Normalising conversations around menstruation and sustainability with Celia Pool, co-founder of DAME
In 2015, a small start-up period business came to the stark realisation that the period industry was unsustainable, and that they themselves were ‘drowning in a sea of plastic’ and were surrounded by demeaning imagery. Spurred on by a desire to turn the tides of this toxic industry, Celia Pool and co-founder Alec decided to start a new company, DAME, normalising the conversation around menstruation and championing sustainability. I had a chat with Celia and talked about her brand, the wider period industry, and the work that still needs to be done.
AM: Firstly, if you could just briefly give me a summary of how DAME came to be?
CP: DAME was born out of another business. Myself and my co-founder Alec were already working in the period sector, and we saw that there was a such an opening for sustainable period products. We suddenly found out that period products in the EU aren’t regulated, which shocked me. Because I was just like, what? There is no regulation or certification or anything, you can literally put those things out there and someone can buy them. And you suddenly think, oh my God, this is something that I’m putting inside myself, and I’m doing it really willingly. I spend so much time thinking, what am I putting inside my mouth, I wouldn’t pick something up off the floor if I didn’t know what it was, but I’m putting something either against my skin or inside my body and not considering it at all.
Then the more we looked at that, we saw correlations around what went into these products and the amount of waste that came out of them and not just that, but the messaging that was around them. The fact that I’d literally just had a baby, and I was like wow, not much has really changed since I was a teenager. So, this messaging around discretion, around needing to be quiet, needing to be fresh. All this really quite subtle but dangerous language, and it was then when we thought well look, rather than us trying to work around the problem, let’s just go out and build what we think needs to be out there. And that’s essentially where it came from, and we started off with this reusable tampon applicator and took it from there.
AM: I would never have thought that it’s completely unregulated, that seems quite dangerous.
CP: Yeah, it’s really scary and it’s one of those things that’s been going on. There are so many things that happen to women that aren’t explored enough. So many things that go on with our bodies and it’s just like wait, hold on, why don’t we actually think about the products that we’re using? Potentially we might come to some answers about why our bodies aren’t reacting in the way that we want them to, and aren’t reacting in probably the most natural way. It’s probably because of the synthetic substances that we’re putting in very intimate areas of our bodies.
AM: To expand on that point, would you say that there are benefits for women experiencing gynaecological problems in using your products?
CP: It’s a really interesting one, and it’s one where we’re a small company, we don’t really have the financing right now to go off and do so much clinical testing, which I would love to do if we had the money. But what we can do is we can go and ask our customers.
We did that, and asked approximately 500 customers, how has using our tampons changed your period? 85% of them came back and said that their periods were either lighter, less painful or had less vaginal irritation. Instantly you’re like, okay, well there’s a little bit of anecdotal evidence for you. There’s, you know, people actually coming back and saying it, and I know because that’s happened to me. I used to get really painful periods, and now I don’t. It’s interesting then to hear that it’s happening to other people, and it’s interesting that, I mean endometriosis is another one, why does it take so long to get a diagnosis for endo? We’ve got Viagra, we’ve got something that helps erectile dysfunction, but why are there not more studies and tests into something [like endometriosis] that happens to 1/10 women. And why is that happening to so many women?
AM: Yeah, they’re very much, even now, still in the dark with that aren’t they? But I think if we were men, that this would be being tackled a lot quicker.
CP: Yeah, a lot quicker. So I think it’s one of the things which drive me and Alec to push forward, because whilst this has traditionally been a subject where people like to kind of brush it under the carpet, not really talk about it, it’s such an integral thing to so many other parts of a woman’s life. It really has a ripple effect, not just into the health of her body but also into the way that she views her body, and the negative way that she might view her body, and the negative way therefore other people might view a body. It’s so important to make sure that there is that openness, and that normalisation of it.
AM: How was it working with a male business partner, who obviously doesn’t have periods?
