One principle—the preference to discover paintings with a cause—has guided john Salinger on his winding professional route through various jobs, from advertising to leisure and others in between. Subsequently, he located his activity with meaning, stimulated to polish a light and offer a feel of protection for people worldwide via solar lanterns.
Thus, in launching empowered in 2012 after witnessing the devastating effects of an earthquake on human beings in Haiti, Salinger started a business that created earnings and served a social and environmental motive.
“it aligned with the values that have been ingrained by using my mother and father: people and planet; all of us become same,” he says. “you watch enough documentaries, you examine enough articles and books, you comprehend that we’re destroying what we’ve got.
With what’s been occurring with weather trade, this became a great opportunity to change the world for the better and use commercial enterprise to do so.” By connecting with NGOs around the sector, empowered is capable of offering sun-powered lanterns to sufferers of herbal screw-ups, inclusive of the 2020 Puerto Rico earthquake.
And to folks who stay with unreliable resources of strength without getting entry to a grid. And commonly rely on kerosene and different dangerous substances for light. Salzinger says the sense of protection that light offers is practical and time-honored.
Which fuels the employer’s donation program. Via its product line—lanterns, string lights. Its new motorcycle light and more—empowered customers to assist others thru their purchases and feature the option to add $10 for a given lantern to their order. “If a consumer buys a light, they’ve previously contributed. There’s no longer a heavy elevate,” he says.
In speakme with Salinger lately, as part of my studies on cause-pushed companies. He informed me that empowered had broadened the scope of its donation program via partnerships with company companions, giving agencies a corporate social duty (CSR) choice that has been validated to be nicely received by sustainability-minded employees.
“We are a turnkey solution wherein a mild can go to your clients as a value upload, or on your personnel for engagement or gifting and, frankly, every other light to our application,” he says. “When a herbal catastrophe occurs, our lights pass there. It’s a manner to provide. However, it’s sustainable.”
Mpowerd’s Luci products remain on the shelves at large-name outlets, which include rei, goal, and high-quality purchase, and are available online. The margins those products command at retail permit backed and localized pricing into effect conditions around the globe. The sun lighting and cell chargers are designed with functionality and protection in thoughts, Salinger says, noting that the idea of self-empowerment stimulated the organization’s name.
“We create merchandise for humans. So we don’t think, ‘oh, permits create a product for zimbabwe,’ or ‘let’s get a product for Walmart or goal,'” Salinger says. “We make a product that works across all of those. So it’s appropriate for tenting, but at the same time, it’s proper for a refugee camp, and it’s an identical product. So this is honestly critical: the similar product that’s being sold right here and used right here is used everywhere else.”