DTC to Retail: How Flex Reached 30,000 Stores After Turning Down Target Twice

The most important thing I would say is just being really, really close to your customer, and also doing things that don't scale.

In the beginning, most things don't scale and can't scale, that's actually okay. For anyone that's going out and doing TV for the first time, don't let an agency talk you into doing something that's off the walk. To see it on a shelf-up warmer is the best advertisement that I could ever get. I could never pay for that good of advertising and the trust that comes with having a huge brand block of warmer. For the number one period disc, a number one period cut brand in the US, sold over 185 million discs.

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For two days, what did you say to them? I told them that I created a product for a must free period sex. And, you know, it was truthfully a new innovation and period care, but one of the benefits happened to be for a must free period sex. And that seemed to really appeal to the majority mail investor audience in that particular situation. It worked so that you understand the mail mind.

I suppose so.

“Anyone can understand anything, I guess.”

It's a loaded question. That is a loaded question. It should be the last of my husband. So that was the initial pitch. So talk to me about where the idea came from and kind of what you did once you had this huge amount of coverage that happened way back ten years ago.

Ten years ago, yeah. So I created flex because I was getting infections from tampons and pads for 15 years. And, but I learned as I grew older was that it didn't matter if the tampons or pads were organic or not organic. It was the cotton itself that was throwing off the pH of my vagina and causing these recurrent infections. And, you know, fast forward to pitching a room full of investors, not really in the tech realizing that TechCrunch was actually in the audience.

It was kind of a magical moment, but also kind of our worst nightmare because we didn't have a website. Or technically, we did have a landing page that just said, you know, fill in your email and get to get notified when we launched and we ended up getting over 200,000 emails. And, you know, maybe like a week later or so the site was up and running, but then we had to figure out what to do with all those emails. And what you do? Well, we were in why combinator at the time, which is a start of accelerator.

And we told them about this problem was actually a Alexis who started bread it that I had a meeting with to be like, you know, yeah, I was like, I don't know what to do. And he was like, well, this is actually kind of the best news because you don't have any of their mailing addresses. So, you know, out of minimum, you got to email all these people back and say, hey, you know, give me your, give me your mailing address so we can actually send you. It was an offer for a free sample. But part of the issue was we didn't have approval from an FDA perspective to be distributing our products in the US yet, but we did have approval in Europe.

And our YC partners, Michael Sible and Dalton Callable were like, more into you guys, like, just start shipping your product in Europe. But we didn't have enough money to do that. So we flew via, it was like Iceland had some crazy deals at the time the government was sponsored in flights.

Yeah, so I think we got like a flight for like a hundred or two hundred dollars round trip. So we, you know, flew to Europe and we just went country to country hand packing sealed flex discs into envelopes and going to the local post office and so we would go to the post office with like bags bigger than my body.

“To ship all this product out, so that we had a way of gaining momentum and driving revenue before we had finished YC.”

That's a new one. I have not heard of the flight to Iceland to access the European market before that's that's new one for the podcast.

Take me back to YC to when I think of YC, I think of mainly SaaS products and tech products were you were there a lot of other physical products or even physical products focused on women's reproductive health when you were there or you kind of alone with that. I've heard at the time there have been since which is really exciting and promising, but no then we were primarily with software products. There were a number of hardware companies like there was a furniture company in there with us, but no female specific products at the time I had never heard of YC before I you know was on my entrepreneurship journey and I had a friend say, you know, go check them out they invested super early stage companies and I actually used their application.

To write my first business plan and it helped me really clarify my thoughts and ideas, I thought it was really helpful and so I went through the trouble of doing all that work and so I used it for my application and low and behold I get an interview and low and behold they said yes and at this point I'm like, well it's a lot of money like they they you know I think at the time was like 120K investment I think they increased it since then, but you know they take a good good. They take a good chunk of your company for that money and I wasn't really convinced that that there be folks there that would be able to help me so I had initially you know said thank you, but I don't think this is going to be a great fit.

