Was there a particular moment when you two knew you had to start Lola?

Transcription

1 Jordana Kier and Alexandra Friedman are taking on the big guys of feminine hygiene products. Tampax, Playtex, Kotex. These are the brand names we all grew up with whether you re a woman yourself or ever did a (likely reluctant) drugstore run with your mother as a child. And, like we too often do with many brand names, feminine hygiene products are often from brands we ve accepted blithely as permanent fact, part of a locked-in landscape of items we purchase and use without thinking. But what were to happen if we did started thinking about it? That was the question Kier and Friedman posed to themselves in The result of that conversation was Lola, the first subscription service for 100-percent cotton tampons. As one might suspect, there s a problem with not asking questions. Lola s founders are riding the wave of people demanding more transparency in their products. In the underregulated tampon business, there hasn t been too much of that. The FDA does not require that the big brands or anyone producing tampons, for that matter provide a comprehensive list of ingredients. And while there isn t direct and conclusive evidence that using these products is bad for your health, the typical tampon is comprised of a mix of bleached cotton and various synthetics. Lola aims to be the opposite, offering their customers 100-percent hypoallergenic cotton tampons that never use additives, synthetics, chemicals, or dyes. Ignorance, especially when it comes to tampons, should not equate bliss. In a business environment that increasingly rewards conscious companies of all stripes, Lola has become a notable up-and-comer in the feminine care field. They launched in July 2015 with $1.2 million in angel funding, followed by an early-2016 seed round that raised an additional $3 million. Their investors run the gamut, with everyone from the Warby Parker founders to Brand Foundry getting in on the action. The funding will ensure that Lola continues to grow and expand its product selection. And the vision for the brand is big. Kier and Friedman imagine a company that becomes the go-to for transparent products used throughout a woman s life. One day, hopefully, Lola becomes the big guy itself, and when shoppers blindly reach for their product, it won t really matter. This time around, they ll be in better hands. Below, we talk to Kier and Friedman about knowing your market, tips for successful focus groups, and building brand loyalty on honesty and trust.

2 Was there a particular moment when you two knew you had to start Lola? We can probably trace it back to one of the first focus groups that we did. We were bringing up a topic that a lot of women hadn t put much thought into before, or hadn t looked at it from an objective perspective. When we brought up these topics in a focus group setting, the first five minutes were a little awkward, but then the conversation would go on for hours and hours. By hour three when everyone was trying to get a word in, when everyone is telling their most embarrassing stories or laughing because the person next to them had told a story that had happened to them, too I think that was the moment we looked at each other and and thought, We have to start this business. There s a clear opportunity for new product and a new conversation. Knowing you wanted an all-natural product, how did you go about doing the R&D?

3 We work with a manufacturer in Europe that has been producing natural feminine care products for many decades, so that was helpful we weren t having to reinvent the wheel in that way. We worked with them to ensure that what we were going to provide our customers was exactly what American women, in particular, wanted. For instance, plastic applicators are not something that European women tend to prefer; they re used to o.b.types of products. But we knew US women prefer plastic as an applicator, so that was something we knew we needed to have. Do you feel like you re part of a generation that growing up didn t have the same opportunity for ingredient transparency that Lola offers? Yeah, that s exactly right. Growing up, we basically used whatever tampons or pads were handed to us, and never gave it much thought. Nor did we realize that the companies we were buying from weren t required to list comprehensive ingredients. For most of the years we ve been using these products, transparency hasn t been a conversation in this category. That was really the catalyst for going into this business, when we realized we couldn t figure out what was in the products we d been using for years decades, even. We decided to start our own brand based on transparency and natural ingredients.

4 And what did you find were the most potentially harmful ingredients in your standard American tampon? We don t know for certain what s in the big brand tampons because they re not required to list comprehensive ingredients on the box. For the most part, they re made of synthetic fibers like rayon and polyester mixed with cotton. For us, we want to know what s in the products we re putting in our bodies. We know what s in the food we eat, we know what s in the skincare we put on our face, we know what s in the diapers we put on our babies. Why don t we know what s in a product we put inside our bodies once a month?

