When customers tell Genie Lam (BCom 2009) that the product she makes and distributes worldwide feels like “nothing at all,” she’s likely to thank them for the compliment.
With husband and business partner Victor Chan (BASc 2009), Genie manufactures and sells Aoni condoms. Just five years after her husband picked up the family business, Genie joined the team in applying for one of the Company’s biggest milestones - the Guinness Book of World Records for the “World’s Thinnest Latex Condom” in 2013.
“When my parents first heard about [me getting into the condom business] they didn’t object, but they didn’t seem too excited,” she recalls over a phone call from her home base in Hong Kong. She's quick to note that her dad is on board now, as an active consultant on Aoni’s machine technology.
From Genie’s first days as a marketing and accounting student at UBC Sauder, her path seemed clear enough: after graduating, she began work at Deloitte and Touche, where she started as a staff accountant and earned her Chartered Professional Accountant’s designation.
Then life intervened — namely, marriage to Victor and a move to China to work with her husband on the condom company. Victor has transformed the traditional factory's outdated machinery into smaller, mobile, patented nanoscale technology that made condoms with uncommon precision — an innovation that led to their Guinness Book of World Records ranking.
Genie is leveraging Aoni’s solid product development to tap into the North American market, with her sights set on Vancouver investors in a bid to launch the next phase in an international expansion.
In the meantime, Genie is an active UBC Sauder alumna who keeps in touch with fellow UBC alumni around the world. Wherever her travels take her, she’s noticing a bold new market for Aoni in a young demographic that values safe intimacy and responsible family planning.
“When we go to events and say we make and sell condoms, you know you’re not going to have a dull evening,” she laughs.
Aoni Condoms
