Gabrielle Lods: “Ask yourself what is important for you and how you can work sustainably.”

You are the founder of the project “the Green Condom Club”. Can you tell us what it’s all about?

The external page Green Condom Club is a condom brand that originates from my discovery that condom manufacturers do not have to disclose ingredients on their packaging as condoms are classified as medical devices.
As a woman, I want to know what is in my face cream so I definitely want to know what is in condoms.
After my initial research, I was very shocked to discover that apparently no one is really tackling this issue. I started by getting in touch with condom suppliers and aimed to resell an existing brand. This resulted in a subscription service. As things grew, I entered into more and more partnerships and sales increased at this point, I decided to launch my own brand.

Today the Green Condom Club is definitely growing. We are now stocked in about 150 shops across 6 countries and my team and I plan to grow further by the end of this year as we are entering into new distribution contracts in several new territories.

What kind of marketing do you do?

We undertake numerous different things. We maintain a blog on our website that is really geared towards sexual health and relationships as we are trying to establish ourselves as a reliable source for contraception and sexuality.
Furthermore, we are also involved in several partnerships, notably with the LGBTQ community and SwissVeg (our condoms are certified vegan). It goes without saying that we are active on social media too. However, we have experienced various problems because if you put sex-related content on your social media platform, the advertising policy responds by shutting us down. It’s unfortunately a known problem for sex related businesses.
This is terrible for women’s rights, the LGBTQ community and for an open discourse on sexuality as such policies end up impacting people’s sexual health. It seems that our work to advance this topic is highly relevant.

You first studied Chemical Engineering at EPFL and then you graduated with a Master in Management, Technology and Economy from ETH. What made you decide to study for this Master at ETH?

After I completed my Bachelor in Chemical Engineering, I didn’t feel like I was in a place where I belonged. Most people with a chemical engineering degree either work in the industry or in labs. And this was not what I wanted to do. A friend of mine was doing her Master in Zurich, I checked it out and it looked like a good orientation for people who were a bit sick of the science mindset, like me.

Studying at ETH and moving to Zurich also allowed me to be come into contact with European students studying Industrial Engineering and Management. To some extent, my Master gave me an understanding of all the components of business and entrepreneurship. It gave me a glimpse of how things should be in a perfect world.

Nevertheless, my studies at both EPFL and ETH have definitely been of benefit to me. Graduating from those institutions has the huge advantage that journalists love my educational background and it adds a kind of credibility stamp to my business since both ETH and EPFL rank very highly amongst universities worldwide.  

What impact is the current COVID-19 crisis having on your project?

When the first lockdown came into force back in March, our Swiss logistics centre shut their warehouse down, which was really inconvenient because even though we were able to remain open as we run our business online we were not able to access our goods anymore. After a very complicated 24 hours of juggling and moving things, we set up a warehouse in my flat.

Thereafter, the COVID-19 crisis had a negative impact on our sales. Some of our customers are single; others live in relationships but do not use hormonal contraception. As a consequence of the lockdown, all single people were stuck at home and therefore did not have much use for condoms. Some of the couples that were stuck at home were really happy to spend more time together, others less so.
This is why we had to be relatively sensitive in the way we were advertising and communicating on our webblog. I think it worked quite well since we managed to maintain sales on the website at the level they were before lockdown.

What kind of advice would you give to other alumnae and alumni?

The first thing that comes to mind is to be aware of sexism. No matter how good your ideas are or where you come from, depending on who is making the decisions it is possible that no one will listen to you.
Another point that I want to raise is work-life balance. I encourage people to not focus only on work. There are so many important aspects in life. Ask yourself what is important for you and how you can work sustainably.

And my last piece of advice is: Done is better than perfect. Don’t wait until you are the perfect fit for a job description, don’t wait until you have the perfect idea or all of the pieces align perfectly. In most cases, things change several times anyway so better start producing! There will always be time to adjust if need be.