Wel­come Cap­tain Dufry!

Captain Dufry will make his debut in the next few months! To be available in a large number of countries where Dufry operates, this is Dufry´s first global charity initiative, which aims to further increase our support of SOS Children´s Villages.

By Jorge Muñiz

It´s cute, isn´t it? This soft toy is a new ar­rival to many of our stores across Dufry. His name is Cap­tain Dufry and, yes, it’s a dog wear­ing a Dufry scarf and avi­a­tor hat with gog­gles. Cap­tain Dufry has all the qual­i­ties the best soft toys should have. It ap­peals to every­one – big and small – and is soft enough to cud­dle (a must for chil­dren), but at­trac­tive enough to put on dis­play (some­thing some adults ap­pre­ci­ate).

How­ev­er, of­fer­ing soft toys as part of our toy cat­e­go­ry is not new to Dufry. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, these items are a ver­sa­tile and af­ford­able gift that our cus­tomers buy as a sim­ple ges­ture that says “I missed you” “con­grat­u­la­tions,” “I’m think­ing of you,” or even “good luck.” Pro­duced by in­ter­na­tion­al toy sup­pli­er Au­ro­ra, Cap­tain Dufry is eth­i­cal­ly sourced – this means it´s been re­spon­si­bly man­u­fac­tured guar­an­tee­ing that the work­ing con­di­tions for its pro­duc­tion are fair, safe and le­gal for work­ers and also sup­port lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties.

And much as we could go into the de­tails of how hug­gable this lit­tle chap can be, the most im­por­tant part of Cap­tain Dufry is not that vis­i­ble. It’s a gift that helps im­prove the liv­ing con­di­tions of many chil­dren and their fam­i­lies, thanks to our part­ner­ship agree­ment with SOS Chil­dren´s Vil­lages.

How does it work

Dur­ing the last quar­ter of 2020, Cap­tain Dufry will start to be avail­able on the shelves of some of our stores – with more to fol­low at the be­gin­ning of 2021. With a very af­ford­able price – €6.95 / $7.90 / £5.99 – this new ar­rival to our store is strate­gi­cal­ly lo­cat­ed in im­pulse ar­eas such as queu­ing sys­tems, to trig­ger in­cre­men­tal pur­chas­es.

Ben­e­fits ob­tained from the sale of this soft toy will be do­nat­ed to char­i­ties and, at least for the next cou­ple of years, Dufry has part­nered with SOS Chil­dren´s Vil­lages to re­ceive the pro­ceeds of this ini­tia­tive.

The launch of Cap­tain Dufry comes along with in-store com­mu­ni­ca­tion and sig­nage to build aware­ness. Dufry is fea­tur­ing high vis­i­bil­i­ty spaces across the stores where Cap­tain Dufry is to be avail­able – in­clud­ing ded­i­cat­ed sell­ing dis­plays and gon­do­las. On top of this, our cus­tomers will be of­fered ad­di­tion­al op­tions to do­nate us­ing the Red by Dufry app, hence, in­creas­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties of help­ing this char­i­ty ini­tia­tive even more.

Why SOS Children´s Villages and what this organization does?

The part­ner­ship sto­ry of Dufry and SOS Chil­dren´s Vil­lages spans over 10 years now. The com­pa­ny has been sup­port­ing this char­i­ty both at lo­cal and cen­tral lev­el through di­rect do­na­tions and with dif­fer­ent ini­tia­tives geared to give vis­i­bil­i­ty and to raise funds for this NGO, in­clud­ing col­lec­tion box­es in sev­er­al of our stores all over the world.

The role of SOS Chil­dren´s Vil­lages is very much aligned with Dufry´s main char­i­ta­ble fo­cus, which is to spon­sor and sup­port dis­ad­van­taged chil­dren, young peo­ple and their fam­i­lies. Col­lab­o­ra­tion start­ed in in 2009 when Dufry spon­sored a first project with pre­ven­tive care in Igaras­su, Brazil with the con­struc­tion of a so­cial cen­ter that has since ben­e­fit­ted near­ly 400 in­fants, young chil­dren and teenagers with their moth­ers and en­abled them to join fam­i­ly strength­en­ing pro­grams. The role of this NGO how­ev­er does not stop there, and with the sup­port of Dufry, we have also spon­sored sim­i­lar projects in Lavro­vo,in Rus­sia; Nairo­bi, Kenya, and Comitán, Mex­i­co.

Why is this important?

