
HelloFlo Launches a Tampon Subscription Service - jeffepp
http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/04/helloflo-launches-to-be-a-little-fish-in-the-big-pond-of-tampon-subscription-services/
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petercooper
My wife's mind boggles that so much money is spent on this stuff when you can
buy a menstrual cup every year or two and face almost none of the cons:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menstrual_cup> .. I wonder if this is one of
those "the industry doesn't want this to happen" dealies. (Disclaimer: I do
not have a vagina so don't have direct experience, but she raves about it.)

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Swizec
My initial reaction as a person without a vagina is "Ew, isn't that a bit like
installing a catheter so you don't have to go pee?"

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.

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petercooper
Though that first reaction would also be true of a tampon. You're inserting
something that collects liquid in both cases: just one absorbs it and the
other doesn't.

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).

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rvkennedy
And a big HN welcome to the Pets.com of the second internet bubble!

~~~
niggler
I can think of at least 10 other companies with many external investors that
better deserve the dubious title of "Pets.com of the second internet bubble"

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rhplus
I'm skeptical about the real usefulness of this service, simply because I just
don't think it could match the timeliness or efficiency of the current
distributions model. Right now you can buy these products in literally every
convenience store, gas-station, drug store, supermarket and warehouse store in
the country (ordered roughly by decreasing unit cost & decreasing
convenience).

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_.

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jgrahamc
The margin on this business must be very thin. I assume they are just buying
the tampons wholesale and then reselling them on a subscription basis. At the
same time the barrier to entry for this type of business seems very small
which ultimately means that the margin gets squeezed even more.

It would be interesting to know what value added services they can provide to
increase their margin.

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liddybird
the barriers to entry are not as you may think. Yes, anyone can set up an
etsy/ebay store, with some paypayl express check out thrown in. But if you'd
notice, it's not often that women complain about the price of tampons (though
they are getting more and more expensive), it's really the entire experience
that is dreadful.

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?

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acgourley
Small shout-out to my friends at Juniper [1] who run the same business and
_did not_ get techcrunched. As the article says, a little competition probably
isn't bad in a large market like this.

[1] <http://www.getjuniper.com/>

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MBee
They were covered on Techcrunch in October.
[http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/07/juniper-monthly-
subscriptio...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/07/juniper-monthly-subscription-
tampons-video-interview)

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jbrooksuk
Definitely need this in the UK. I can't understand why, but my partner HATES
buying tampons in the supermarket, the amount of times I've had to pick them
up on my way home is countless. It's a normal part of being a woman, there is
no prejudice women.

Any women here who don't mind sharing why this is so embarrassing for the
alike?

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joezydeco
Male here. Your partner just needs to grow up. I've been purchasing feminine
hygiene products for my girlfriend-now-wife for the last 15 years and have
been _happy_ to help her, not embarrassed.

If this is a problem for him _now_ , childbirth is _really_ going to be an
experience. =)

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joezydeco
That being said, I _would_ like to see the tampon/pad manufacturers try
something that would help a lot of men out.

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.

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erre
True, but it's also a matter of habit. At some point, I knew my wife's
preferred tampon "configuration" better than she did.

(Then we moved to a different country, everything changed, and now I have no
idea)

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GhotiFish
This has a male equivalent as well.

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUG9qYTJMsI>

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ajtaylor
How has that not gone viral?! I had to stifle several laughs so my boss didn't
look at me funny. Plus, how can you go wrong with a dollar a month? That won't
even buy you a cup of coffee in Sydney.

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dmor
It can only be a matter of time until tons of these subscription services are
consolidated in a single place. You can already subscribe to products on
Amazon, although often the minimum quantity is still so high that a quarterly
rather than monthly subscription makes sense. I'm kind of waiting for a
subscription-box-as-a-service company to come along, tell you that you can
create the custom subscription box of your choice and one you hit X number of
subscribers they'll fulfill it for you and you'll get a cut.

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.

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stinos
I just showed this to my girlfriend and she was like "wtf would I need that
for?". Seeing that in our basement we have like a pallet of tampons and pads I
understand her. Buying this stuff in mass just seems cheaper and smarter.

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untog
You could say the same of any subscription service. Despite being a male, I
can tell you that in NYC at least, having a pallet of tampons in the basement
is not practical, given that no-one has a basement or any spare room for a
pallet.

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ecubed
Why would you use this service instead of subscribing on Amazon?

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mkoble11
I'd bet that men would also purchase this for their girlfriends/wives, so they
don't ever have to go to the store :)

File this under ideas I wished I would have thought of....

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liddybird
you CAN buy this for your gf/wife if you use Juniper — Just go to
<http://www.getjuniper.com/gift> !

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liddybird
Lynn Tao, here, CEO of Juniper (www.getjuniper.com). I figure I’ll chime in
and address some of the questions and comments here:

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.

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gadders
I thought of doing something similar in the UK. I was also looking at the use
of Jersey as they let you send (or used to) packages under £15 vat free.

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.

