others are focused on getting actual water to drink.”
They also focused on staying put in Houston, a city Mohamad calls a great place to raise a family. Which, in the end, is the work-family balance they set out to build.