5 You ve mentioned before that women tend to be very brand loyal, almost blindly so, when it comes to tampons. How hard is it to break that loyalty and get them to switch to a new product? What we found from talking to women is that once they learn the concept that big brands haven t fully disclosed what s in their products, they re horrified and surprised. They want to know what s in these products that they re putting into their bodies. For the most part, we found that a lot of women who are conscious of the ingredients in all the other products they are using in their lives are eager to switch once they start talking about it. You have the advantage of being a new player in a really old space. What marketing channels are you looking at that some of the incumbents haven t adopted yet? We re innovating as much as we can. The real differentiating factor for us is how we re talking to our customers and our community within all of the different channels. On social media, for example, we re talking to women in a different way that the big brands do. We re women ourselves, and we re building the brand to talk to us the way we want to be talked to. We want the packaging to appear a certain way. We want the whole experience to feel like something that s made for you by people who get you.

6 Do you have any tips for running effective focus groups? I think the first thing is to know what you re looking to get out of a focus group. We ve done a mix of styles. We ve used more targeted focus groups to really get to an answer about how women feel about a specific part of the brand or experience or product. Our broader brainstorming exercises are used to really understand what s missing in the market or in the consumer experience within this product category. So know exactly what you re trying to solicit from the group going in, and also make sure you do enough focus groups with a diverse enough group of people that you re actually getting a well-rounded, full answer.

7 With production based in Europe, does that impact your supply chain in any way? Because we were creating a customized box of products you can customize the mix of supers and regulars within a box of 18 we always knew that we needed to ship everything over in bulk and then pack everything to order Stateside. Are there hurdles in pitching a feminine product to what s likely a table of predominantly male investors? We saw it as an opportunity. As our own users, we were coming to these meetings having a lot more knowledge than others in the room who maybe had a sister or who were married, but for the most part had never actually held a tampon. After a few uncomfortable initial meetings, we saw it as a real opportunity to own the conversation and educate them. We knew way more about the market than they did. Also, the way we were approaching building this brand was something that, regardless of whether [these investors] would use the product, they were seeing in other categories. They saw that building the right transparent brand and establishing a connection with the customer was the way to build a very engaged and loyal customer base. They saw that in Harry s, they saw that in Warby Parker. So to them, this was just another category where they understood the idea of wanting transparency and being a conscious consumer was very easily applied here.

8 Are there other feminine care products you re looking to tackle as a company? We re constantly engaging with our customer base to see what they re asking for and looking for us to provide. Our vision is to be a feminine care and wellness brand that a woman can look to for information and products throughout her whole reproductive life, from the moment she gets her period to before she has a baby to going through menopause.

9 Even though you re dealing with very human things, do you look at Lola as a tech company? Inasmuch as we re online and are using technology to bring the best experience to our customers yes, absolutely. How important is customer service to a brand that s online-only and subscription-based? It s everything. Customer experience and brand are the key things we re focused on right now. We re building with our customer in mind, and we want to make sure she gets the products, the service, the experience, and the feel from the brand that she wants. What s been the most unexpected challenges of being business owners? There are certainly a lot of challenges with starting something like this. Hiring is an area that takes a lot of time and a lot of thought to figure out exactly what you need and find the right person for the job. Building the right culture at an early-stage company is also an exciting challenge. We want to make sure that with every new person that we add to the team, we re still retaining the elements that are important to us while also adding to that as we grow. Do you have a piece of advice you would give to someone looking to start their own

10 business? Take one day at a time. We have big ambitions. We re over-planners. We ve sketched out what we want from the next 12 months to look like, what we re trying to build, what we re trying to get our customers. You really have to break it down into smaller pieces in order to tackle all of that. We work on that every day. Also, talk to as many people who you think are doing things well. A lot of what we did in the beginning was talk to as many people building similar (and dissimilar) companies whose function was similar to a function we knew we needed to have or at least know about. Use your network as a way to educate yourself. Quick Fire: Book every entrepreneur should read: The Hard Thing About Hard Things Go-to online resource for health/wellness: Well + Good

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