Picture this. Two best friends who have known each other since they were 11 years old. They tell each other everything. They shed tears over boys, bad haircuts, terrible fashion crimes and how cruel their parents are for not letting them stay out past 11pm.
Well that was us. And we really did talk about everything. Except our periods. We both had heavy flows that affected us. There were days when my period pain was so bad I couldn’t go to school and when I did, I was mortified when I realised my tampon wasn’t coping or, worst still, I didn’t have a spare and had to stuff toilet paper in my undies until I got home. Mary was in the same boat, but I had no idea. It’s so weird looking back on it now because we were complete over-sharers in every part of our lives - just not when it came to periods.
I hated the bulk and smell of pads so I had pretty much always been a tampon user. I loved water sports which meant tampons were the only option I had if I wanted to ensure I didn’t let the team down. But let’s be honest, tampons and swimming pools are still an awful combo. Yes, they work but pool water also gets absorbed which means you have a chlorine-filled thing inside your body. Not ideal.
Fast forward a few (too many years). We’re still besties but we’re living in different cities - both married with kids. Despite saying at school that ‘when we grew up’ we’d own a business together we actually chose two very different career paths. Mary worked as a nurse, while I chose a career as a journalist before moving into marketing and public relations.
So, how then did we end up starting Hello Period? Well, those schoolgirl periods that were so heavy and stressful - they didn’t stop being heavy and stressful. In fact, after having my first child - a daughter - my periods got worse and even harder to manage.
In 2017 as I was driving home from work one day I could feel the dreaded cramping that announced the start of my period. For some reason, I remembered an article I’d read months earlier that talked about menstrual cups. I thought in theory they sounded good, but assumed that if they were that good then people I knew would be using them and they certainly weren’t. Still, curiosity got the better of me and I decided I’d give one a go.
It. Changed. My. Life. Instantly. I found it more comfortable to use and it held so much more - giving me more freedom. I FaceTimed Mary and proudly showed her my full cup. Talk about oversharing! However, while the cup I had bought was great, there were things I didn’t like about it so I said to Mary ‘let’s design and manufacture the world’s best menstrual cups’.
We came up with the name ‘hello.’ because we wanted to talk about periods in a positive way. Yes, periods can be a challenge but our goal from the very start was to encourage people to talk about periods more. By sharing our experiences we can help each other to not only learn, but also to know when you might need to see a doctor to get help with managing them. For too long periods just had been a topic that was ‘out of sight, out of mind’ and we wanted to change that. It was nuts to us that periods were something half the world’s population experienced yet they were virtually a taboo topic.
We spent countless hours designing a menstrual cup that ticked all the boxes for us. It needed to be smooth, have no unnecessary grooves or crevices, and it needed to look good. Why was that important? Because if it was as visually appealing as possible, then people would be more drawn to it. Our goal was to get as many people to try menstrual cup life as possible and to do that we needed to create something that stood out.
We officially launched in December 2017. We had no idea what to expect. I ran the social media, taking crappy photos on my iphone and Mary dispatched the orders from her kitchen table. We had no business experience, just a passion to give people with periods another option. The orders started rolling in. It was both exciting and terrifying. The customer emails often reduced us to tears - in a good way. People were so grateful to have something that was easier to use and better for them.
As a nurse, Mary’s compassion and love of helping people has always been her superpower and this transferred into our business - she made our customers feel special from day one. For me, I loved the creative challenge of talking about periods and education in a way that didn’t sound like the elderly health nurse who was rolled out awkwardly at school with a purse of bulky ‘demo’ pads.
I won’t lie, running a business is a huge challenge - there are big highs and lows - especially when you throw in a global pandemic. But as the years have gone on, we have only become more motivated. We have continued to innovate and create period products that are the best quality and that are designed with the people who will use them at the forefront.
Launching our Hello Undies, Hello Pads and Hello Disc in 2022 was a huge milestone. We are now the only sustainable period company in the world that offers something for everybody - internal and external period care as well as specialist menstrual cups for high and low cervix.
Between us, Mary and I now have four daughters. We’re super proud of our business and the way it has grown but what we are most proud of is the fact our daughters now have sustainable period choices available to them. If you ask me, single-use period products won’t even be available in 20 years time - and that’s bloody awesome.
Robyn xxx