And Michael, so I will call me and talk to me and to go and it was just great. And at this point I imagine you wouldn't change anything you probably got a ton of value just in terms of all the different perspectives you got there what was your big takeaway from the YC experience. There's way too many things to know and Sam Altman was was running YC at the time and he was just full of wisdom and like there are things that I use every single day in my life and so does my husband is my co-founder that we learned at YC the most important thing I would say is just being really really close to your customer.

And also doing things that don't scale I think that we tend to I just as humans get really caught up at this idea of like always that thing in a scale and in the beginning those things don't scale and can't scale and that's actually okay we have to do the manual thing to get to the point where then it makes sense to set up something to scale. So you know find to Europe and like milling out a bunch of disks you know before we had a three p.m. didn't scale but that gave us enough momentum that we needed ahead of demo day that you know we sold eighty thousand dollars and pre-orders at that point so you got to find some way to solve the problem.

I have a note here and correct me if I'm wrong but that you grew to around twenty million dollars in your first few years on D to C alone talk to me about the that crazy frenetic pace that you achieved in those first few years.

“So this is the early days of Shopify and prior to starting flux I had like not done D to C anything I think that even the phrase D to C was kind of new wish.”

I didn't exist without you um yeah it was pretty frenetic I think like a lot of stuff broke the film broke our manufacturing equipment broke.

That way you know months for a new piece of steel to be cut and you're just throttling down your orders and what you really don't want to be late with Eric as a woman's period product especially when she's become overly like extremely and love with it and will never ever use another period product again. And you're the only maker of said product you better believe that you don't run out of inventory but we had all kinds of pickups like that.

“And then you made the decision I think against maybe some of the advice at why commonator to get into retail I think back in like 2017 talked to me about that decision and maybe why some of your advisors were against it at that time.”

Yeah well in 2016 when we went super viral target had reached out to us and said like we want to carry your product and I had flown out there really loved the buyers perspective on women's health and which how she wanted to transform the category.

It's hard to know that you're marketing and it's going to scale and if it can't scale before you get into retail it's not going to scale when you get in retail you know it's a little bit too late and you have such a short time when to perform.

“I didn't know any of that stuff at the time but what I did know was you know my customers kept saying every single month.”

I don't track my period unless I'm trying to not get pregnant or trying to get pregnant most people most of the time aren't tracking their menstrual cycles which means.

You run out of your period product and you're like oh my gosh I got to go to the store right now to get my period product so when you're on a DTC subscription which at the time you only offered subscriptions. You need your products when you need your product you can't order online and like sit around and wait for your you know and and we kept trying to solve this problem by. You know adding fewer discs adding more discs you know changing the subscription frequencies we opened up like two different fulfillment centers and both sides of the country to try to shorten the shipping window like they're all these different ways we tried solving this problem but the truth was in our data the truth was in our customer.

“Research that came up every single month I wish I could buy this in retail and it turned out the number one destination where people wanted by their period products is retail for the reason that I said so.”

Obviously a fair and investor and you're like seeing a company like bars with hockey stick growth they're like. Why are you going to do a totally different business model doesn't make any sense. And like hear me out I agree.

Like I've been saying no for a long time to target but I know nothing about retail but all I know is this is what my customers are telling me.

And they taught us in noisy sincere customer and you know they were great. Talk to me about the retail lever and what it's been to the biz. Of course retail is no over 60% of our revenue it's definitely the fastest growing portion not just in terms of new points of distribution but in terms of velocities and cell through. And there are we're outpacing growth in our category overall and like definitely in our sub segment of discs and cups which is really exciting and we see from data that Gen Z likes going to stores they like going shopping and they like buying our products at retail.

And you described your marketing flywheel. I'm sure that's changed over the years. Talk to me maybe about what what what it was back then like just describe it as best you can and and what it's evolved into at this point. How does your marketing flywheel work. Very early days before I could hire a growth marketer and trust me we were trying it was just they were very difficult to come by. We did the only things we knew how to do which were of like small scale events and PR and that like carried us pretty well for a couple of years and then we.

