RetailCraft 52: "Can we change an industry?" - in conversation with Alec Mills, co-founder of DAME

Show Notes

In this episode, Ian Jindal speaks with Alec Mills, co-founder of Dame, about the journey of creating sustainable and toxin-free period products. They discuss the challenges faced in the industry, the importance of changing the conversation around menstruation, whether men have a role in women's health discussions. Alec shares insights on product innovation, market positioning, and the impact of collaborations with larger brands. The conversation concludes with reflections on the future of Dame and the ongoing mission to improve menstrual health and sustainability.

Takeaways

• Dame was launched in 2019 to address the issues with traditional period products.
• The company focuses on creating sustainable and toxin-free products.
• Changing the conversation around menstruation is crucial for societal progress.
• Product design must prioritize both functionality and sustainability.
• Reusable products can save money in the long run.
• Period poverty is a significant issue that needs addressing.
• Collaboration with larger brands can amplify impact and reach.
• Innovations like self-sanitizing menstrual cups can change user habits.
• The mission to improve menstrual health continues as long as subpar products exist.

Sound Bites

"We make sustainable and toxin-free period products."
"Traditional period products are full of toxins."
"Can we change an industry?"

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Sustainable Period Products
02:57 The Journey of Dame: From Idea to Impact
05:49 Challenges and Insights in the Period Product Industry
09:11 The Role of Men in Women's Health Conversations
11:59 Innovations in Period Products: Design and Functionality
14:51 Market Positioning and Addressing Period Poverty
17:48 Collaborations with Big Brands and Their Impact
21:08 Future Directions for Dame and the Industry
24:00 Conclusion and Reflections on Progress

 

--  Run time: 45 minutes

INFORMATION:

[ 🖥️ ]

Dame - https://wearedame.co/ 

 

[ 👨‍👧 ]

Alec Mills: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alec-ph-mills/ 

Ian Jindal: www.linkedin.com/in/ianjindal/ and www.twitter.com/ianjindal 

 

[ 📷 ] (c) Ian Jindal / www.instagram.com/ianjindal

 

Creators and Guests

Host

Ian Jindal

Founder of RetailX and CustomerX

What is RetailCraft - digital retail, ecommerce and brands - Retail Podcast?

Multichannel retail, ecommerce and digital business - interviews, analysis and discussion with Ian Jindal and InternetRetailing

Do you let them eat you when they're crunchy or do

you soak them mush them a bit and they eat it like a sort of

instant cold porridge what's the i'm very

liberal with the starter gun on that they can pick whichever moment they want

split the pack and where is it going we're going down the brick rather split

the brick are you going down the crunch route or is it more of the soggy soggy

soup. It's a very interesting question.

Hello, dear listener. Welcome back to the studio. Hope you had a lovely summer.

It passed in an instant, but it's lovely to be back once again in the Spirit Dance studio.

I'm Ian Jindal. I run internet retailing, but more importantly,

my guest today is Alec Mills. Alec, welcome.

Thank you very much for having me. Now, I think you should introduce yourself.

Not because I'm lazy, but because I'm just interested in how you sum up what

you do in a couple of sentences. Alec, tell us about DAME.

Well, DAME makes sustainable and toxin-free period products.

We started, launched in 2019 in response to some findings from a previous business that we ran,

which effectively pointed very clearly

to the fact that traditional period

products are full of toxins they are full of plastics and

they're sold with the language of shame so

one of the moments i had

was in a supermarket and i picked up a pack of let's

call them a major brand and on the side of the packet it advertised how the

tampons the wrappers opened silently and i thought wow there is no way that

i I want my daughters to grow up using products by a brand that talks about

them and the way they feel about their bodies in this way.

So in 2019, my co-friend and I launched Dame out of our previous business and

with the world's first reusable tampon applicator.

And it's sort of been an evolving journey from that.

But ultimately, we make a full range of toxin-free and sustainable period products.

Right, so I'm just going to let our listener have a think, put on the kettle,

because there's so much there to unpack, which we're going to try and get through.

