Socially responsible condoms set for sale
Firm aims to help women take charge of their health
BURLINGTON, VT. Come this summer, Jeffrey Hollender, the 59-year-old co-founder of Seventh Generation — the household and personal care brand aimed at consumers concerned about the environment and social justice — expects to be online and in stores with Sustain condoms.
Like Seventh Generation, Hollendar’s Sustain is on a mission: Empower women to take charge of protecting their sexual health, with a fair trade, toxin-free product made from a sustainable resource: latex tapped from rubber trees.
Hollender’s daughter Meika, 26, who is working with him to launch Sustain, said she and her father see their new company as “trying to start a movement.”
“Women are so empowered in so many aspects of their lives: In the workplace, in relationships, women are becoming more on top in all aspects of their lifestyle,” Meika Hollender said. “It seems that in terms of their sex lives — being prepared and practicing safe sex — they’re still falling short.”
The Hollenders cite two statistics as proof: Only 19% of women ages 20 to 44 are using condoms, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Preven- tion in Atlanta; and every year, 25% of teens contract a sexually transmitted disease, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
“So as AIDS has fallen to the back burner, especially among heterosexuals, women have assumed, especially if they’re taking another form of birth control like the pill, that they don’t need to use condoms,” Meika Hollender said.
Leslie Kantor, vice president of education for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, has a somewhat different take on the statistics where condoms are concerned. Kantor said on average people are 17 years old the first time they have sexual intercourse, and 80% of young men report using a condom the first time they have sex, according to the CDC.
“The good news is, it has become a norm in this country for people to start off using condoms,” Kantor said. “What you do see as relationships progress and people are in them longer, condom use does start to drop off.”
One of Sustain’s biggest competitors in marketing a kinder, gentler condom will be Sir Richard’s Condom Co. based in Boulder, Colo. The company, launched in 2010, advertises chemical-free, vegan-certified condoms, made with natural rubber latex with minimal latex odor. Chief Operating Officer Sean Fox said Sir Richard’s is the No. 1 condom in the natural products category.
Sir Richard’s is aware of Sustain, and Fox said he welcomes the competition, although he cautions that the condom marketplace already is dominated by three companies — Trojan, Durex and Lifestyle — that control more
“We’ve created packaging that’s a lot more appealing to women.” Meika Hollender, co-founder of Sustain condoms
than 90% of total U.S. annual sales of about $600 million.
“We’re fighting for 7% to 10% of the market,” Fox said of everyone else.
When Jeffrey Hollender decided to jump into the condom business, he went on a globetrotting tour of the world’s rubber plantations, many of them established by the British in the late 19th century in their Asian colonies.
Today, rubber trees are grown in Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Vietnam, Hollender said. He found his source for harvesting latex and for manufacturing condoms at the southern tip of India, where he discovered a familyowned plantation that was certified for fair trade and by the Forest Stewardship Council.
Hollender found a factory to manufacture Sustain condoms owned by another multigenerational Indian family.
Meika Hollender, a graduate of New York University’s Stern School of Business, is Sustain’s target audience. She said she knows how young women feel on the condom aisle. Women buy some 40% of the condoms sold in the U.S., according to her research.
Sustain’s packaging is understated, with cool colors and natural images.
“We’ve created packaging that’s a lot more appealing to women,” the younger Hollender said. “It’s more contemporary.”