The tampon, a late chapter in the story of menstruation, is a significant upgrade after centuries of women making do with homemade efforts – old rags, sheepskin, cheesecloth sacks stuffed with cotton, pieces of fabric pinned into pants. In parts of the world, including the UK, where many women can’t afford menstrual products, makeshift options are still used. Bespoke period products came into existence shortly after the first world war, when nurses realised that the cellulose-based bandages they were using to dress wounds were better than cotton at absorbing blood. Kotex introduced the first mass-market sanitary pad in 1921; it had to be held in place by a belt. Ten years later, Earle Haas, a Colorado-based doctor, invented and patented the first cardboard applicator tampon. (For those unfamiliar with the form, an applicator is the telescopic-tube mechanism that inserts the tampon into the vagina. Non-applicator tampons, or “digital tampons”, are pushed in by hand. Oddly, depending on which brand reached a territory first, most countries have an in-built preference for one or another – so the vast majority of US consumers use applicators, while most German users don’t.) [...]
Over the decades, Tampax’s promotion of the discretion of its products seemed to give corporate endorsement to the idea that a period was best kept secret. “You’ll love the Quiet Easy Reseal Wrapper,” goes the current marketing blurb for Tampax Radiant. As a narrative, it seems increasingly at odds with the times. Why should we hide tampons up our sleeves on the way to the bathroom, or worry that someone might hear us unwrap one once we’re there? (In a recent Saturday Night Live sketch, Phoebe Waller Bridge riffed on all the possible items – a copy of Mein Kampf, a neatly folded Confederate flag, a dog shit – within which you could more acceptably conceal a tampon and its associated deep shame.) For years, major period brands, including P&G’s sanitary towel Always, have advertised absorbency by using a bright blue liquid, as if to deflect us from what would actually be soaking a pad. Blood, it seemed, could openly seep from grazed knees and shaving cuts, but not from a woman’s bits. [...]
What the new tampon startups also have in common, but don’t talk about quite so openly, is the fact that beneath the reusable applicator or CBD coating, their fundamental products – the tampons themselves – are extremely similar. While Tampax has its own tampon factories and machinery, the vast majority of Europe’s new-brand tampons are made in one of a handful of factories. (The two leading ones, I was told in hushed tones, are in Slovenia and Spain.) The secrecy is not unusual – all companies protect manufacturing information. But many of the brands didn’t seem to realise that within these factories, their tampons were most likely being made on the same machines. A Swiss manufacturing firm called Ruggli has a near-monopoly on tampon-making machines, so almost every new-brand tampon, whatever its particular design or added feature, is a Ruggli tampon. “We all try and make it sound like there’s something proprietary,” Parvizi-Waynethe of Freda told me. “But ultimately, it’s like a white T-shirt. It’s the same product. We can’t fool ourselves that this is something different.” [...]
If you see the world as a set of addressed or yet-to-be-addressed markets, it changes things a little. I started to wonder what was left to address. Death? No, that’s been done: there are a host of nifty death startups, offering cheaper funeral services and probate advice. Your mind? Done, too – and I’m paying for it already (along with more than 1 million other subscribers, I have the Headspace app on my phone). Disconnection – our only hope – has long been monetised, and again, I’m shelling out for the privilege (the Freedom app, which disables the internet, is probably my most-used software). It makes sense that the only markets left are the ones we’ve been historically reluctant to talk about. “Let’s face it,” an investor once told Parvizi-Wayne at a meeting, “taboos have become sexy.” A taboo, seen another way, is just a market still invitingly unsaturated.
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