You know, slot it in also a growth marketer and then you know a lot of our spend was focused on meta obviously for for many, many years and then we would kind of go digital back channel by digital channel. We would take what we learned from one channel to apply it to the next. I think over the last couple of years we recognize that a lot of our customers are in places that we haven't marketed before and the biggest problem that I have to solve with 3% awareness of our category. Is awareness and so while we have these you know definitely performance channels for us digitally. We started investing in things like connected TV and New York City subway ads other out of home things campus.

We're just trying to create a more well-rounded brand experience so that people who see us on a subway after their friend has been talking about us for a while. And then they get that micro influencer content on TikTok those things all work together to drive that purchasing decision. Super cool. Talk to me a little I'm always interested in CTV what has been the strategy there and how effective has it been at creating awareness. We think it's been pretty effective. You know, continue making investments there.

“The platform that we just use use just changed their attribution data. I think it's like any other marketing channel these days it's like the pop that in pop from data will always show you that it's more favorable.”

Yeah exactly than what we would necessarily measure but the thing that I really like about it is it's highly targeted the way that other digital channels are.

And are you noticing like there's got to be a halo effect too right because most people are buying these products in store as you mentioned TV is the best the best rectangle. It's the rectangle we like the most of that we watch all the time and and so these I think you get credibility from being on that rectangle. So there must be also like there's probably a lot you can quantify but are you also noticing a halo effect from it in retail and other places.

Talk to me about some other ways I think staying close to your customer obviously that sounds like the prime learning for any brand in this space what I'll really understanding your voice a customer understanding what they want and and serving in what are some other ways that you stay really close to your customers.

“I'm regularly talk to customers I regularly ask for feedback I regularly I think make myself extremely open to very difficult feedback from people.”

And that helps you know inform the product development process we have a full time customer insights person which that to me is a major major investment that we made a couple of years ago to ensure that we have a steady stream of not just like once a year twice a year.

Information that we have you know really in depth ongoing insights and so we get like a richer picture from that.

You know going back into the early days of the company. It looked like the 1800 number on the website went to my cell phone and nobody on on the phone knew that it was me. And so that's kind of how I started and then yeah just evolved it know it's like more personal more face to face.

“And I think any time you launch a product with a fairly new form factor especially for one that's going to be inside you education is got to be a really critical part of things how have you handled the education aspect of awareness and delivery here.”

We have to include an education in or actual ads and ads that don't include educational pieces don't perform as well because people see the product and they instantly have so many different questions like. How's it going to fit inside my body is it going to get stuck where does it sit inside my body is it going to be messy to remove and so we have found that we really need to address a lot of those things in a very very short time period. But that that is the beauty of digital marketing is you have more leeway to be able to talk about those types of things.

But we really think about education is a full funnel exercise like I said starting with advertisements going all the way through to retention. Sounds like you've really got your Omni channel approach dialed here, but you also mentioned that word of mouth is still probably the majority of your marketing.

“I think that's probably because you have such incredible advocates and people that try the product say they never want to use anything else kind of thing.”

And then they spread the word to their close friends is that maybe describe what word of mouth is for your business and how you foster it as much as you can make sure it continues to be the biggest source. The thing that we hear over and over again is they'll be one friend in the friend group that's the early adopter and then show kind of never stop talking about the product and then you kind of get this entire group of women. All using the product at the same time I recently met another CEO and we were introduced and she was like hold on a second flux.

This is so weird. I was at a dinner last night with a bunch of other girlfriends. I asked for a tampon and everyone at the table gave me dirty stairs. Like what are you doing? So using tampons as they're so back for you like.

And she's like I literally never heard of a disc before. No so shocked that my question was like received that way by group of my best friends. But that is a very typical.

Story that we hear and I think women are really good at not keeping things that work very well and things that we're in love with. We love sharing with each other our favorite moisturizer or laundry detergent or fill in the blank and it comes to something this intimate and personal. It takes a real user to be able to convince the non believers that it actually does work and that you know it's not going to get stuck. And it might be a little bit messy the first time but I take it out in the shower or you know those types of back and forth conversations happen.

And so yeah it's it's the worn-of-out but it's also the education that they're providing to really get somebody to you know from a no to a yes. Have you experimented much with groups or anything like that Facebook groups or Instagram kind of things?

