This week we took another step towards expanding our mission of giving a free pepper spray to every woman in America - by taking the simple step of letting anyone buy pepper sprays to giveaway.

Our Giveaway free pepper spray page allows anyone to buy any quantity of pepper sprays at our wholesale cost - in other words we don't make any profit on these. 

The catch? These pepper sprays must be given away for free.

You can however give them away to any women you know: family, friends, colleagues at work, fellow joggers, other students, members of your church, or women in your "Fifty shades of grey" fan club.. :)

Our hope is that more people will start to spread our mission in other cities across America.  

After all, with packages starting at just $25 can't you think of 10 women that you personally want to help protect themselves from attack?

Bonus: see many of the over 2,200 women we've helped so far!

I met today on campus with Sara Hollis of the University of Texas Orange Jackets and handed over another 100 pepper sprays that their group have sponsored to giveaway to women.

Many thanks to all the OJ's, and especially Natalie San Luis for organising this latest sponsorship. 

I'm told more sponsorship is coming soon!

Very well done Ladies, you are doing an amazing job.

Janeen Jenkins of MyEventBoss - with help from Stacy Price - is the latest business to sponsor our mission by buying hundreds of our pepper sprays to giveaway at their events. They are already handing out pepper sprays to women at the InfusionCon event this week - you'll soon be able to see the photos on our success stories page.

I am in awe of amazing people like Janeen and Stacy who approached me and offered to help - so please take a look at their business if you are in need of any event planning services. I've known Janeen personally since 2008 and attended some very large and very complicated events that she has organized. 

Reducing our prices recently may have puzzled some of our readers. If you follow Internet marketing you'll often hear that you should never compete on price.. And that people will pay more if they believe in your brand. After all, isn't a Rolls Royce just a BMW will nicer upholstery nowadays?

As has been the case with many of our earlier decisions when we started selling online in 2007, our beliefs have changed in the recent months. I've realized that everything becomes so much easier if you just think about doing "the right thing" for the customers all the time and completely ignore what all the business gurus tell you.

(In case you didn't know, most of the Internet marketing gurus make all their money from teaching people how to sell products, not by actually selling products themselves.)

"Special" prices

In our case, reducing the price simply means that more people can afford to buy themselves or their family members items that can help keep them safe. You'll find now that our prices are truly competitive, even with items supposedly "on sale" on competitors sites.

In fact, my disagreement with the whole "sale" mentality was one reason why we removed the "MSRP" and "our price" labels from our site recently too. A customer called us out and accused us of misleading advertising by showing two prices and upon review I totally agreed.. It was just another example of something we had on our site from the beginning and we didn't even see it anymore.

Simplify everything

As "Steve Krug" famously said in his book called "Don't make me think":

 Delete half the words from the page... And then delete half of those that are left. 

We've had a spring cleaning these last few weeks and we've done just that. We're closer to presenting you with the bare minimum - no bullshit - just the price, stock level and when you can expect it to ship. It seems everytime we look at the product page we delete another word or two!

Non-profit status

Another way we're simplifying our business is running our mission through a non-profit company. We've started the process already. This simplifies the business and allows us to promote our mission in ways that we cannot as a for-profit company. We hope that this is complete in a month, but we've been warned it could take up to 3 months! 

We've just lowered our prices across the board - not as a sale, but forever.  The markup on some products was frankly ridiculous so over the last week we've been reviewing our 1,412 different product SKU's and in some cases knocked off hundreds of dollars of a single product.

More importantly though, all our best sellers are now selling at a lower price. Here's just a small sample:

Personal Alarm with lanyard - 130dB

Pull the pin to start the alarm - it will sound continuously for 2 hours.

Secure to belt with the belt clip or attach to a purse with the lanyard.

Read more..

Price: $6.95 plus $8.95 shipping

Soda Can Diversion Safe

Hide your valuables in plain sight. Unscrew the top to reveal storage compartment.

Read more..

