Hilary made the decision to face her addiction head on too soon after, with the duo looking to each other as a support system to stick with it. While everyone around them were openly smoking and vaping, they were taking Nicorette in secracy. Through this shared experience, they began discussing how counterintuitive it all felt. The options for making the healthy choice of quitting were so limited and lacked the depth to connect with today’s consumer, as did the community and physiological support needed to help manage withdrawal symptoms.
That lack of resonating options led Caroline and Hilary to apply for a grant through Stern Business School where Caroline was getting her MBA. They received $10,000 of non diluted funding which they put toward building the foundation for Jones.
While vapes had only been around for just a few years with very limited research and data linked to the long term health effects, NRTs were developed in the 1960s, are clinically tested, and proven to be non carcinogenic, safe for long term use, and proven to help you quit. “We wanted to create this contrast between the scary, new, and unknown of vapes and the trustworthy, historical, and the clinically tested,” Hilary says of the brand which was designed to be rooted in a modern, chic take on the aesthetic of 1960s pharmaceuticals.
The now Co-CEOs and split up responsibilities where Caroline handles brand and physical product and Hilary manages digital and web. They’ve also set up an advisory suite for each tentpole of the business from healthcare to product, and brought on Agency 8 to manage influencer gifting and Futong and Friends to support on PR and events.
If it feels like you’re seeing Jones everywhere these days, from the side of trucks around NY, sidewalk decals, and wheat pasting campaigns, that’s the point. While the online Jones’ community is growing and cheering each other on in their app, NYC is the first place the brand is investing in on the ground support. Hilary explains, “With out of home, we wanted to do it in a concentrated way, where it felt like, ‘I’m seeing this everywhere, what is this thing?’ And I think because Caroline and I had both been through the process of quitting, we know that when you’re quitting, you want a reason to quit. Like you want something to feel like, ‘Oh my god, this is my sign to quit, now I have to do it.’” Sophie Kennedy Sorenson, the Director of Marketing and Brand adds that conversations with potential customers speak to this same rhetoric which felt like a moment to “meet customers where they’re actually engaging with these habits, whether they’re on their lunch break or walking home from work, and offer that sign.”
Similarly, during New York Fashion Week, the brand popped up backstage at the Rachel Comey show and in October hosted a community event at the brand’s SoHo shop where attendees could get their limited-edition, aluminum Jones x Rachel tin custom engraved. Beyond the aspiration and cool factor of fashion, the partnership is a nod to an industry that has been so deeply rooted in the social factor of smoking for such a long time, with Jones is stepping up to cast a new design-driven narrative in the space.
And while vapes were big when Jones launched, with all else, it feels as though the cycle is onto something new, with Zyn, the nicotine patch brand that launched in the US in 2014, up in sales by 63% in 2023 in comparison to the previous year (CNN Health), and a term surfacing for those most impacted, “Zynfluencer.”
Ultimately though, “It’s estimated that two billion people worldwide use nicotine everyday, so whether it’s vaping, smoking, Zyn, or dip, it’s something that has been around for hundreds of years and will continue to be,” and so the Jones team is carefully considering how they will evolve in their second year and beyond. But make no mistake, they’re solely interested in bringing efficacious, research-backed, and holistic support to the market that looks and feels just as cool as smoking.
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