CP: It’s been absolutely brilliant; he is the most inquisitive person and just hungry to learn. I totally don’t think that this is a subject that has to be confined to women. I think the more that you bring this out and make this a collective subject and normalise it, the better. Boys need to know about this, boys need to understand it and actually, funnily enough, the majority of people that we talk to who get really excited and interested about it are boys, because they traditionally have been kept in the dark about it and don’t really know that much. It’s been really good because it does just open that conversation up more which is a central tenet to what we’re trying to do.
AM: And how much do you think having good sex education in schools would feed into this knowledge and choice when choosing period products?
CP: I think it’s so important, I’m such a big advocate for teaching sex education from a really young age, but teaching it in age-appropriate language. You can very easily be talking to kids about sex from 3, 4, 5. You just do it in a very age appropriate way, and every year you build on it a little bit more, and then you’re getting kids comfortable with each other’s bodies, you’re getting them understanding the correct terminology for each other’s bodies. I mean, the shocking thing is - let’s take boys out of the equation for a second - so many girls don’t know the basic anatomy of their vagina, their vulva, all the rest of it. Me neither, I literally didn’t know because you weren’t taught it really, or if you were taught it, you were taught it in a very clinical, diagrammatical fashion, and you know, that’s not real, that’s not real life.
I’m such a big believer in prevention before cure, you can stop so many ripple effects of unnecessary things that happen in the world if you just start really young and teach kids, especially with sex education, consent, anatomy, everything, teach it from a young age. You don’t have to give them all the kind of adult facts and adult language, but you can really create such an important impression. There are moves from the government, in 2020 they put in that sex education and menstruation needs to be taught in schools, but there’s still not enough clear definition of what that should be where I think there can be steps that could be pushing it forward.
AM: I saw that your brand was the first period brand to be climate positive. Please could you explain exactly what that means, and what that means for your brand and the way your business runs?
CP: Totally, so when we decided to launch DAME, somebody heard about this thing called a B Corp. This was back in 2017, and B Corp had actually just landed in the UK from America, and it was all basically around businesses wanting to be a force for good. So, making sure that you’re not doing things just for profit, you’re doing them for purpose as well.
When we heard about this and we met with them and did some more exploration, we were like, this is exactly what we want to do building out company. We want to make sure we’re taking these values and doing that, so it means that every decision that we make always has to have this thought in mind. So we don’t use the cheapest packaging, just because it’s the cheapest, because it might not be the most sustainable, so we actually hurt ourselves quite a lot because it’s a small business and it’s difficult with cash flow, but at the same time we know that we’re doing it for the right reasons.
Likewise, we realise as a business, as a product business, we are creating something, we are putting something out there, and that is using up a lot of carbon, and the world is quickly learning that carbon is not the way we need to be doing it. We need to be getting down to net zero. So, we decided, again as a very young business, to do an analysis of our entire supply chain and our entire business. Everything from the amount of energy that we use, to the production of our products, to who uses our products, to what they do at the end of the life of the product. We did a huge analysis, and from that worked out what our carbon footprint was. Then we obviously had the option to go and offset it, like most people do, to make ourselves carbon neutral, but we decided not to do that, we decided to go the extra mile and do it twice. Which makes us positive, cause we’re now putting back more than we’re taking away. And again, it’s always really important for us to push ourselves and stretch ourselves because, yes, we are a for profit business, and we wholeheartedly believe in being a for profit business, but we want to show that you can do for profit at the same time as not doing it at the expense of the environment or society.
AM: Aside from the climate positivity, what else sets you apart from the other products in the sustainable period market?
CP: I think the first question to look at is, what is sustainable and what’s not? Cause there are quite a few big brands out there who are doing some really lovely whitewashing, putting in large letters that they’re organic and then small letters that it’s just the core that’s organic, and in large letters that it’s plant based and small letters that it’s only 90%. And for us there’s that difference.