Price: $9.95 plus $8.95 shipping

Model-select-7UP           MILLER        CHERRY 7UP    A & W         DR. PEPPER    ARIZONA       HAWAIIAN PUNCHCOUNTRY TIME  GINGER ALE    

Pepper Spray Triple Pack

The only pepper spray that matters is the one you have WITH YOU!

With the Pepper Shot Tri-Pack you'll get a collection of three pepper sprays.

Read more..

Price: $14.95 plus $8.95 shipping

Jogger Wrist Saver Pepper Spray

Perfect for joggers and cyclists; easily carried while exercising.

Highly reflective edging and LED light.

Read more..

Price: $12.95 plus $8.95 shipping

Wrist Size-select-SMALLLARGE

Tornado 5 in 1 Defense System with Clip in Black

Incorporates pepper spray, 125dB alarm and a blinding strobe light.

Simple and foolproof to use, deploys in under a second. Shoots up to 15 feet.

Read more..

Price: $24.95 plus $8.95 shipping

Super Door Stop Alarm

Wedge-shaped design stops door opening and activates 120db alarm.

Scaring off the would-be intruder and alerting you to the attempted entry.

Read more..

Price: $9.95 plus $8.95 shipping

Auto Dialer Security and Safety Alarm

105dB alarm detects intruders and calls you before you get home.

Motion detector can call up to 5 telephone numbers using your landline.

Read more..

Price: $29.95 plus $8.95 shipping

Small Fry 7500000 Rechargeable Stun Gun

Test-firing this unit is often enough.

Cannot be used against you. LED flashlight and lifetime warranty.

Read more..

Price: $26.95 plus $8.95 shipping

Color-select-BLACKPINK 

Security Guard 4000000 Rechargeable Stun Flashlight

If you need to carry a flashlight, why not carry one that can protect you?

Powerful stun gun with bright LED flashlight. Rubberized, lifetime warranty.

Read more..

Price: $29.95 plus $8.95 shipping

Extreme College Survival Kit

Contains everything needed to make a woman's life safer at college.

Pepper sprays, room alarms, diversion safe and much more.

Read more..

Price: $94.95 plus $8.95 shipping

We have been working on a fundraiser with a young women's group on campus; now we have a fundraising template that we can share with others.

1. We'll promote a special page on our site dedicated to your group with the most relevant products. 
2. We'll help create a flyer for you to distribute.
3. You can buy these items and sell in person, returning any you don't sell.

Your group could make money from this too - and help our mission at the same time. 

For complete details, read more about how to Host a Fundraiser.

Check out our example fundraiser page, and then contact me to get the ball rolling! 

I watched a video on TED.com tonight - what I thought was going to be another good video has actually caused another of those epiphanies just like July 4th last year when I had this idea of our current mission:

"To give a free pepper spray to every woman in America"

Except.. after watching this video I realized our mission, as written, is not what I want to do at all.

Feel free to watch the video, it's 18 minutes long but I found it very interesting.. 

 People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. What you do simply serves as the proof of what you believe in. 

You see, giving a free pepper spray.. isn't really the point.

The point is stopping violence against women. Pepper spray is just "what" we do, not "why" we do it.

(As an aside, I'm not sure why I feel so strongly about this, but I'm wired in such a way that thinking of women getting hurt makes me very angry - and I'm determined to do what we can to help stop it. If I had to guess, it probably came from my early years when it was just my mum and I on our own..)

We'll still give away the pepper sprays.  It's still a very good idea, and I believe it's affordable enough that we can scale it massively, given some help.

But I will be thinking a lot more about this, and will definitely be changing our mission statement to better reflect what the focus should be.  What do you think? 

A quick shout-out to Shelby Dills of UT's Texas Sweethearts - she invited us out to their 2hr self-defense class this week and we're going to be there to hand out free pepper sprays and talk about different items you can protect yourself with.

More at https://www.facebook.com/events/257551387655941/

Also, LeeAnn Cottom of The Coffee Spot in East Side Food Park has invited us to a 2hr event on Sunday March 4th.  Lots of delicious food trailers to entertain you - we'll be there 2pm - 4pm!