So with your help, we'll cover off everything from the sustainability.

I love the shame point. I'm wondering why biscuit, crisp and sweet manufacturers

haven't also adopted the silent opening.

Last time I was in the cinema, they definitely hadn't. But also about your previous

business and how you moved towards this. So, let's go back to...

The motivation first off because one of

your supermarket there are many things that can

annoy a modern human from food waste

to capitalism to sustainable agriculture

so item in bagging area item in bagging here exactly why why did this particularly

motivate you to say do you know what I'm going to dedicate the next decade of my life to, you know,

transforming the way that period products are made,

marketed, and used.

That's quite a sort of a Pauline moment in your, you know, aisle number 12.

First of all, you never think it's going to be 10 years, right?

How many has it been so far? It's a good fight. Yeah, no, I've been a tampon salesman for a decade.

I celebrated that this year. Right, so that's 10 years in. Yeah, burst out of the cake.

And you think you go into this and you think, it's going to grow very quickly

and then I'm going to sell and then I'm going to go on to the next thing. But it's never that way.

Things evolve out of ideas and what you think is an idea or a solution turns

out that it's not and you discover real problems.

And that was the case with us. And the sort of founding story from our previous business,

Sanitary Hour, was that sat next to my business partner who was then a friend

at dinner and she had just had a baby and I was asking her very sort of dull

questions about being a new mother to a newborn,

and she said that she had had to strap her baby to her chest and run out into

the pouring rain to go and buy her tampons because she had forgotten them that

morning and I'd just seen the latest or the video for Dollar Shave Club,

I think, earlier that week.

And I said to her, why aren't these things delivered on subscription?

Like, you can get razors. And she said,

if there was a service like this, I could. So we set out thinking that the problem.

That, you know, that was a big problem was the fact that people forget their period products.

And we grew that business, but it was sluggish because ultimately that wasn't

really a problem. You can get period products everywhere.

It just happened to be a problem for her at that moment. That wasn't a business in it.

But like a lot of kind of founding stories,

there's a pivot involved And we used that experience to discover,

I mean, literally packing tampons and pads in my flat in London all day long

in order to bring these products to people.

And at the end of the day, we would just be in a sea of plastic and her newborn

baby would be crawling around and see her plastic.

We just thought, God, imagine what this is like on a global scale every single day.

And so we looked into it and there's 1.3

million plastic applicators flushed down uk lose

every morning there's over 3 000 different

chemicals found in period products and we realized that there was a much more

exciting opportunity here which was can we change an industry can we create

products can we change a conversation can we make people when they have their first period.

Not be shameful about it or feel shame

from it can we make people who are have

a very bad cramps in the office and they

need to speak to their boss about how to get time off how

can we change that conversation how does this

essential bodily function how it impacts all of

our lives men and women in such a fundamental

way how can we make all of that better and again there's quite a scope creep

here so one minute if i was summarizing your story i'd say oh a couple of friends

sitting at dinner and they extend a business model it feels very sort of mba 101 and,

Two minutes later, you've become much more impassioned.

We're talking about everything, again, from a woman's right to have a conversation

at work about her period, plastic, the environmental impact, etc.

So you've gone from, if you like, extending a business model to having a full-on

massive number of commitments that you're bringing on to try and change in one

go. I mean, that, again, is quite a shift.

It's probably a good time to address the elephant in the room here that I am

a guy. I've never had a period. I will never have a period.

You know, the closest thing I've ever got to is seeing my wife change her tampon

and looking at diagrams very closely. So I...

Hopefully not on the tube. yeah so so when

we were first looking you know i got

into the problem of how do you fit 20

tampons through a letterbox that was the problem i was trying to solve so i

came with this so naive and so unaware of what it is to live that female experience

and it's not just how do you put in a tampon it's not just how do you speak to your mom about it it's.

