Ps
Someday I shall have to write a book to go with a title that popped into my head over the weekend:
"Men; turns out we are all crap, who knew?"I mean, I prefer paper handkerchiefs so I can throw them away after use, rather than carrying around a piece of cloth that gets all messy.
Indeed, with the cup, the liquid is retained in the cup. With the tampon, it's absorbed and still touching organic matter (which is why they need to be changed more often).
What? They last way longer than that. The companies making them recommend buying a new one every 10 years.
Any women here who don't mind sharing why this is so embarrassing for the alike?
If this is a problem for him now, childbirth is really going to be an experience. =)
The tampons and pads themselves are very simple. But, like toothpastes, deodorants, or soaps, there are a TON of options that get piled on by marketers. Wings/No Wings, Light/Heavy/Overnight/OMG, scented/unscented, Thong, etc. I must spend 5-10 minutes just trying to make sure I have the right ones that she likes. Is "Heavy" the same as "Overnight"? What did she tell me again?
It would be great if even ONE company tried to classify their items with a simple code number. If wifey just said "Hey, pick me up a pack of C-2s", I'd be a customer of that brand for life.
It wasn't unusual for me (16 y/o at the time) to go in and buy:-
cans of coke
multiple packs of cigarettes (all different brands)
tampons/sanitary pads
condoms
2 gallons of milk, and 5 or 6 loaves of bread (when the restuarant ran out)
confectionary
toothpaste
etc
It certainly helped me get over any fear of buying these kinds of items.
I used to feel sheepish buying things for my girlfriend but I realized it's not bad for people to think you're a good partner. So instead of sullenly buying the hygiene products, I say go all out. Throw in some generic Midol and dark chocolate. No one will criticize you.
Personally -as a male- I always feel a bit embarrassed when buying toilet paper. I know it's just a normal body function, but I still don't like it. I think it has to something with my early youth.
When I was a child my parents had a hard time to learning me to become potty-trained. At some point my mother got sick of it and from what I remember she pushed my face into my own feces. From that moment on I was potty-trained.
I believe a side effect of this experience was that I'm annoyed by defecating myself and I also am really annoyed by for example people farting. It's probably 1 reason why I don't want to have kids (would hate the baby phase), though I would not mind adopting a kid that's potty-trained.
Perhaps your wife has had some traumatic experience related to her menstruation causing this annoyance.
(c) Jimmy Carr
PS Yes I know this is not Reddit.
It would be interesting to know what value added services they can provide to increase their margin.
To actually bring forth a useful subscription product that's delightful, and always delivered on time requires thoughtful design and implementation. Every woman is different, they require different numbers of tampons each cycle, of different absorbencies, and in their preferred brand. They don't want a backlog of products in their own bathroom that takes up room for months at a time, only to run out unexpectedly when they most need it.
This may seem like a laughable or even trivial issue to tackle, but half of the population has periods and everyone complains about them, why not do something to improve that situation?
The dollar shave club may be sustainable because they have managed to make no-name blades appealing through a viral video.
File this under ideas I wished I would have thought of....
With a 'tailored' delivery service, you're always going to end up with too many at the end a month - in which case you might as well have bought a big box from a supermarket or Costco/Amazon at a fraction of the unit cost, or you'll end up with too few - in which case you will have to urgently overpay at the convenience store or gas station anyway.
The other way I could see this going is towards a content play, where they start out with a tampons subscription but really it is a play to gain mindshare from women about feminine issues and create a media/brand company. Given the interview with the founder I don't think this is her vision right now, but it is definitely a direction she could go.
I have a vagina, but as a West Coast woman surrounded by liberal-minded people and no period in over 5 years (tell your wives and girlfriends about Mirena) I might just be too disconnected from the "pain" of the customer in this case.
1. Yes, the majority of the women I’ve talked to have thought that we have a brilliant idea.
2. Why not just buy from Amazon subscribe and save? Of the women we talked to, many have little insight into how much they use. This is not because they’re dumb — if I were to ask you how many bottles of shampoo you use in any given month or year, you can probably estimate, but you may be off. That’s something you use on a daily basis. A box of tampons is something you use every 28 days — estimating how and when to tell Amazon to deliver that seems trivial, but in practice, one ends up with either a shortage or more likely, backlog. Inconvenient.
3. This leads me to my next point: why is this a tech culture vs a culture culture issue? Because tampons are needed by different women on different cycles. You can use paypal or shopify or maybe even an esty store to deliver this type of thing once a box. To actually get it to the set-it-and-forget-it state, and scale it up, you’d need to invest in infrastructure that’s a bit more involved than an internal wiki. Tampon delivery and Late should never be in the same sentence together. We comp all the Juniper boxes that are delivered even one day late.
4. Why not just buy a huge box? Like someone already said – there’s a space issue. Some women, my self included, like to switch between different products during the course of a period, which means they have to buy different bulky boxes that has to take up a lot of space. Again, inconvenient. Juniper eliminates that need.
5. While some women are embarrassed to buy it, that’s not the biggest pain point. My customers are not timid girls, they’re women. However, being busy women, it’s inconvenient to not have them when you need them the most, and convenient stores only carry a limited number of brands, Walgreens and big-box stores will carry more brands but consumer still have to go to them. In Manhattan, there’s a drug store on every corner, in other cities and towns it’s not the case.
6. re: Gourmet snacks and Tampons being a weird combination to ship: Our customers love that they get to savor high quality treats around the time of the month when it feels extra stressful. Our treats rotate every month to feature something new, so there’s a surprise element to it as well. A good surprise.
7. Washable tampons? Unlike pads, tampons go into a sensitive ph-balanced body cavity. Washing it and reinserting it may introduce bacteria into that cavity and cause infections and even TSS. Diva cups are wash-and-reuseable, and some women love them. However, other women are used to pads or tampons and simply do not prefer them, even if they like the concept.
Bottom line: Yes, chuckle worthy subject. But this is far from trivial. Half of the population has to deal with a monthly period, and everyone complains about it. If we can have pizza and books delivered to us, why not tampons? I could go into a fem-empowerment rant on why we didn’t have this service earlier, but it’s 9am on the west coast and I have to go run a company now.
I think the only way you could make money would be to create your own brand, but I'm guessing (as a man) that this would be an area susceptible to brand loyalty, or at least to not using unknown brands.