More about this at https://www.facebook.com/events/174090822704963/

Thank you! Keep the suggestions coming in..

Between August 1 and the end of 2011 we gave away around 800 pepper sprays.. but Esme Barrera's death on Jan 1 increased awareness so much in Austin that we've given away almost that many again in January alone.

We've met many new friends in the last few weeks and have received a lot of support - but nowhere more so than on UT campus where this week we were overwhelmed to hear that the Orange Jackets - the oldest honorary service organization at the University of Texas - chose to further our mission by partnering with us for their 2012 project.

Their aim: to improve campus safety by (amongst other things) giving a free pepper spray to each of the approx 25,000 women students on UT campus!

This is HUGE - now we can really start to scale our mission; we're already talking about ways in which the OJ's can help us publicize, fundraise and distribute.

With over 40 members the OJ's help will be a big boost!

Founded in 1923 as a women's honorary organization, the OJ's were named for their distinctive orange vests. The official hosts of the University, their three tenets are scholarship, leadership, and service.

Our aim is to create a program that we can then rollout to other universities and other cities, so we're confident our 25,000 pepper spray 2012 goal will be quickly exceeded as we expand our reach.

Our first self-defense class was a success, with Chad Haas and Michael Cargill doing an amazing job with the venue and the class content. Live demonstrations were followed with everyone in the class trying all the moves on each other - with 3 TV crews watching!  We're doing another class on February 25 in Steiner Ranch.

We also visited Kinsolving residence hall again, where UTPD were doing a self-defense class of their own. 

We're doing at least one giveaway each week - usually at the weekend - for details visit our Facebook events page. 

Austin's Bob Salon is the latest small local business to help our mission to give every woman in America a free pepper spray.

Bob Salon approached us this week to take advantage of our offer to sell pepper sprays at cost to businesses, groups or people who promise to give them away.

It's an awesome way for us to grow our mission faster than we could alone and we LOVE LOVE LOVE Bob Salon for helping us!

Please help us show our appreciation by calling or popping into Bob Salon for your next hair styling session.

3703-A Jefferson Street
Austin, TX 78731
View Map 

Call or text 512.914.7078

Visit their website www.ilovebobsalon.com

Teo coffee shop - or more properly "Teo Espresso, Gelato and Bella Vita" - on W 38th in Austin was where we spent a couple of hours this weekend hanging out with Sandra and handing out free pepper sprays.  Sandra invited her friends, and we had others visit after seeing the event on facebook.  It was a little cold perhaps, but it was nice to see more new faces who were appreciative of our mission.

On Friday night I went to The Annex at 1808 on E 12th street for the "For Esme, With Love" benefit. It was a great event; many bands, silent auction, sun dragon martial arts demonstration - and everyone was donating their time and products. I have no idea how much was raised yet, but there was a good turnout with a few hundred there by 10pm. 

I gave away about 100 pepper sprays and grabbed photos of most people that I saw. I tried a new thing for the first time; a donation jar for those who wanted to put a few bucks towards more pepper sprays.. it worked great! I was of course a little reticent to try this (our intent is to give away pepper spray, not sell it) but I was persuaded to try it by someone I had met at a previous giveaway.

$80 was donated - about half the cost of the pepper sprays we gave away. That's quite an amazing result I think - it pays for another 30 sprays that we'd normally have paid for ourselves! It will certainly be on display at every event from now on - but hopefully people won't feel pressure to "pay". I'd love to know your opinion in the comment section below..

Thanks again to all who organized the event. I met a lot of facebook friends, some of which you can see above. Please tag yourself on FB!

We will be at Casis Village Starbucks on Thursday at 2pm, then again at for For Esme With Love benefit at The Annex at 1808 on Friday at 8pm.

For more details:

Casis Village Starbucks
For Esme, With Love

The Starbucks was significant to Esme Barrera - she used to work over the road at Casis Elementary School and frequented the coffee shop. I got a call from Happy Day who works there and asked me to pop in and offer pepper sprays to local women and perhaps leave some there. 