Interesting enough. Yes, but Facebook groups first came out.

I have the hypothesis that people wanted to talk about periods and they just weren't doing it and there was no form on like to do it. So we started a secret Facebook group and named it something very silly and we didn't tell anyone that it was like the company and then we would kind of see content in there every once in a while not about our product which is about like periods. This is a group and it absolutely blew up and then we had you know tons of thousands of people in there.

It goes to show that small groups or communities of people are a great place to see your product and to get feedback about your product and just to quietly watch and see what types of questions that they have.

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What do I need to know? Give me some tips. What do I need to know about her period? Wait a second. I can't believe you have it's 12-year-old. How is that? Were you 12 when you had her? I have a 12-year-old. I'm 46. I have a rosy complexion maybe and that keeps me and I have to want to leave, but yeah, I'm 46.

I have a 12-year-old and she's amazing. Her name's Iris. She's not going to maybe love that I'm talking about this on the podcast, but to late. Sorry, Iris. It's not good. We should normalize periods and we should normalize conversations between dads and daughters.

“I think it's such an important special place to start and I love that you're being so thoughtful and asking that question.”

I think the most important thing, other than education and making sure that she understands what's happening to her body,

you understand what's happening to your body. Her body is letting them lead when it comes to product selection. I always say like young girls or young women should be able to use whatever period product that they feel most comfortable with. There's already so much going on in so much feeling and emotion and about now you're grown up. There's like a lot of weight that comes with that for girls and I think they just need to know that their period product is going to work. I think as a parent, I would definitely research safety and testing and just to make sure that whatever products that you're giving your child are safe and addition to the ineffective.

The other thing I would say is there's a wider variety of period products today than there has been in the last 100 years. So there's period underwear, there's reusable and then there's disposable period underwear, menstrual disc, menstrual cup, it's pretty much it. And then on disposable, there's tampons and pads and pantyliners. And then there's like various brands under each of those, those buckets. There's also, sorry, single use menstrual discs of course.

Take me back because you kind of if really evolved the form factor with your product. Take me back to the many of early manufacturing days. You have an interesting story about a manufacturer who laughed at you and then you got the last laugh. You tell me about that story.

“I think say laughing is a little harsh. I don't know that they were smart.”

Maybe, yeah, on the phone. Yeah, so I had a lot of starts and stops when it came to product development. My background is in marketing. It is not in product development. Actually to the point where I had shelves the idea for a flex and decided not to quit my day job. But through an interesting conversation with a partner from Apple decided to go back and do some additional research. And in my several years of research had never ever come across this particular patent, which I was shocked by because when I read through it, it had all of the features and functionality that I wanted at my own product.

I need to know more about this product. Like, if something like this has been made before, that means that we can make it.

And it turns out that that product was still for sale. I just never seen it. And I'm like, whoa, that's a marketing problem. That is.

And I'm a marketer. And this thing has all the features and functionality that I want.

“So I contacted the company, I called email them on LinkedIn, and I pitched them my idea. My idea was, hey, I think millennials, we were younger at the time.”

Millennials really want to talk about periods. There's nothing on the internet talking about periods.

And I want to make, you know, like, your product at different, like call a new product category and start selling it, direct a consumer online, I can help you.

And they were, they were in retail at the time then they were like, who are you? You have a Gmail address? Like, I don't know what's going on. So they said, no, it's me working with them. So I decided to design around their patent, apply to white combinator.

“And the interview, I told them all of this. I was like, I didn't invent this thing or not a product designer inventor, but I do want to create this category called the disc right now they're calling it disposable cup.”

It isn't a cup, it looks different, it acts different, it's like it's a totally different format and it's a different guitar, target consumer than a, but a cup consumer. And so, like, what had happened at that point is I went out and, you know, had to find a manufacturer that couldn't make this thing. Because all their stuff was made on bespoke manufacturing equipment and then their patents and all the other stuff like I said. And found a manufacturer, but then I had to go raise money to be able to start to build the line at the manufacturer, which I did.