Now, you may be ask­ing - if Dufry is do­nat­ing all ben­e­fits ob­tained from the sale of Cap­tain Dufry to a char­i­ty - what is the com­pa­ny tak­ing out of this ini­tia­tive? More­over,wouldn´t it just be eas­i­er to make a di­rect do­na­tion and leave it at that?

These are prob­a­bly the right ques­tions to ask. Some­times, and more fre­quent­ly than we thought, mon­ey is not the only lever that mo­ti­vates peo­ple to do things. And whilst in­creas­ing our con­tri­bu­tion to this or an­oth­er char­i­ty would be sim­pler, we be­lieve peo­ple in gen­er­al, and our cus­tomers in par­tic­u­lar, are as keen as we are in sup­port­ing char­i­ta­ble caus­es. And as a good re­tail­er, we have the op­por­tu­ni­ty of giv­ing our cus­tomers what they pre­fer and want...

The good in­ten­tions to do­nate to char­i­ta­ble caus­es are of­ten af­fect­ed by oth­er things - “I have no time”; “I´m in a rush”; “I don’t want to sign up to a long-term com­mit­ment. Just a one-off”. These are some of the ob­sta­cles that we can over­come with ini­tia­tives like Cap­tain Dufry. Of­fer­ing an ap­peal­ing and af­ford­able way of con­tribut­ing to a char­i­ty is a tried and test­ed way of re­mov­ing these ex­cus­es and elim­i­nat­ing the bar­ri­ers.

In the UK, we sell bot­tled wa­ters that en­able the ONE Foun­da­tion to build wa­ter fa­cil­i­ties in Africa. In Zurich and Basel, the sale of wa­ter bot­tles is also help­ing to fund hos­pi­tals and lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties. And sim­i­lar­ly in Spain, the ben­e­fits ob­tained with the sale of two prod­ucts (nougat and a per­fume) are giv­en to a char­i­ty. What makes Cap­tain Dufry dif­fer­ent and unique is that this is the first glob­al ini­tia­tive of this kind, and an­oth­er proof point of the progress made in align­ing in­ter­nal process­es and ways of do­ing busi­ness.

Dufry´s support to communities

Dufry is aware that the im­pact of its op­er­a­tions goes be­yond the fi­nan­cial goals. These im­pacts are clas­si­fied un­der three di­men­sions – en­vi­ron­men­tal, so­cial and eco­nom­ic. Un­der­stand­ing these im­pacts is crit­i­cal for Dufry to op­er­ate re­spon­si­bly, en­sur­ing we min­i­mize our neg­a­tive im­pacts and max­i­mize the pos­i­tive ones. Bring­ing it back to ba­sics, it is im­por­tant to un­der­stand, for ex­am­ple, that run­ning an op­er­a­tion in a spe­cif­ic coun­try has straight­for­ward pos­i­tive im­pacts in the lo­cal economies, as we em­ploy staff from lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties, trans­fer know-how and pay lo­cal tax­es. But there are oth­er ben­e­fits that are not so vis­i­ble but equal­ly im­por­tant, like en­sur­ing fair busi­ness prac­tices, or sup­port­ing lo­cal pro­duc­ers by buy­ing lo­cal prod­ucts.

It is also true that these pos­i­tive ini­tia­tives are also need­ed in lo­ca­tions where our busi­ness has less (or no) abil­i­ty to make such a di­rect pos­i­tive im­pact. And this is where cor­po­rate phil­an­thropy pays a crit­i­cal role to di­rect­ly sup­port those in need.

As a group, Dufry sup­ports a large num­ber of ini­tia­tives framed un­der our com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment. Ei­ther by di­rect do­na­tions, by sell­ing prod­ucts – like bot­tled wa­ter or toys like Cap­tain Dufry – or just by giv­ing ex­po­sure and vis­i­bil­i­ty of var­i­ous ini­tia­tives, to our ex­ten­sive, glob­al cus­tomer base. We are also proud of pro­mot­ing a cul­ture of car­ing for the more dis­ad­van­taged and, when­ev­er pos­si­ble, we give sup­port to projects car­ried out by mem­bers of our staff.

What we have touched on here is not a com­pre­hen­sive list of all that our com­pa­ny is do­ing and we en­cour­age you to find out more about some of the most promi­nent ini­tia­tives Dufry sup­ports, by read­ing the com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment sec­tion of the an­nu­al re­port which is avail­able on our cor­po­rate web­site.