As always, I'll take photos and put them up on our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/resistattack

We met YNN TV crew at Waterloo Records where Esme Barrera worked today. We handed out free pepper sprays to women in the store and talked about how women should pay extra attention to safety while these violent people are on the loose.

One question we've been asked a lot this week - where do we recommend for a self-defense class? Not a full-on kickboxing course, but a simple introduction class to basic self-defense and situational awareness.

Well, I'm excited to say that together with Chad Haas' teamhaasjudo.com and Michael Cargill's centraltexasgunworks.com we can now offer our own class - and this first one is FREE.

Taking place on Tuesday January 17 between 6pm and 8pm, you can sign up below:

Only 30 places though, so be quick!

Calily Bien at KXAN is following Esme's case closely and sent out a crew to meet me on King St yesterday. See the video and read the story on their website:

http://www.kxan.com/dpp/news/local/austin/passing-out-free-pepper-spray

Austin is in mourning after the murder of local woman Esme Barrera on New Year's Day. We're heading out to her neighborhood today to pay our respects and offer free pepper sprays to women in that area.

This is the third attack near Washington Square and we all need to get together and help prevent any further attacks. 

According to KXAN, the suspect:

"..is described as a black male in his 30s, about 6 feet tall, with a muscular build, dark eyes and a shaved head. He was also wearing a gray sweatshirt."

More information at statesman.com too. 

Anyone with information about the attacks is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 512-472-TIPS (8477)

684: it's not quite as big a number as I'd hoped, but that's how many free pepper sprays we've given away to women since we launched our mission 16 weeks ago.

That's an average of 6 a day! 

Our most recent giveaways were at meetings of young women's groups on UT campus - Omega Phi Alpha, Texas Orange Jackets and Texas Wrangler Darlins, some of whom are shown below. You can see more on our Success Stories and Facebook pages.

Can you help us with our mission to give a free pepper spray to every woman in America?

Omega Phi Alpha:

Texas Orange Jackets:

Texas Wrangler Darlins:

I was just sent a couple of copies of my favorite business book to giveaway to people who read this blog!

I've bought multiple copies myself already so these will be sent to two randomly picked people who share our mission with their friends on their facebook page.

What do you need to do?

• Share (not like) www.resistattack.com or facebook.com/resistattack on your facebook wall
• Tell us that you did it by posting on our facebook wall, commenting below or emailing me at james@resistattack.com.

We'll put your name into a bucket and draw two names out on Thanksgiving Day!

I was excited to get a call from Sonal Patel at Omega Phi Alpha who asked to do a pepper spray giveaway next Wednesday. 

Next week is their National Service Week, with the UT Conceptual Self Defense Group performing demonstrations on a plaza on campus. Students will be able to participate in these demonstrations to learn basic self-defense tactics.

In the evening, they will be hosting a free Rape Aggression Defense Class taught by the University of Texas Police Department open to all students on campus. The hour long class is a condensed version of the 14-16 hour class taught at UT by UTPD. The pepper spray giveaway will happen at that class.

I'm meeting Sonal tomorrow and will post more details (and an event) on Facebook then.

Coincidentally on the same day I am meeting the Orange Jackets new members and giving them pepper sprays too.

If you would like to host your own giveaway please read this which gives all the details

Over a nice breakfast of crepes and "pain au chocolat" this morning at La Cafe Crepe with Realtor Les Sherman and Jennifer Pedersen and Cindie Brooks from Chicago Title we discussed ways to expand our mission to Realtors. 

I have discussed scaling our mission before, and every day we tweak our plans a little as we talk to more businesses and women's groups.  

This morning's idea revolved around safety seminars - I am now looking at becoming certified as an MCE Instructor so that I can teach Realtors about safety.. plus I can hand out our free pepper sprays during those classes. 

The classes are only an hour long, and I will probably invite other businesses such as Michael Cargill who is a certified Concealed Handgun License trainer. 