So first of all, we are setting ourselves apart from them through the fact that we truly are sustainable. And the ones who are sustainable with us, we’re really behind them. I’m so happy that there are so many more companies who are coming into the space and educating and bringing new options, because every single person is different in the way that they manage their periods, everyone. There is no one size fits all. Everyone has different needs and different wants so therefore the more optionality there is out there, the better it is for people. I think where DAME really strives forward is we really always look at true innovation, so we go and do customer first. There are quite a lot of sustainable brands out there who do white label products, so that means they just buy a blank canvas and they just put their brand on it and put it out there, which again, if a product’s good, that’s fine but I think we’ve always really strove to make sure that we are being really innovative.
Working with our consumers is one of the reasons why we love being a direct consumer business is because our customers are the ones helping us, and when there are issues with them, we go back and ask them, look, here’s a new version, we’ve tried these changes, what do you think about this? Really making sure we put that customer and that customer experience comes first.
AM: Do you think it will be possible to one day phase out the unsustainable real players in the market, like Tampax, and how do you think that could be done?
CP: I think wholeheartedly one of the most exciting things is this new generation of people that are coming through. One of our biggest challenges as a period brand, and as any kind of period brand entering, is breaking habits. Because of the fact this hasn’t been talked about or discussed, it traditionally was handed from mother to daughter, no questions asked, just carry on. Now with the rise of social media, and the rise of online forums and stuff like that, people are being much more inquisitive about the products that they put in. But still, you’re still trying to break a habit of someone who’s used to using a tampon for the last 20 years and feels a bit weird going onto something else. Then you think about teenagers who are coming into this market who have never used a tampon, they’ve never used a pad, they’ve never used anything, so therefore that’s a completely blank canvas to be like right, rather than starting you off on a bad habit, let’s just make sure that you start using something that’s natural whether it be a reusable pad, a period pant, you know, organic cotton tampons, whatever it might be, and by that you’re already getting a whole sway of people. So yes, I do think that there is an age of disposable and synthetic which is going, it’s how quickly we can get there, that’s the important thing because we can’t wait generations for this to happen, we need to make sure this is happening fast.
AM: One of the first things that struck me when I first saw your brand was the sleek packaging and design, and I wanted to know, was that a lengthy process? Was it difficult, or did you approach it was a clear picture of what you wanted for your product?
CP: When we realised that this was what we wanted to do, we wanted to try and convert as many people across to reusables as possible, and by the way that’s not just ours, any other brand, it’s just making sure that this happens. As much as we were coming at it from an environmental perspective, we knew that there were so many awesome environmental products that just sit in eco shops because they’re branded horribly, they don’t look nice, they’re an amazing idea but they’ve just missed the mark.
We realised, as much as someone wants to say they’re environmentally conscious, they always buy the cool stuff. People like to buy stuff that looks good, but that’s fine, that’s the world that we’re living in. Therefore, that really pushed us to make sure that this product looks really good because that’s going to be another reason for them to buy, that’s going to be another reason for them to convert onto something, and then we just sneak in the sustainability in behind it. So it was very important, and we wanted to make sure that we weren’t going down the route of overtly girly and pink and frilly and fluffy and flowery. I think both of us had a vision in our minds of what we wanted, and it took a process of distilling it down but I think we were really happy that we had something that we felt cut through the noise of what was on the shelves.
AM: In terms of your advertising, we’re used to seeing the woman in white playing tennis advertising pads and tampons, but you’ve taken a different approach to that. Why did you decide to do that?
CP: I think one of our favourite campaigns that we’ve done has been one of our customers. It was one of our customers who had sent in a shot of her, you couldn’t see her face, you just saw her pants and a tampon string hanging out. And when we had the opportunity to do a London bus campaign. We thought that’s the kind of image that we want. We want an image that not only represents what we’re trying to do which is normalising this conversation and normalising this topic, but also something that has genuinely come from one of our customers. This customer genuinely wanted to put that out there and to show this.