Infiltrates every single aspect and over once

once you sort of see it you can't unsee it and being

you know a purveyor of

period products it's it's you're

on the coalface every day and and and to put it in its most sort of you know

direct example of this is i would run our facebook account when you know facebook

pages were very much sort of what it was when you started and i'd have teenage

girls messaged on there saying,

I've just experienced, I don't know, spotting my parents.

What do I do about it? I can't tell my mom because she doesn't like having these

conversations or I'm living with my grandmother and I don't know,

or I haven't had this conversation until I need help.

So you very, very rapidly become

immersed in the

world of what it is to be you know a girl starting

or you know a mother who might have

sensitivities or so yes it

was initially starting trying to fit a certain

amount of peer products through some letterbox at the right time

every day you know every month without fail and it

was a logistical exercise and rapidly became

something more much more existential yeah so

from engineer to advocate and empathetic person

yes to social engineer to you know

to product engineer and that's

that shift though because i mean we're lucky on this podcast that our listener

is a an open-minded person who doesn't see gender and didn't make any assumptions

about the voices at the end of the microphone but there's often a caricature

that the engineering approach is a male one.

So whenever there's an emotional problem in the family, the man will go,

let me just engineer the way out to this current problem.

So again, it is interesting to look at that broadening from a product engineering

solution to a more holistic view of the company and a mission in more of a societal context.

You're totally right. And I was literally having this conversation with my wife

two nights ago about engineering problems and thinking you can fix this and

actually sometimes you just need to listen yes and correct yeah you're saying i'm my therapist now,

ian just listen and stop telling people what your answer is yeah no surprises

who won that discussion and it was a discussion so yes there is a big switch but i guess i go back to,

Simon Suneck, who talked about the why of your business.

And for us, there are so many why's which are much more exciting and much bigger

problems to solve than trying to put things through a letterbox.

But ultimately, you are still solving problems. And as a business owner or someone

who runs a startup entrepreneur.

I guess your skill set is, right, how do

I engage with the problem and you know you're out there to

sort of try and fix and fixing might not be engineering fixing might

just be collaborating or engineering and maybe sometimes accepting

that you don't know what the answer is but you

are prepared to give it a go and and

try and get people talking and interested

in changing and ultimately you know buying into what

you're trying to do so i think it's you know so there's a

there's a passion is a key ingredient you

know diverse ways of thinking and problem solving

you know it has a much wider i guess

scope than obviously just sort of engineering what other

people are doing yeah so tell us a bit more about the

products because looking at

your website there's a sort of mix of you know

tech and design where you're designing solutions but also the materials so maybe

just quickly just tell us what it is you sell so what do you have that's got

a buy button on it and then we'll talk a bit about the materials and innovations around your product.

So the first problem we tried to solve is the issue of tampons being filled with plastic.

70% of people in the UK use plastic applicators which for men out there is like

a sort of syringe or a shotgun cartridge kind of device that effectively loads a tampon into your body.

And like I said earlier, millions of these things are flushed down loose.

And there's a whole load of problems here.

The first problem is that no one in Europe uses plastic applicators, only in the UK and the US.

Why? Because the major players, in this case, Procter & Gamble,

launched at plastic applicators in these markets. And therefore, it was created...

In case the lawyers are listening, we celebrate that innovation of its time.

We absolutely celebrate the ease with which you can insert a tampon using these products. Yeah.

But, you know, there's people in Europe look at the UK and be like,

why do you need to solve that problem?

Because it's not a problem. And so, you know, habit change and culture feeds into this as well.

But to go back to the solution, we wanted to...

Create something that would solve this problem of how do you help women insert

a tampon without it having huge plastic you know ways to impact so very simply

we just made ours reusable.