More details to follow, but in the meantime please let me know below if you're a Realtor and want to sign up for a class..

In my earlier Scaling Our Mission blog post I talked about how businesses can get help our mission - in fact I think this is key to our long-term success. 

Well, I'm excited and proud to announce that Michael Cargill of Central Texas Gun Works has signed up and is fully on board! This is a very big deal to us, and I am very grateful to Mike for his support. 

We have delivered our first big box of free pepper sprays to Mike so expect that his giveaways start soon! His plan is to give pepper spray away to women who take some of his concealed handgun license courses. 

Mike is very highly thought of in the Austin CHL training business; it was easy for me to find some glowing testimonials online:

 We hosted a CHL class on campus last semester and had 60 students and faculty members take the class. .. If anyone has taken a class with a CHL Instructor named Michael Cargill, please thank him for all the support he's given us. 

and..

 A+ Class. I highly recommend it to anyone in the Austin, Texas area. It was a blast! 

Please help me thank Mike for his support - if you need a CHL, give him a call on 512-731-3585, and get your free pepper spray!

Connect with them on Facebook too, at www.facebook.com/centraltexasgunworks

Are you a business that wants to get involved?

We launched our new mission on August 1, 2011, and since then we've given away many hundreds of pepper sprays.  A few dozen to joggers and Realtors, but the vast majority to college students (see Success Stories).

It's not as easy as it sounds!  Each group we meet usually points us at another, and slowly but surely word spreads.  Facebook and Twitter help too.  But although our mission hasn't changed, the experience has made me realize that this is not going to scale unless we get help!

On the one hand, we could organize larger giveaway events (like at last years Realtor Roundup for example) and perhaps give away up to 1,000 pepper sprays in one go - but we can't afford that.  Or we could continue with the 20-50 woman groups - but that will take forever.

What's the answer?

That's easy - we just need more people and more money!

Which got me thinking - who would pay for us to give away pepper sprays?  Then I remembered what Blake Mycoskie wrote about his first partnership with AT&T:

 If you incorporate giving into your business model, and give your business a mission larger than your bottom line, you also create opportunities that companies with more resources might not be able to enjoy. If it weren’t for this model, AT&T, Theory, Ralph Lauren, and all our other partners would not have approached us to collaborate. People want to feel they are making a difference.. 

Getting businesses involved

Businesses want to get involved with good things.. especially if they would normally advertise to your audience.  So we need to find businesses who target groups such as women college students, women Realtors, etc.. and allow them to sponsor our giveaways.  In return, they will (quite rightly) be associated with our mission.

 When you have a story that’s larger and more interesting than your product or service—or you—other people and companies will want to incorporate your story into theirs to share in the halo effect. For TOMS, those people and companies included the publisher of Vogue, who gave TOMS as a holiday gift to his extraordinary list of contacts.. 

Here's an example of a business that is helping us: Central Texas Gun Works

Do you know a business that could help us?  Call me direct on my cell, any time: 512-814-6192

Getting groups involved

Another idea for us to develop is to find groups to host their own pepper spray giveaway or fundraiser events.  The groups could be anything from a book club to a school cheer team.  Church groups to cycling clubs.

For a giveaway event we'll supply the materials at wholesale (we're have no intention of making money from giveaways) and help promote and organize their event.  The advantage to the groups is obvious - at the very least much cheaper products for their members.  But we hope that there are other advantages too, such as us publicising their group to a wider audience.

Do you know a group that may be interested?  Please get them to call me direct on my cell, any time: 512-814-6192

Getting people involved

Lastly, individuals like you can help in so many ways.  Send us a note, post a comment, like or share on facebook, tweet to your followers - just tell one friend.  If you've received a pepper spray, please send us a photo.  If you're a celebrity, send an autograph for us to auction.  Send a donation.  

I'd settle for you just tellng us that you believe in the mission - that women deserve the tools to protect themselves.

I'm always available - if you can help, please call me direct on my cell, any time: 512-814-6192