Making it big: Bravo Condoms aims product at sports, music scenes

By LAITH AGHA
www.montereyherald.com

In orchestrating his quickly growing business, Bravo Condoms, Zac Mazzotta figured out early that he is not just selling a product.

He is selling a name. He is selling packaging. And perhaps most importantly, he is selling an image.

In an industry that has traditionally focused on more general themes — safety and comfort — in its marketing, Mazzotta, a Stevenson School graduate and part-time Carmel Valley resident, is billing his product as the condom of youth culture, infiltrating the adventure sport and rock music crowds with an aggressive advertising campaign.

"We're becoming the Red Bull of condoms," said Mazzota, 28.

It is tailored toward a fast-paced lifestyle that craves convenience and lacks patience.

A cup of coffee is to be sipped. A Red Bull is "downed."

"These days kids buy image," said Bob Wecker, owner of The Wecker Group advertising design company in Monterey. "With a condom company, image and packaging is everything."

Most condoms come in three-dimensional boxes that must be ripped open. Bravo Condoms are sold in a flatter fold-open packet that borrows from Orbitz's gum packaging design. Flaps hook together to contain the contents.

While the typical condom package is easily identifiable, which can be embarrassing for those concerned about the stigma of buying or carrying condoms, Mazzotta said, Bravo's sleeker package design is less conspicuous.

The company's innovations appear within the packet, which, in addition
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to three condoms, contains a sticker of the Bravo logo — a lion's head with a flowing mane, an information booklet and a baggie for disposal purposes.

Starting a business in an established marketplace, with an industry leader, Trojan Condoms, that holds about 70 percent of the American market, "It's almost like, it's impossible to reinvent the wheel," Wecker said. "But there is always an opening."

The insurance industry, for instance, used to play it straight with its advertising, but once Aflac loosened the collar by featuring a comical duck in its commercials, "everyone else started do it," Wecker said.

Mazzotta saw a similar opportunity for the condom market.

"It's been a sleeping industry for 85 years," Mazzotta said.

The target consumer ranges from high school students to thirtysomethings, the age group most likely to use the product and to be involved in the sports and music scenes. But the company is not hyping sex to sell the product, Mazzotta said.

"We don't promote sex," he said. "We promote safe sex, and we promote condoms as a tool if you choose to do it."

And while the sales pitch is image-driven, the product retains the basic principals of its function.

"We're not just selling a mediocre product in nice packaging," Mazzotta said. "The goal was always to put out a phenomenal product in great packaging."

His company mantra, as well as his motivation to start the company, stems from personal experience.

Mazzotta's 4-year-old daughter is a blessing now, he said, but at the time he found he was going to be a father, Mazzotta was a 23-year-old race car driver living the fast-paced lifestyle that complements the profession. He hadn't planned to start a family for another decade, but he promised himself he would stop racing when he did start one because the risk of dying on the track was too great to be a responsible father, he said.

At the end of the 2003 racing season, a month before his daughter's birth, he retired early from the sport. Giving up the career and lifestyle to take care of a child — and learning how to be a father — was a major struggle, he said. Mazzotta learned first-hand the financial and emotional strains that can rise from an unplanned birth.

That was a major driving force in starting the company, Mazzotta said.

"It spawned in me a real passion to try and make options that gives someone the opportunity to keep that from happening to them," he said. "It's not easy for the adults. It's not fair to the kids."

He wanted to pursue something that inspired him more than pounding nails at construction sites, which he did for a while to make a living after racing.

Mazzotta moved to Santa Barbara from Carmel Valley in 2006 — he splits his time between the two places — and began researching for his new business idea the new-fashioned way, by Googling.

Selling the image can't happen without getting the word out, so Mazzotta is slapping the Bravo insignia on some very strategic surfaces.

The company sponsors 15 athletes in the adventure, or extreme, sports realm, starting with Mozzatta's brother, Hawk, a 26-year-old motorcycle racer from Carmel Valley who is competing in Sunday's American Motorcyclist Association Superbike race at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. Bull rider Tony Mendez, who competed in Wednesday's Professional Bull Riders tour event at the Salinas Sports Complex, signed with the company Thursday.

Bravo sponsors surfers, skateboarders, bicyclists and a daredevil.

Distribution is steadily increasing. Mazzotta started by stocking shelves of convenience stores and gas stations around the Monterey Peninsula and Santa Barbara. He expanded to businesses that cater to Bravo's target audience, such as surf and motorcycle shops. He has a deal with 7-Eleven stores in Hawaii.

But most of the company's volume has moved through online sales. More than 250,000 condoms have sold on the Web site, www.condomdepot.com, he said.

Mazzotta recently signed a product placement deal to put Bravo in several movies, including "Transformers 2" and "Old School 2," and the television shows "Entourage" and "The Office." And he is working out a deal with a distributor to have Bravo's logo placed on race cars in 11 NASCAR events next year.

After the label is on the race cars, Mazzotta said, he will be in a strategic position to approach major chain stores. If that door opens as Mazzotta hopes, the Bravo image could be sold across the country and, eventually, around the world.

"We're getting very close," he said.