But then we're in YC at the time, and they go back to the manufacturer and like, great, I just raised my 120K from YC, like, time to start building and they're like, we gave up the spot on the factory floor, there's no specific, it's taking you a year, like, where have you been? So I ended up going back to that original company that had created this thing, which we know, called the disc. Broker to deal with them, and we acquired them, and we were in the middle of YC, which was amazing, and we made that business profitable, and we ended up leveraging a lot of their RAD and relationships to build our own product and start shipping our own product.

So we were able basically to start shipping product, let's see, we finished YC and May, and then we were shipping by October, so it was very, very fast.

“What can you say, you know, just skyrocket in those early days, even before the 2020s to be in the eight figure range, what, what do you comfortable saying about how big you guys are now?”

Not a lot. I could say, I could say, for the number one period disc, and number one period cut bread in the US, based on sales. As of last year, we'd sold over 185 million discs, which is something a really proud of, and never been linked to toxic shock syndrome is to something else. That's a lot to be able to say. Congratulations on that, first of all. Thank you. And then what, what are your biggest challenges today with the, you know, you've gone through so much, you're, you're fully omni channel, you've got this great community, great word of mouth, aside of your business, what are the biggest challenges in the business today to get to where you want to get to next.

Terrific. That's it. That's it. It's up for me this week. Okay. So we think our products in Canada and we've always been in the US MCA exempt and then every day is a different thing. So I think everybody is kind of sitting on pins and you don't, right now when I say this because you're based in Canada, you know, how can I help my elbow to go, I'm just keeping my elbows down elbows up isn't really helping anyone. Maybe I just talked to me about what like this. So the US MCA might end and then we'll, and then what we just don't know, then it could be a 50% terror for first of all, why did you choose Canada to manufacture?

I wanted to be able to go and see the plant and to be able to go whenever I wanted and not be in combat fight, you know, really, really long fights, and I wanted to be able to speak the same language. Mainly because I had such a steep learning curve in every other area of my business and my life that I, I didn't, I didn't need to add like translation is an additional complication and Canada's been absolutely wonderful. I'm so happy that we manufacture there. So I hope this terrifying will get sorted out. I'm sure that it will, but the reality on, on our question, the most difficult challenge is really just awareness right now, you know, there's only so much a brand.

And so I'm like endlessly impatient because I'm like, we have such a big opportunity to market opportunity ahead of us.

“What did you say awareness was it only three person, what, what do you, how do you quantify awareness of the product right now?”

Through our customer insights team, so they all measure this on a quarterly basis. Like what household penetration looks like, eat it and unneeded awareness and this is unneeded awareness. So if you're like, have you heard of a menstrual disc, yes or no, like three percent of people will say yes. So much opportunity still that's absolutely well. And what, what are you, is it just going to be a block in tackle, you know, sort of, performance, top, just extending your funnel out, or when is the Super Bowl commercial happening where you ask the question that you asked the YC guys.

I don't know if you can get that on to TV, but what's the next big play? I mean, you know, when the weekend performed a few years ago, I'm like, if he's allowed to say these things, I should be allowed to have a Super Bowl commercial for sure.

I'm counting on it. I have a good friend that actually makes Super Bowl commercials and we've been talking about that would be baller.

I look forward to the day. I think you're ready. Yeah, the distribution, right? Just like go to your local film, like Walmart targets, yes. And if you can make something viral, like, and it gets all the repeats and people are watching it after and after the fact like, I bet you can make the CPMs make sense too.

“I think he's positive. I mean, like I said, I've been the mix Super Bowl commercials and they have worked really well for those businesses that he's done them for our show.”

I'm going to keep my, that's a reason to watch the Super Bowl for me. Yeah. What can you say, we just back to TV for a second. It's such an interesting topic for me. What can you say about what's working in creative for CTV? Similar to what works in creative digitally and we'll test things digitally before we do like a big media buy on television. It's a lot of that, like, just like the tried and two things that make our other ads work really well.

There always needs to be an educational component as that have me in it tend to perform better.

There is a certain trust not that. The intensity, especially for category that's so private like you said and like so intimate of like something that you're putting inside of your body. You have to trust somebody with it. Of course you want to know that it's a woman that's starting, you know, like that's behind the company that's leading the company. It just builds that other layer of trust.