But making it reusable there's a whole lot

that comes with that yes you've got to make it

if it's going to be in your handbag for 10 years

it's got to look really good it's got to be durable it's

got to be super easy to clean it's got to be really easy to

use it's got to be versatile it's got to be able to fit lots of different

sizes of tampon in it so we spent

i mean it was our first ever you know

attempt to to make anything and i'd

never designed a product in my life i just maybe built a bird

table in carpentry at school so there was

a lot of design and but ultimately it had to have all of those

things and we launched

that on kickstarter which was a very crucial medium

for us to or vehicle for us to get this out

into the world because allowed us to build a community gauge interest

get minimum order quantities from and did

people did you get sort of emails coming in

saying love what you're doing i've looked at what you've done

and here's an improved CAD design or you if you do it this way might be better

how active are people chipping in to your version one or did you just get it

right first time i mean What was the iterative angle as well as the funding

and pre-market testing?

Did you get people chipping in at all?

Again, very astute comment. You should definitely run a podcast,

Ian, if you don't. I might try one, actually.

So I wish we had been more collaborative and done a much more open book approach

and just said, this is the problem and we're trying to solve it.

Can anyone help us? but you keep

your cards very close to your chest because you don't want anyone else to run away

with this secret and now it turns out

there's about five different versions of what we've done and people have

copied us and but to begin with no it was very closed book and you can't we

didn't want to put anything out until we were happy with it because then you

couldn't patent it because if anyone knows or have seen your design you can't

then protect it and maybe we shouldn't have protected it.

Maybe we should have viewed it like.

You know have periods should be which is like this most

democratic or you know it should be a democratized product

and exactly open source

and just said this is kind of what we're thinking who can chip in but you you

know we didn't and i think if we'd done that we probably wouldn't have got investment

so you know it's the innovators dilemma isn't it there's there's an element

of chasing the money you know in every aspect but we launched on on on kickstarter and it was my

co-founder Celia who went through the sacrificial process

of trying out some of the early prototypes a

lot of these things were probably closer to medieval torture instruments they

were actually like comfortable insertion devices but we through that process

you know my wife as well got closer and closer to something that resembled a

solution but it couldn't just be a solution it had to be actually an improvement

on what's already out there and it was very.

Satisfying when two months ago I decided on a whim just to speak to all our

applicator customers and just said, is this more comfortable than a cardboard

applicator, which is I guess the most disposable.

And 87% of them said absolutely, it's far more. So hopefully we've actually

done an improvement to what's already out there.

So yeah, in terms of asking people, no, you just, you know, we got it out there.

And because it was a world first, that I don't know.

Created an impact and it caused digital ripples on the internet,

which we are still feeling today.

Our SEO brand recognition, our authority in the eyes of Google is all huge because

it was got so much momentum in the press, all free.

And, you know, it certainly helped plant the flag of what DAME stands for.

It stands for like better design, easy to use solutions,

sustainability, and you know

durability so we've tried to sort of

transfer all of those qualities into every product that we make uh from from

then onwards so an inventor innovator when i speak to people who have a product

invention background the hard thing is stopping so how you stopped yourself,

extending into a million different products and you

know different areas where you know there's inequity that needs to be solved

i mean you know what's the balance between warrior for justice and improvement

on the one hand and running a tight sensible business on the other because you

know most businesses can't stop themselves bloating to add on branded extension products.

I'm always on the horns of that dilemma i

can't stop and you're you're so right to recognize that

that is one of the great flaws of people who like creating things and no doubt

there'll be a lot of adobe listeners right now who will also be you know will

know that problem it didn't really stop we went from that,

But, you know, it's largely led by what our customers and our community are saying.

So we launched the reusable applicator and with it, some organic cotton tampons.

We then had lots of inquiries from our customers saying, this is great.

You've done it for tampons. Can you now do it for pads?

So we then, that kind of led our next move and we designed reusable pads,

which did get a patent and they are, you know,

ultimately more comfortable and softer and more absorbing than

what's out there so that leads

us a bit but there is a point where we probably should have stopped

and learned how to sell what we had already made better right and my my inclination

was you know a small percentage of people use tampons compared to pads so pads

will help expand our market base.

And then from there, you know, you're then thinking, well, more people are starting

to use pants and reusable pads.

So, you know, and we were sort of chasing a wider and wider market.

