Our Story
In late February 2011 I saw a young rapper called Jessie J perform on a UK chat show (The Graham Norton Show) and fell in love with the song. The song was called “Price Tag” and as well as being a very catchy tune had some great lyrics:
We just wanna make the world dance,
forget about the price tag.
It ain't about the cha-ching cha-ching,
Ain't about the ba-bling ba-bling.. 
It seems that most people in business nowadays are just in it for themselves, and ethics and morals are often taking a back seat. Big and small businesses alike will do anything to boost revenue before the end of the month.
At that time I was just as caught up with “growing my business” as everyone else - and using the same methods that everyone else was using. Still, the thought that there has to be a better way had been planted in the back of my mind.
During the summer of 2011 my eldest daughter started looking at colleges ready for next year, and I started thinking more about teenagers at college - alone, often far from home. As a father of course I worried – I’m not going to be there to protect her from all “those boys”!
But since we sell pepper sprays – something that could potentially help every college girl - more gears start slowly turning in my head.
Then, over the July 4th weekend I spent a lot of time reconsidering our business. I read a lot of articles that weekend about successful businesses, both online and offline, and although most were the usual marketing “tips and tricks” (or how to basically fool customers into buying more from you) there were also more and more people talking about how we should forget about the "hard sell" and do something that our customers would actually appreciate.
One of the articles talked about businesses that really helped people; and they used TOMS as an example.
By now everyone has probably heard of TOMS (www.toms.com). Founded in 2006 by Blake Mycoskie, TOMS donates a pair of shoes to a child for every pair that you buy. I’d read the story before too, but it was only on that July afternoon that it all clicked into place:
We should give away our pepper sprays! One to every college girl. Or battered wife. Or nurse. Or teacher. Or realtor. Your wife and daughter.
Rather than spending our time and money on "holiday sales" every month or pushy advertising we now spend them on our mission. Every time we sell any product in our store, it enables us to give away more pepper sprays.
We quickly took the plunge in July '11 and it was a lot of fun; but more importantly I finally feel happy running a business that is making a little difference to the world.
Thank you for your support!
James Shaw