We arrive at Joanne Zhou and Eric Fong’s new flat in Bel-Air on a bright morning that smells of fresh paint and possibility. Perched on a stool while a makeup artist dabs and blends, Zhou is already talking about the slogan that sits at the heart of everything she does: “Better for You, Better for the Planet.”

It is not so much a marketing line as a personal thesis. And the woman delivering it, half-made-up and fully present, is the founder and CEO of in lieu, Asia’s first premium sustainable lifestyle water, which arrives on the shelves in neat aluminium cans. She is also living proof that a kid who once hated drinking water can grow up to make the rest of us fall in love with it.

Liquid Gold

That distaste for tap water is one of Zhou’s strongest childhood memories. “We were a pretty typical family that boiled tap water at home and for some reason, whenever I drank it, I felt nauseous,” she recalls. “I always thought it had this strange medicinal taste.”

Young Joanne gravitated towards mango juice, iced tea and all those little cartons with straws that taste like liquid childhood. But the sugar eventually caught up with her, inducing weight gain, teenage hormonal chaos, and the kind of bullying that leaves marks long after the words stop. Looking back, she sees the irony with perfect clarity. The girl who couldn’t stand water now owns a water company.

Zhou’s mother was the architect of her values. A busy working woman who still found time to prepare home-cooked meals fresh from the market every day. She saved the water from washing rice to feed the plants and turned leftover watermelon rind and aloe vera into homemade face masks. “She never called it ‘wellness’ or ‘sustainability’,” reminisces Zhou fondly. “It was simply about taking care of yourself, your family, and not wasting what you have.”

Natural Start

in lieu, founded in 2024 under the banner of HydroX Group Limited, is not Zhou’s first startup. Her ideas have always circled the same question: how do I make people’s lives slightly better? The deeper she went with her clever canned concept, the clearer it became that the traditional water industry was ripe for a gentle revolution.

The first spark was personal. The family owns an artesian aquifer in China’s Dabie Mountains. The closest taste she could find on the market was Fiji Water, but the plastic bottles made her wince. Why couldn’t there be an Asian premium option packaged sustainably? That question became the brand.

Clean water, insists Zhou, is shockingly rare even in a city like Hong Kong. While renovating their kitchen, the couple stared at old rusted pipes and suddenly felt the full weight of everything that happens to water before it reaches a glass. “The best water starts with a clean, protected natural source, as untouched by pollution as possible, naturally containing minerals and trace elements, and handled with the highest standards of safety and quality,” she declares. Because truly clean natural water is becoming precious, it carries a responsibility to protect the environments that produce it.

Water Fail

While many people have stopped drinking water altogether, replacing it with convenience-store bottles of highly processed drinks is not a solution. The in lieu mission is to make water desirable again: good-tasting and good-feeling. She would love to hear more people say, with actual pride, “I drink only water.”

Her simplest tip for the chronically dehydrated: make it a morning ritual. The moment you wake up, your body has been dry for hours. Start with two to four glasses of lukewarm water and pair the rest with breakfast.

Zhou’s personal wellness routine is almost aggressively simple. Seven hours of sleep. Packed lunches and dinners during the week, with more creative meals on the weekend. Strength training, cardio, and breathwork when needed, and a stubbornly positive mindset. The office culture has shifted accordingly – less milk tea and the house rule that pantry snacks cannot be breakfast. Leadership, she believes, happens in the small habits you normalise every day.

Special Source

The toughest challenge in product development was discovering that less is harder than more. Most lines are designed to add things, not leave them out. “If the source is right, it shouldn’t require heavy engineering or unnecessary additives,” she says. So the team innovated their own techniques. That same philosophy now guides every new product: start with great natural ingredients and interfere as little as possible.

Launching as a lifestyle brand in Hong Kong’s luxury venues required the same obsession with detail. True luxury, Zhou believes, is caring about every millimetre: the product, the taste, the experience and the packaging. Hospitality partners ran fingers around lids, checking for sharp edges. Early supporters tasted the water, understood the values, and opened their doors.

For in lieu, luxury and purpose are not opposites. Sustainable packaging, carefully sourced water, recycling partnerships, electric vehicles in certain cities – these are not afterthoughts. “We’re not perfect, but we’re trying to make better choices step by step without compromising the quality, design and experience expected from a premium product,” she affirms.

As for the future of HydroX Group, she keeps most of it under wraps with a mischievous smile. But she will say this: in lieu natural sparkling water is about to launch, and it tastes so good she is genuinely excited.

Energy Drink

Fong, in lieu’s co-founder and the quiet engine behind its operation, is everywhere during the shoot: adjusting props of their product, offering encouragement, occasionally just watching with the silent pride of a man who knows exactly how rare this particular combination of vision and execution is. “Wow… what a lady boss,” he murmurs at one point. Then, as his wife turns for another frame: “It’s giving Gigi Hadid and Hailey Bieber. Oh wow!”

Zhou laughs and immediately states that she is not a “girly girl”. She prefers baggy, loose athleisure over dresses. Colleagues are routinely shocked by her energy levels; friends already have a running joke. “My friends tease me that I can be the Asian Hailey Bieber. Joanne Bieber!” she cries, dissolving into laughter. Fong joins her and the entire room follows.

When the photographer asks her to fake a laugh for a few frames, the fake laugh lasts approximately 1.7 seconds before it becomes the real thing – loud, unselfconscious, completely contagious. Like her product, Zhou is natural through and through.

No Filter Needed

By the time we pack up, the new flat still smells like beginnings, and she is still laughing, in that real, unforced way that makes everyone else forget they were supposed to be professional. The same instinct that once made her reject boiled water now drives her to protect the sources that still run clean. The same values her mother practised without ever naming them now shape a brand marketed for our benefit.

Indeed, Joanne Zhou is doing something quietly radical. She is making water cool again. And if her laugh is any indication, the rest of us are invited to join her; glass raised, the planet slightly better for it.

Interview, Text & Art Direction: Joseff Musa     Photographer: Jack Law     Videographer: Iris Ventura   Hair & Make up: Sapphire Shen