Why this women’s self-defense startup is winning fans but facing obstacles

When Ashley Raymond and Meagan Doyle met in a business class as sophomores at the University of Texas at Austin in 2017, it’s no wonder they had self-defense on their minds. Two students had recently been murdered on the campus: Haruka Weiser in 2016 and Harrison Brown in 2017.

“At the time, we really bonded over not feeling safe, particularly around and on campus,” Raymond told Retail Brew. “It came as a big shock to ourselves and others on the campus when these tragedies occurred.”

As part of a class project—along with two other classmates, Danna Tao and Margy McCallum—they came up with a handheld multifaceted self-defense tool, Pocket Punch, that included pepper spray, a flashlight, (nonbrass) knuckles, and an alarm. While they created a prototype and started a company, as the Covid-19 pandemic bore down, they folded it.

In 2021, the foursome—Raymond, Doyle, Tao, and McCallum—formed a new company focused on women’s safety, Safely, with Raymond serving as CEO and Doyle as CMO. Along with a new multifunction defense tool, Sidekick, Safely features a line of pepper sprays, with the replaceable spray fitting into a cylindrical keychain holder.

Described on its product page as a “compact safety tool that doubles as a cute accessory,” the pepper-spray product comes in colors including “Pretty in Pink” and “Opal Blush.”

To promote its products and instruct how to use them, Safely stages events using practice spray, which substitutes water for pepper spray in the containers. The events, where the target of the spritzes is a pink skeleton named Pinky, are popular at colleges, and are scheduled this fall for campuses including Colorado State University, Texas State University, and the University of San Diego.

Along with its e-commerce site, the products are available at about 90 brick-and-mortar locations, including running stores and campus bookstores, and business over the summer was good, with product orders increasing 157% over the last 90 days, according to the company.

But Safely faces hurdles, too. While nobody would fault the brand’s mission of empowering women to protect themselves, what makes pepper spray a deterrent is also why states have a panoply of regulations restricting it. The restrictions vary from outright shipping prohibitions to limiting the size of the containers to the strength of the spray. Citing state laws, Safely currently doesn’t ship pepper spray products to New York, Massachusetts, Alaska, or Hawaii.

Spray grade: Doyle understands the rationale for pepper spray regulations, even if she chafes at some.

“There have to be some sort of restrictions, and it’s not like we don’t understand that piece of it,” Doyle told Retail Brew. “[But] that just seems a little crazy to us when this is a nonlethal product and something that people are so familiar with; the general reaction when we tell people about these restrictions is they just have no idea.”

Beyond shipping, some states strictly regulate where pepper spray products can be sold, which of course limits retail distribution opportunities for Safely. In New York, for instance, pepper spray can only be sold by licensed firearms dealers and pharmacists, although a state senate bill would remove both that restriction and the one that prohibits shipping pepper spray ordered online.

“As a mother of an 11-year-old daughter who is coming of age, my goal is to make sure that young women and all people really feel safe and secure,” State Senator Jessica Scarcella-Spanton, who sponsored the bill, told the New York Post. “I do believe this is something that could help save a life.”

Pepper stake: Jake Egbert, inventory buyer for running retailer Fleet Feet’s seven franchise locations in Houston, said that the stores had carried another pepper spray product for years.

“It was this generic pepper spray product that was plain black that did what it was supposed to do, but it didn’t have any kind of colorful marketing or packaging, and it just kind of sat up on the wall,” Egbert told Retail Brew.

The stores switched to Safely products in 2023, after Raymond, a runner herself, pitched him the brand.

“Not that you can make pepper spray really sexy, but I guess you could say they found a way to do that” with “bright colors, good marketing and this infectious positive energy about their startup,” Egbert said.

Egbert estimates that on average the Fleet Feet Houston stores sell 10 times more of the products than the ones they carried previously, in part because the founders’ enthusiasm and marketing efforts inspired him to display Safely products more prominently.

Over the summer, Raymond appeared in a video on Safely’s Instagram account saying that a woman on a run used the brand’s pepper spray to thwart an attacker after attending a training event at Fleet Feet’s Houston location.

“Their willingness to create a safer tomorrow for runners is definitely something you can tell is a top priority for them as a brand,” Egbert said. “They’re passionate.”