Two months ago, Lila Stewart stayed up all night to binge-watch the five-part Showtime documentary series Outcry, which tells the story of Texas high school football star Greg Kelley’s wrongful conviction on child sex charges.
“I came to work the next morning and couldn’t stop thinking about him,” said Stewart, founder of Dallas footwear brand Hari Mari. “I was so angry about it, but at the same time moved by ... his character and his integrity and his strength.”
At the time, Hari Mari was looking for a male model for its new fall boot collection, which launched in early October. The flip-flop maker expanded its product line to include waterproof waxed suede men’s boots that range from $120 to $220.
Kelley’s ordeal began in 2013, when as a teenager, he was accused and later convicted of sexually assaulting a boy in an in-home day care. He was a star football player at Leander High School north of Austin and had committed to play at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Instead, he went to prison for three years.
Since being exonerated late last year, Kelley has married his high school sweetheart and recently received a scholarship at age 25 to play football at Eastern Michigan University. The Showtime series highlighted insufficient evidence used to convict Kelley. A Texas judge declared him innocent only a few months earlier, ending his six-year ordeal.
“It almost was like the stars aligned because I finished [the series] at the same time our search was going on,” said Stewart, who founded the mission-driven company in 2012 with her husband, Jeremy. “I had asked our social media team to reach out to him because at the very least, I wanted to send him and his wife pairs and wish them well from everybody here at Hari Mari.”
That outreach grew into making Kelley the face of Hari Mari’s boots campaign.
Hari Mari has never had someone front a new collection. Stewart said she was inspired by Kelley’s ability to be at peace.
When they met in person, she asked him how he managed to avoid becoming an angry young man during his 1,153 days in prison. He told her he relies on his faith, believing there’s a bigger purpose for him because of what happened, she said.
“This isn’t normally something that we would do,” Stewart said. “But I felt so moved by his story and compelled to want to do something to amplify his story and his message of positivity and justice and fairness.”
Justice and fairness are ingrained in the mindset of Hari Mari’s founders.
Unlike most business owners, Stewart and her husband knew what they wanted their brand to stand for before they had a business plan — they wanted to create a business that helped kids and the community. The couple lived for three years in Indonesia, where they worked with underprivileged children. When they returned to Dallas in 2010, they learned that pediatric cancer is the most fatal children’s disease.
Hari Mari donates 1% of its sales to support kids fighting cancer through its Flops Fighting Cancer initiative. Since 2010, Stewart said, Hari Mari has donated thousands to its primary beneficiary, Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth.
Stewart wouldn’t disclose the company’s revenue, though she said it’s significantly higher than the $1.78 million a year listed by Dun & Bradstreet. Hari Mari sells to about 1,000 retailers, including Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, J.Crew, West Marine, Zappos, Whole Earth Provision Co. and Saint Bernard.
Stewart said her desire to use Hari Mari for good outweighs any backlash or criticism that might come the company’s way for choosing Kelley to represent it.
Gary Orosy, a marketing professor at Southern Methodist University and managing principal of Orosy and Co., said Hari Mari’s selection of Kelley is a form of cause marketing — when a for-profit company seeks to both increase sales and better society.
“What we do see in the data about millennials is that they are more interested in purpose,” said Orosy, who has worked with well-known companies such as Procter & Gamble, Frito-Lay, Nabisco and Gillette. “The purpose of their work, the purpose of their lives and certainly the purpose of the products that they buy.”
