Card marketplace flies high putting principles before profit in refusal to sell helium balloons
Thortful has put its money where its principles are and turned down a £400,000 income stream from helium balloons because md Pip Heywood and the business believe that’s the right thing to do.
The online greeting card marketplace announced the decision in a hard-hitting Thortful Creators Instagram post on Saturday, 23 March, explaining why party decorations and celebrations are not the most pressing use for the world’s extremely limited supply of helium.
In a series of seven text shots the internet marketplace, where artists and publishers upload their card designs for sale to the public, admitted the cash would have been “a life-changing amount of money for our business” but added “it gave us the ick even to consider agreeing to it” as there are only around 10 years’ worth of the chemical element with the symbol He left on Earth, and it’s needed for mri scans, space shuttles and the pharmaceutical industry.
The post continued: “How could we stand up and talk about how eco-friendly we are, if we’re selling one of the Earth’s most precious and rapidly depleting resources?
“To take it for ourselves and plop it into a cheesy 50th birthday balloon that lasts only a couple of days is, frankly, a dick move.
“We don’t do dick moves here at Thortful so we turned down that six-figure opportunity, and you can bet we haven’t lost a wink of sleep over it. Because when you’re as passionate about sticking to your values as we are, you know that you’ve done the right thing by putting planet over profit.”
Pip explained Thortful looks at its strategy process each year, considering opportunities and how to better serve customers and grow the company.
She told PG Buzz: “Another vector we’ve started laying on our strategic choices, in line with our desire to one day become a truly purpose-driven B-Corp, is ‘is it a Thortful thing to do?’ And, while all our financial modelling told us that selling helium balloons could be worth in the region of £400k to Thortful – with a very healthy profit underneath it – it doesn’t stack up with who we want to be as a business.”
As a carbon-balanced business through working with Proco, Premiere, World Land Trust and Ecologi, Pip said “to waste a precious and limited natural resource purely for financial gain did not feel very Thortful”.
And she added: “It’s really important to me that our team understand that we’re serious about building a good business, not one that says one thing and does something else, and a business that thinks more broadly than its own needs.
“That shared passion for doing the right thing also carries through to our creators and to our consumers – we know we have high levels of brand advocacy because we do the Thortful thing. So what could, on the face of it, be a tough commercial decision, actually becomes extremely simple – and then we go figure out something else we can do that doesn’t lose us a wink of sleep!”
The industry is looking for alternatives to helium for keep balloons flying high – hot air can be used by blowing up a balloon then holding the end near a hairdryer to warm the air before tying it, but the effect doesn’t last very long.
Ammonia could provide the lift required but is poisonous, hydrogen and nitrogen both burn explosively in air as does methane although not as vigorously, and coal gas has a toxicity through the carbon dioxide element and is also flammable.
Neon is a noble gas like helium so not reactive, and leaks less easily through the balloon but it’s also quite rare at 18 parts per million by volume (ppmv) in the atmosphere and more expensive than helium, which is only 5.2ppmv in comparison to carbon dioxide at 400ppmv while water vapour averages about 4,000ppmv, and argon – used in industry for welding, light bulbs, 3D printing and metal production but heavier than air so not suitable for balloons – is abundant at 9,340ppmv.
