The green tampon commercial enterprise is a crowded market. With manufacturers, including Lola, DAME, and Rael, it is difficult to interrupt. However, this didn’t forestall Afsaneh Parvizi-Wayne, a businesswoman from London, launching Freda, a business enterprise providing an organic period care range, in January 2018. The tampon range has fully biodegradable bioplastic – the usage of plant-based totally products in preference to petroleum-based – applicators manufactured from sugar cane, which might be made in a manufacturing unit usually using renewable strength.
Now not the best thing Freda does.
It’s essentially a health platform specializing in the two taboo areas of women’s health—menstruation and menopause. We started with our very own variety of natural duration care merchandise and now expanding into addressing the needs of girls entering menopause,” explained Parvizi-Wayne. Periods at the moment are ‘woke,’ and the sector, after a long time of final stagnant, is, in the end, getting a few interests. And Parvizi-Wayne is proper: innovations which include duration pants, a revival of reusable pads, and menstrual cups are hitting the market—and the entrepreneur determined to get in at the motion.
Freda is specific because it addresses the wishes of females from puberty to post-menopause. I believe that length merchandise ought to be free wherever there is free lavatory paper—who in the end has determined what is important? If anybody had periods, there might be pads and tampons available in every restroom. We are taking the maximum used products, pads and tampons, and simply enhancing them: ditching the chemical substances, the perfumes, the dyes, and the artificial materials. Our view is what you can’t put in your mouth or your face; you certainly shouldn’t be placing internal your body.
Freda’s services are aimed at people and corporates—and the agency works tough to train corporations on the need to recognize sanitary towels as an important item. The biggest undertaking has been the disgrace surrounding the space. In a digital international, maximum logo recognition comes from superbly short product images; it wasn’t easy to hear our voice. The way we tackled it turned into lovely illustrations that addressed the taboos visually demonstrated the unconscious bias within the place of job, schools, and resorts regarding what needs to be inside the restroom. Who desires mini sewing kits or plastic shoehorns in motels, for example?
Freda offers various period packs—from starter kits to make your very own—and that they may be scheduled to deliver to coincide with menstrual cycles. There are several other players inside the sustainable length product space. However, Parvizi-Wayne says Freda is “greater of a carrier,” as extra than 80% of customers customize their boxes to suit their flows. Every length is unique, and our carrier lets in ladies pick what they want. Our tampons are also designed differently, extending widthwise rather than lengthwise, which healthy our bodies higher. Although the products are wrapped in plastic lining – due to fitness and safety guidelines as they’re hygiene products – the wrappers are biodegradable.
The menopause area is even more stigmatized than periods and “stays untapped,” Parvizi-Wayne mentioned. “The female area is seeing many new entrants, primarily women-based groups, and together we’re changing the distance. The legacy manufacturers have been compelled to reveal their product components, and the entire trouble of length poverty and absence of clean get right of entry to length merchandise at the moment are very a good deal a part of their ’cause. Freda additionally goals to be competitive price-wise.
Competitors like TOTM rate £three.10 for 10 excellent+ tampons, except postage. We fee £6. Ninety-nine for a field of sixteen customized products, together with the £1.Forty postage fee, and a giveback of 70p which goes to charity. So that works out as 30p in keeping with the product in a custom-designed set, instead of TOTM’s 31p per product, in a prepackaged box. However, when it comes to menopause, there are nevertheless few manufacturers obtainable confronting the stigma in the U.K.
There may be less than a ten% uptake of Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT), whilst 66% of girls were prescribed antidepressants by GPs in place of HRT. Many ladies partner the menopause with warm flushes. They don’t comprehend the signs are so wide-ranging—from the lack of hair to the lack of libido, insomnia, and coffee moods—and so Freda pursuits to be an academic aid for ladies going thru menopause. The needs of fifty+ women are not being met on the person stage or at their place of job,” Parvizi-Wayne delivered.
The menopause range has but to formally launch—Freda experienced a setback after Parvizi-Wayne turned into identified with bladder most cancers a month after her employer’s release. In a merciless twist of irony, doctors first of all mistook it for menopause. We needed to make bigger our beta section. However, we’ve shipped over 15,000 boxes of our duration products and have over 50 company customers, including resorts and gyms.