And so I would say for anyone that's going out and doing TV for the first time. Don't let an agency talk you into doing something that's off the wall. I will tell you. The first time we did TV was incomplete disaster. I heard this big, the team heard this, we hired, there's a big fancy agency that came in. And they're like, you know what, you know, it would be really different and cut through.

But when if we have old people talking about periods. And I was like, I don't know that this is going to work. And they're like, no, we're going to shoot. It's going to be like super color rich. It's going to be very eye popping.

We're going to get these with really endearing people. We're going to get two women and a man. And they're just going to be delivering the lines about, you know, talking about flex and it's going to be great. And I had reservations every quarter. And by the way, like, listen to your gut founders on creative. I don't think if it's digital who cares, but if you're spending a lot of money like hiring actors,

then we're saga proved and doing a whole building a set in like a high production. There are there are faster cheaper easier ways to get to TV commercial that it will perform really well than doing that. Sure, sure. In any case, ads did terribly. They didn't perform. We had to get our media by, but we had a contract. So there was like a certain amount that we had to spend.

And it was a very expensive mistake. And so from that point forward, we're like, we're not going to run anything on TV that doesn't perform well on YouTube. Like, why would we, you know, so like, let's start there. You, you open the, the, the pendant was boxed with YouTube. I was on a call a couple months ago with a bunch of big brands and they were starting to talk about just YouTube, not just as the top of funnel for the Google suite, but YouTube as the top of funnel for the whole digital marketing suite for meta for everything.

“How, how have you looked at cracking the YouTube note has it been a, has it been an organic play? Has it been almost all ads? How do you view YouTube in your funnel?”

It is a mix and it's been a mix. It's, it's dependent on the year. It could be completely honest with you. I would say over the last 12 months.

It was almost all paid because that's where we found most of our traction.

“The thing that's really surprised me on YouTube is some of the things that make no sense to me at all that would be viral are completely viral.”

There's a video. There's one that we have of somebody like taking the, the cup and like pulling the string and then you see them like dump blood and then toilet and it just kind of explains like what the menstrual cup is and what this poll tab is that it breaks the seal for you. There's nothing funny in it. It's like a ways of viral. I can't tell you, but that drove our velocity and double digits at Walmart. Okay. And it educates people about what the product is, how it works like at the same time. It's like a visual hook that is also education.

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. That's exactly right. So I think, again, whatever, whatever works, do more of that.

You still interview every hire. I read the book a couple of years ago, who not how and I always think about whenever I'm thinking about problems that I have in the business.

And I've had, I've not, not all the hires that I've made have come in like this, but when you're able to hire someone the right experience, it can really accelerate your learnings.

“Can you think, I don't know if you want to single anyone out or any positions out, but are there any hires that you've made in the last little while that you really focused on hiring for a competency that really worked well?”

Gosh. I mean, so many different ones. The first thing that came to mind for me was HR, like hiring a full time HR person felt like a very grown up company thing to do at that point. You know, we had always had some sort of outsourced HR or HR consultant, but at a certain point you need to move HR in house. And yeah, I was like one of the best decisions that I think that we've made, you know, it just takes so much work off of my plate every day. And it feels also great to have somebody that I can go and like talk through about different people's career trajectories and have like thinking about like the, you know, longer term or strategy and or design.

Yeah, right HR partner will go a long way. So that's not DTC specific, but it is all part of the biz. And then you still interview every higher. What are you looking for in those interviews? Ask everyone the same time questions. Somebody's probably published them on the internet somewhere I wouldn't be surprised, but as everybody did the same time questions, and I'm only looking for cultural fit.

I'm not looking to assess them with their skills that happens much earlier on the first phone screen that we have is actually like a culture fit screening with HR.

So it isn't the, it isn't the first time someone's screen for culture, but I'm also trying to find out from the candidate like why this job, not why flex. I think most people have a good really solid answer on why flex like, oh, the mission so amazing. And I love the innovation or use the product and my sister uses the product. But the thing that I'm looking for in answers is like, how does this role right now fit into your Eric's career trajectory and what are you hoping to learn here and and like what where's that going to take you five, 10, 15 years from now.