A lot of people make the mistake that just because half the population use period

products is going to be the easiest thing to sell.

But by definition, they're already using something. Exactly.

So therefore, you know, the appeal of what we did, lots of people use lots of different products.

So it made sense for us to have a solution for the whole basket that they might

buy. They can buy that basket from them.

Because if you're the sort of mindset where you want to stop plastic waste,

well, then you're probably the mindset, well, you want to do that across your entire life.

So that was kind of,

our vision was to create the range. And we've now done that.

And I thought that I'd put down my pencil and ruler and not do any more designing.

But already we're about to launch, or we have launched this pretty cool 3D dispenser

that you can put into public washrooms that dispense our product made out of

old strawberry punnets.

So yes, it doesn't stop and it's a constant battle is stop.

Consolidate what you've got and like learn how to sell and

then and then regroup this is when you have to hire a really

good focused sales team who could do that allowing you

to go off and keep keep innovating just as

you were talking the middle class alert

alarm went off our listener can't see

that but we were talking about basket of

products the customer has already decided that

she doesn't like plastic and immediately something

well hang on if you've got the range of experience

the range of affluence or not

the the people saying i'm a non-plastics

first person tends to be a more affluent customer

so where do you fit in in the

whole spectrum of providing period

products for me the people have nothing on the one hand

they're totally underserved through to people who are you know able to pick

any product they like and have the money to do that so where does your product

fit in in terms of the market let's say i'm very grateful that that's where

the question went when you said the middle class alarm went up i was taking you a while.

Spot my ridiculously plummy accident so it's a very good point and ultimately

reusable products save you money.

But you need to have the money up front. But you need to have the money up front.

So for example, you know, our reusable pads, over five years of their lifetime,

you'll save about 80% of what you would have on disposables.

But that upfront cost is obviously big. So there are, you know,

ways you can do it with Klarna, that kind of thing, which spread out the cost. But it's really,

It's the level below that, that I think is more of a challenge,

which is like period poverty, people who can't buy anything at all.

And that's not just in this country, that's globally.

It's shocking you didn't say it all the way around, as in that's not just globally,

it's also in this country. I mean, that's the real shock.

Yes. It developed after nations that we still have period poverty.

Well, there's peer poverty in this country in that people have been exposed

to peer products, but they can't afford them all the time.

But there are ways and means of getting them.

Which yes, is shocking in itself, especially when you consider the cost of these essential products.

But globally, there are people out there who have never even been introduced to peer products.

And so they use all sorts of things from soil to rags, literally straw.

So where do you begin? Because you can't boil the ocean.

So it's about picking, I guess, a small segment of society that you can help

and not spreading ourselves too thin.

We, as part of our B2B offering, our business dispensers, we've partnered with

a charity called bloody good period, who provide free period products to refugees

who've come into this country who can't afford them.

So very targeted, very, you know, amazing charity that's been around for a while.

And what's good about that is that businesses have, there are boxes that they need to tick.

And so it makes it a bit of a win-win-win where you're saying,

right, your employees are going to be happier because they've got period products,

your female workforce is going to feel valued and we also use the charity to

then help build period policy in workplaces and then we give a percentage of

our profits of those every refill in the dispensers that goes to world period

poverty so it's kind of baked in to that whole model so that's kind of,

as far as like our resources concerned as much we can do

and it's a sort of pay-as-you-go model so we're not

sort of you know don't have any anything that

we can't sustain and then we work with a great

charity called pilio who do our carbon insetting in

pakistan and we've just

started with them there's always products that won't be fit for sale because

they've got sort of something wrong with the logo on it or the packaging's not

quite right so we've give all of our products to them and we've just given 3,000

pads and pants to them and they've gone out to villages in Pakistan.

It's a very, very measurable, small, discreet project where they can actually

go to five villages, gather people around.

And what's great about that is the learnings of what the questions they are

when they first use these things, because you're literally giving somebody who's

never seen anything before.

