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Launch Signals
Sara de Zárraga (left) and Quinn Fitzgerald
When they met at HBS, Quinn Fitzgerald and Sara de Zárraga (both MBA 2017) shared their experiences as survivors of assault—and realized they wanted to create a tool to prevent future occurrences of violence against women. The result was Flare, a wearable tech startup producing stylish bracelets with an inobtrusive control button that can send text messages and GPS tracking to friends, a pre-recorded call to a specific phone number, or a direct connection to the police. “Flare gives you options to decide what is right for you in the moment,” de Zárraga told Fortune. “It fits into your life instead of you having to do something new or different and connects you to others, so you are never alone.”
“With creating Flare, we wanted to offer an effective, practical tool, not a solution, that would give people more options to take action earlier in a moment of uncertainty,” added Fitzgerald. The pair spent four years interviewing assault survivors and refining their product before launching in February 2020—and relaunching in June 2020. “Honestly, we were very concerned initially that the pandemic would limit the perceived need for our product, but COVID-19 did not solve safety issues, and, in fact, we found that there was a higher need for our product both at home (domestic violence) and out of the home (as people adapted to a new normal),” Fitzgerald said. In its first year, the company has sold out of its inventory three times and is the fastest-growing DTC brand with a 313.7 percent increase in online traffic quarter-over-quarter.
Both Fitzgerald and de Zárraga see Flare as a stopgap measure until cultural and policy changes shift the prevailing environment around victims of assault from one of blame to one of support. Ultimately, they hope their product will be unnecessary; until then, they are using feedback as the basic for future iterations of the Flare bracelet, particularly when it comes to style and other options. “That last thing we want to do is create another safety device that ends up in the junk drawer,” Fitzgerald said. “Look out for a big step in that direction coming later this year.”
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