Australian condom brand Hero is calling on corporate Australia to step up and commit to making a positive social and environmental impact in 2016.
Started by entrepreneur Dustin Leonard in 2012, Hero is a socially responsible FMCG business that aims to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS in developing countries. It currently donates one Hero condom to Botswana for every Hero condom sold in Australia. Hero is available at Woolworths, Coles, IGA, convenience stores and pharmacies in Australia.
“With Hero, we’ve proved that it’s possible to incorporate social responsibility into a business model and turn it into a commercially successful and thriving business,” Leonard, said.
“We don’t have the massive budgets of the multi-nationals, yet we’ve been able to make a substantial difference to the lives of the people in Botswana, a country which has the second highest incidence of HIV/AIDS infection in the world. If Hero can do this, imagine what the larger companies could achieve if they diverted some of their profits to helping make the world a better place.”
Hero’s success this year, including securing distribution deals with Coles, Woolworths and New Zealand-based supermarket Countdown, has enabled it to donate half a million condoms to Botswana this year (up from 75,000 condoms last year), as well as commit to supplying at least two million condoms to the country a year in quarterly installments from 2016.
“Our progress this year is a perfect example of David taking down Goliath with a small yet strategically wielded stone. It’s funny, a few years ago – one of the big wigs at a major competitor dismissed Hero as a company unlikely to make much of an impression, so it’s a sweet victory that our condom boxes are sitting right next to theirs in no less than 1700 stores nationwide,” said Leonard.