So, you know, in the same way that a baby might pick up an ipod and

instinctively start you know doing things you know steve

jobs did a good job with the design and if

you give someone a pad who's never seen anything comparable what

happens to it and you know to that whole process and what's what's been amazing

about that is not only obviously are we able to give hundreds of women the freedom

the liberty that you get with using period products but we also get to see how

they all speak to each other and the questions they ask and And amongst them,

you know, there are very much influencers and it'll be some of the.

Some of the women in the group who get it very quickly

and then start influencing all the others and doing it so you

know it's a it's a very it's a very worthwhile and

valuable experience for us to learn interesting well

look speaking of learning and you know

how progress happens quickly at times the

the growth of the company on the

one hand hey kickstarter innovator but

on the other hand working with big companies so you've

done some material science work with patagonia which

was sounds very interesting you got

grant funding from the john lewis partnership circular

fund and i think i hope

i didn't make this up by saying that your first retail channel

was in waitrose yeah so these are all kind

of plucky motivated starter meets

big co so talk to

me about how those interfaces have worked to

help you get the business up and running what's it like when you know you're

a small company and you wander in and you're in front of i don't know the circular

fund owners or you're trying to get things into waitrose that's of you know

early stage versus big company it's terrifying because you've got everything

to lose and they don't really.

But I think we recognized very early on, and we had this brilliant person who

worked for us at the time called Richard Johnson, who was our head of impact.

And he was really good at going out and meeting people and talking.

And I think the expression radical collaboration was always a radical transparency

was always thrown around.

And recognized very early on that we,

that that we have a value to them it's not just one way and how do we exploit that,

and in the case of finistair for

example they got in touch with

us and said we want to do something that improves access

to the ocean for everyone and

as part of that they wanted to have a range of sustainable period

products because ultimately because you want to be swimming through

them when to companies exactly exactly

and period products are the fifth most common plastic found on

uk beach so it was a big big sort of thing and in return

we said well look we've got these dry bags

which keep your products safe when you're

if you've changed your pants or pads out on you know on the move you can sort

of roll the top but the material that we're using is basically raw plastic and

they had recycled ones so they gave us the secret ingredient to their pads and

we gave them I guess brand equity and product and we co-branded something and that was a great.

It was a valuable lesson in in that

you can actually bring something to the table however small

you are as long as you're authentic

and if you built a good moat around you

and you're doing things for the right reason you're not trying to retrofit stuff

then there is a value to what you're doing

and big businesses sometimes can't access that yeah and

so they rely on partnering with smaller authentic

brands in order to achieve those goals so you're

like their purposeful dna that they're uh rubbing up

against yeah exactly that sort of you know sorry that sounded very i didn't

mean that to sound cynical as it sounded just to stop myself there because it

wasn't meant cynically a partnership can be very valuable yeah they're that

sort of friend in the playground who's like really you know does something and

you just want to be sort of friends just because they can do that.

And then the John Lewis one, they very sensibly threw out a grant.

So they get for all those pennies that you spend on plastic bags as part of

that tax, they put all that money towards it.

Giving grants which was a

very good thing to hear that that's where all the money went

yes i always just assumed they pocketed it but they

john lewis would never do that no no no so they

did a sort of you know process of of

people applying and our challenge was

the menstrual cup

is like the holy grail of period products is the most economical by far i mean

these things cost pennies to make reusable totally reusable last 10 years incredibly

good like health-wise for your body doesn't you know leak anything very sustainable

i mean they are literally perfect but.

Barely anyone uses them so less than five percent of the planet use them and

yet they would solve everything from period poverty to health issues.

And we said to them, this is literally the most perfect product,

but no one's using it. Can you fund our research into why?

And then hopefully produce a product at the end of it that might push this a

little bit further down. Oh, right. Yeah.

And so we carried out some research and there was two big things that were pointed out.