And is this an environment that's going to provide that two or not does this person have a good understanding of what the day to day actually feels like, you know, if it's somebody that hasn't worked it to start it before for example, like they might have heard lots about working to start it from there. Significant other, but do they really understand what the piece of work feels like. So yeah, that's just the giving you a sense of when I say culture fit, I'm not like, oh, do they like the same movies as everything else is like, is this does this job make make sense in their story of themselves and in their own career arc and can I help reflect back to them.

As accurate of a picture as possible, but what the day to day reality is like to work at floods company all that and then finally like.

“You have massive retail penetration, I think, do you have a lot more to go in terms of growing retail or do you see most of your growth happening in D to C going forward.”

I think a little bit of a growth will come from ecome from new product innovation and from increasing velocities at retail, we do have.

I think if you look at, like, what have any doors like a tampocs are in always are in it's in the like hundreds of thousands whereas we're in 30,000, but to your point.

Sutterah, we're in Canada as well, in Walmart and a variety of other places, but we haven't done club believe it or not, we're not in the natural channel just a little bit shocking. We're about to be, which is very exciting, but not yet.

It made the financials make more sense for us in terms of the investment. We are able to invest more in marketing and other things like that with broader distribution, but also like for something that seems as like weird as a periodist to a lot of people or a period of two a lot of people.

Just see it on shelf at Walmart is the best advertisement that I could ever get. I could never pay for that good of advertising and the trust that comes with having a huge brand block at Walmart.

Just listen to your gut, I think that's my big takeaway here. Even when you have people like Sam Altman and, you know, this whole group of investors that you've paid a lot of your company to be in, you're still going with your gut and your decisions are still paying off for the most part. So well done Lauren, thanks for coming on the DTC podcast. Thank you so much for having me to such a fun conversation.

“Yeah, anytime you have to come back, I would love to hear once you have your Super Bowl commercial, you've got to come back.”

If people want to follow your journey online, are you public anywhere on LinkedIn or anything?

I look on LinkedIn, on TikTok, on Instagram. If you just look for flex, the handle is at FLX, flex just for letters and then you'll see my my bio.

I don't know what time it is, but it's happening right now. I think when the came back from the festival or the I'm in the bio, you know, link in the bio. Okay, you've done great. Super fun and any one in the audience, if you want to experience the flex disc, you've got to go to flexfix.com. I'm going to be chatting with my daughter about it later, not imposing any of my views or ideas, but just letting her know what's out there and I know her mom will as well.

But yeah, thanks so much for coming on today. This is super fun and educational. Thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah, let me know. I'd love to send your daughter some of our non-toxic pads and liners. There's then as a sheet of paper and three times more absorb it than the leading brand beautiful. Absorb it. I just one last thing. I have a note on here because I have so many memories of like commercials where they're literally showing a tampon in like a blue fluid.

And they're using water to prove its absorbency and water is not at all the same viscosity or anything as blood. I feel like it's just like a symptom of like a male dominated industry sort of creating products without really thinking through the use case that well.

“Is that something is that an experience it's common?”

It is very common. I mean, we were like, the menstrual products were not tested with real blood until just a few years ago.

So it's bizarre to me that we're in the 2020s and that's the first time that that happened.

But yeah, I think it's deeply ingrained in this idea that somehow menstrual blood is sick. Yeah, we watch all these movies and TV shows with all kinds of violence and red liquid everywhere. So I don't really understand like the difference of the feelings there. Well, here's to change. Thanks again. Let's stay in touch. Thank you. I love that.

[Music]

“Thanks so much for listening to today's episode.”

If you're not a subscriber to our newsletter, you can do that right now at direct to consumeralloneword.co. I'm Eric Dick, and this has been The Details He Podcast. We'll see you next time. [Music] Holiday starts early on Walmart Marketplace. Apply to sell and get your inventory to Walmart fulfillment services to prepare for millions of holiday shoppers. Build your seasonal assortment with customer favorites.

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