For us, that felt really powerful because it really put it out there that this is a normal thing, this is how comfortable people are, this is how people are using it. For a young kid who’s walking down the street, boys and girls, who’ve never seen a tampon string before, you know, that’s impactful, that kind of stuff stays with you, and it lodges in your brain. Therefore, when you see let’s say, your mum coming out of the loo and she’s got a tampon string hanging out, you don’t really bat an eyelid as you’ve already seen it on a bus. It’s those kind of like small, little decisions that we wanted to make, because we do feel that they have this big impact going forward to anyone who sees it.
AM: Definitely. I think it’s horrifying, the way that our bodies are viewed still even in the 21st century. I can only liken it to when I breastfed my children and people thinking that you’re doing something unclean or that you shouldn’t be seen in public. It’s the same thing, we just can’t have conversation about the natural processes taking place in our bodies and it’s just mind-boggling to me.
CP: It’s completely mind-boggling. This is how all of you arrived here, because of a period or breastfeeding or something like that. All of you, everyone, male or female, this happened to you in some form or another, you were touched by this at some point or another, and that’s the insane thing, the more it just shouldn’t be covered.
One thing I always feel quite strongly about is if people don’t want to shout it from the rooftops that’s completely fine, but don’t make people feel negative about it. Don’t make people feel like it’s something shameful or something to be hidden. There are so many stats, because we’ve worked closely with different gynaecological cancer charities about trying to get women to go out for smear tests. One of the reasons why they don’t go is because they’re embarrassed. And it’s like, who is teaching someone that they should feel embarrassed about that? Ever since I’ve had kids, I don’t care who looks down there, I’ve had so many people look down there now, I really don’t care! You’re getting people who are dying of embarrassment because they don’t get checked early and that’s just, in this day and age, not on, in my opinion.
AM: Absolutely, we should not be ashamed of getting checked. There’s a lot of work that still needs to be done I think, but your brand is definitely doing that work.
CP: And we’re hopefully a tiny cog with so many other people trying to push in the same direction, and that’s what’s so amazing about it is, this collective push towards the same goal. But it does mean that you do have to push, you do have to keep doing it, not just to young kids, but to the mothers, to the fathers, to everyone, because it’s a group conversation.
AM: Do you think the main reason that women do not adopt the sustainable period products is because we are just doing what our mothers did, or maybe the misconceptions about the financial implications of using sustainable products?
CP: Yeah, it’s a really interesting question, it’s one that we look at quite a lot, but I think there are so many different things in it. I think the disposable nature of our culture is something that’s a real lesson. I think the fact that we feel it’s easier to just get a plastic fork or it’s easier to get a water bottle rather than wait whatever that might be, a half hour journey to get home and to just drink some water out of a tap.
This throwaway nature that we have, I think also yes, the embarrassment is a factor, yes, the misconception about the fact that this costs you more when actually for example, our pads save you money after about a year and a half, and we’re talking about using these pads over decades. So, it’s all these issues which, because there are so many, and because they’re covered on top with this layer of embarrassment and shame, it’s about breaking them down.
I think that one of the most exciting things that we’ve seen is that we started off our first business back in 2014 when social media wasn’t really at its height and people weren’t really talking about this stuff. I know that if we had tried to launch our own product then it would’ve sunk. Then we’ve seen over the past few years, people talking more on social media, asking questions, lots of questions. People saying, I love cups, people saying cups don’t work for me, and all these different things, and I think that is a really positive signal because conversation is getting out there. People feel, even if it is behind a computer screen, comfortable to ask those questions, to enquire, to be inquisitive, and I think that’s the really hopeful part of this whole thing is that more and more people will be asking questions and not just taking what they’re given.
AM: Are you soon to be releasing some period pants? And I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit more about that and anything else that’s currently in the pipeline?