The first is just habit change like people putting cups inside

them was just mind-blowing you know

people don't it's just such

a it's counterintuitive yeah it's such a big leap

and and if it goes badly then it's like right this

isn't for me and they give up and like that's it and so that

was a big thing is like how do you facilitate that change and

the second thing was once you've used them all cups

out there you have to boil them in your kitchen and the idea

of boiling your menstrual cup in your kitchen if you're in a flat share with

someone else or like a family member my you know there's already there's already

enough that goes on the kitchen in terms of arguments whether people want to

make that carbonara and there's a cup boiling in there so i totally understand

why that might have been putting people off,

So we ended up doing a lot of research, you know, made a load of video sort

of guides, and we made the first self-sanitizing cup that doesn't need to be boiled.

And the problem is now is we get a lot of our customers for that cup actually

already use a cup. They boil it.

And next thing, it's a melted cup. So it's kind of worked, but it hasn't.

We're still, you know, trying to break the back of that habit change is very difficult.

So to answer your question, BigCo, there should be a lot more of it.

It sounds like these companies have also made an effort to create interfaces

for collaboration and support.

And I think that's another lesson, which is to look for the right way in to

the big companies rather than just knocking on the door and trying to sell into the stores.

So that's interesting. Well, going back to what we were saying earlier about

like, you know, I wish we'd collaborated more on our first product.

I think big businesses should ask for help more.

And we should all ask for help more. Because to get out of where we are as a

planet, as people, it's going to require all of us working together.

And so these very small windows

where businesses open up and they say right we're

going to do a grant for this are just moments of collaboration

in what could be a much less competitive

and much more cohesive business environment and

we run these these camps for

girls who are sort of 16 17 18 and it's one of the big things that we try and

talk to them about is the power of saying i don't know and the power of asking

for help whether you're starting a business or you know whether you're you're

you run one already and looking for something else because there is a.

And this, again, is why you need more women in the workplace and you need more

women co-founders because historically, men have this sort of chest-thumping

approach to doing things of, I'm going to get to the top.

And naturally, women are so much better at asking for help and talking about things.

And so, I mean, it's all getting quite meta, but we are helping,

hopefully, to get them to think more about how to weaponize these skills that they've got.

And hopefully the world will be a better place when we get to that great 50-50 point.

So in a way, you also brought us to an obvious question for both of us.

So we've already identified ourselves as male.

And even though we may have, you know, we've also got mums, we have better halves

as our wives, we both have daughters.

That still doesn't qualify us to talk

either of the lived experience of women or

for them so can i

just ask as you were setting up

a company admittedly with a

female co-founder but there you are conspicuously male

walking in asking for funding talking about

your ideas was your maleness a

positive and negative were people so enlightened they

looked through gender and just saw the product i'm just

interested about those conversations a decade ago where

you were a man looking at

a taboo women's product in

the pre-covid age so how did that feel

or the benefits disadvantage how do you reflect on

that i mean fortunately things have changed

a lot from then but and only for

the better but it was a very strange world

or it was a strange stage to walk out onto when you can see and feel very viscerally

the difference between you and your co-founder when you go into certain meetings

and that might be talking to a warehouse manager who typically has been male.

Or facilities managers who run buildings who typically have been male.

Investors male, again, and you know, this isn't.

The time to go into the patriarchy but it's ultimately

trying to dismantle that and in order to

do that i think you've got to have someone behind

the enemy lines so to speak and you've got to have men

part of the conversation because men are the problem so but

there's been a very sort of trance it's been it's transformed

from at the beginning when male investors

spoke to us they'd either be sort of sniggering about periods because

they were sort of you know didn't want to talk about it and those

they'd had to be sort of slightly put

back in their place you know then and there to them

assuming that i did all the finances in the company to you

know i mean it was man's job yeah and and and as and as i sort of said at the

beginning like you see when you're at the sort of the face of this you just

and you see it through the lens of being a woman it's everywhere i mean it is literally everywhere,

even from the way products are designed to the way, I mean,

sport is played to everything.

And once you're led into this world and you see it, you just can't unsee it.

And in some cases, it was so obvious, and yet it wasn't spoken about.

And the moment I'm thinking in particular is we went on Dragon's Den.

Nobody look it up, please. And we had the dragons all laughing about periods and and.

What's he called? Peter Jones was sort of asking some sort of kind of childish comment.

And there was this sort of awkward kind of thing where it's like,

hang on a second, we're actually talking about something quite serious here

and you're totally undermining it.

But you play along, right? Because they're the dragons and you're trying to

woo them over and and it gave me great pleasure to talk about vaginal discharge live on the BBC.

To peter jones you just couldn't handle it but then

afterwards i think it was maybe like an hour later on

the planning schedule there was a program about depression amongst

teenage girls and i wrote a letter to the bbc saying this is just such irresponsible

broadcasting like you cannot show grown men laughing about period products and

periods and then show a program which just blatantly reveals why this is so

important that this is spoken about.

And actually the letter got far more of attraction and interest than what we got on Dragon's Den.

But, you know, it was so obvious back then.

It's a bit like when you watch 90s sitcoms now and you're like,

how are they getting away with that now?

Retrospectively cancelled. Yeah. So, you know, it's been a very exciting 10

years to be on this and we started with fighting tampon tax and I'd write articles and papers about it.

And when you look at how luxury yachts weren't taxed or whatever it was, I can't quite remember.

And then Peeropodics were, that's another example of just how mad it is how

these things sit alongside each other.

Yeah, it's been a great time to be in it. It's been great to be part of that

change and actually trying to get policy and tax removed and that kind of thing.

And I guess it's why I love what I do. so

let's look forward another 10 years i know

that's difficult to imagine but as we leave the studio you're

not short of ideas progress has been made but

around every corner there's there are more things

to be sorted out more more paths to follow what's on your mind what's next for

dame in between the enormous amount you could do with also focusing what what's

exciting you about what comes after the podcast hopefully no letters would be to jones's lawyers.

You know i i i think we're at a crossroads of of very exciting zeitgeisty conversations

that are happening and everyone could be an entire career in itself for us for

me it probably is is much more commercial.

The answer is we've been in sort of startup mode, burning through cash for a

long time, and we've been on a big path to profitability, and we're now there.

And it means that I don't have to go out and fundraise anymore for the moment.

And I think continuing on that deep commercial focus for now,

the environment's changed.

Investors aren't quite as willing to throw in the DTC sort of bug is slightly sort of worn off.

And actually, I think there's something very attractive about a business that

can stand on its own two feet.

So that's really like a big priority.

How we do that, well, it requires a lot of sort of creativity still,

you know, it's how do you find people for as cheaply as possible and persuade

them to do what you're, you know, to do what you're selling,

to buy what you're selling.

And one of the things that we're doing at the moment, which launches tomorrow,

which I'm really excited about, is a partnership with Girl Guiding.

And their slogan is, we believe any girl can do anything.

And I just love that. it's what everything that

we're about and so that launches tomorrow and

with it we're going to sort of do a effectively a

kind of product launch and support the quarter of a million parents who have

teenagers out there and do some sort of co-educational basically building and

writing of resources so those are the sort of things that will help us get to where we need to be,

so it doesn't sound like there's much of a let-up though it's not the next 10 years i'll be coasting,

i think no i i don't think coasting i

just think there's so much that still needs to be done and as long as there's

still crap products being made and sold in crap ways then then then we have

a purpose well that's a mission statement to add to your other ones alec time

has defeated us and And I'm only a fraction of the way through our notes,

so we're going to have to get you back maybe later in the year when they're

talking about purposeful businesses,

B Corps and so on, because we didn't even get anywhere near that.

I hope our listener has enjoyed and been as inspired as I've been with what you've done.

It's been an absolute positive revelation and what a lovely way to get back

to the studio and hear the story. Alec, thank you so much. Thank you.

When you take the things off your voice all of a sudden doesn't sound as nice

you notice that there's something about hearing it feels like you're hearing

the podcast when you're in it doesn't it.