CP: Yes, we’re about to launch our period pants in the next few months which is really exciting, and the way that we’re constructing them is brand new for this sector. We’re doing it as a 3-D net which means there is zero waste around it. It’s like a 3-D printer, so there is literally zero material waste that comes of it. Not only that, but it’s seamless, so it has no side seams, so when you’re on your period and you’re feeling bloated and you don’t want anything holding you in, this actually stretches with you, so it has this kind of flexibility and stretch as you get bloated and as you don’t which is so nice. Not only that, but it’s got the same as we have in our period pads, this incredible wicking fabric, which means that it just draws the moisture away from your skin straight away, so it’s not any of that sitting feeling damp or feeling a bit uncomfortable.
They’re absolutely incredible and a really exciting product, as going back to that whole thing about younger girls. You know, rather than having to get them to learn how to use a tampon or put on a pad, you’re just getting them to wear pants, like they’ve always worn pants before. I don’t know if you can remember getting your first period, but I remember being freaked out because [I thought] what do I have to do? How do I stick it on? Why is it like moving around? If you’re just wearing pants, it’s just so much simpler, it’s what you’ve been doing your whole life so that is really exciting.
AM: You’re doing a lot to expand your outreach with the adverts and being distributed on Zapp, so I was wondering how successful this has been and are you planning on further expansion?
CP: One of our central pillars is accessibility, so it’s making sure that everyone and anyone can be accessible to that, and that’s not only with our products but with price points as well. You always want to make sure that we can be as inclusive as possible, and we have plans in the future to make sure we can be more and more inclusive as we go bigger. As a small brand it’s really tough but as a bigger brand, you know, things become more available to you. I think it’s a really exciting time because there is so much openness to this subject right now and so many people talking in the retail world, wanting to show these products and put them out there and realising actually, this is where the consumer is going, and this is what the consumer is wanting. We have so many different retailers coming to us wanting these products, so it is really exciting. It’s just like that classic thing in a start-up, just trying to not spread yourself too thin but get out there as much as possible.
AM: How have you found it with the very interesting times that we’ve been going through with Covid? How’s that been with the business?
CP: So many aspects of the business have been super tough, just, it’s been draining on everyone. That was the first time, we got our first employees three weeks before lockdown, so we had to do all of our onboarding and building a team and stuff like that all over lockdown, which has been really really tough, but at the same time, amazing because everyone pulls together. I think one of the things that was awesome for a business like ours is we’re essentially recession proof, you know, as much as anything happens, people will always get their periods. And it has allowed people to pause and reflect and think okay right, maybe this is the time I might change and try things. You know, more and more people working from home, it gives that little bit of extra comfort for them to trial different products. But yeah, I mean I think like everyone really hoping that 2022 is a better year than the last two.
AM: And finally, what advice do you have for young businesswomen, and how do you stay motivated?
CP: I think my most basic advice is, if you’re thinking about starting a business, make sure you go problem first, not solution first.
So many people try and find a solution and then retrofit a problem around it so just make sure that your problem is big enough and has a big enough market for it and people who are willing to pay for whatever that product or service is. If you start there, you’re building on really strong ground. If you don’t build on that, you’re just building on shaky, very thin legs. And staying motivated, I think one of the simplest things is, it is tough, really tough, but if you do something that you believe in, it pushes you through. I mean I have had really tough days but at the same time, I wholeheartedly believe this thing needs to happen, and whether it’s me or someone else that does it, it just needs to happen and I know that I’ve got as good a shot as any in trying to make it work, so I may as well just keep bashing my head against a wall trying to make it work.
Find out more about DAME here:
_
Abigail is a photographer, writer and mother of four based in West Yorkshire. She is keen to explore all manner of themes within human nature and history through her photographic practice, amalgamating in a dusky, decadent aesthetic. These visual characteristics are further enhanced through her use of analogue equipment. Her photographic work is informed by a unique depth of research, and she prides herself on becoming fully immersed in the intricacies of each theme that my work explores. Whilst she specialises in editorial fashion photography, her work is also characterised by elements from a variety of photographic genres, particularly street and documentary photography. When she’s not photographing, she is writing, especially on topics such as visual arts, culture and history and is currently undertaking personal and editorial work in this field.
