Bringing Innovation to an Underserved Market

Welcome to HBR on strategy, case studies and conversations with the world's top business and management experts, hand selected to help you unlock new ways of doing business. The taboo around menstruation made it hard to innovate in the feminine hygiene market. It also made marketing these products difficult. But feminine hygiene brand Thinx turned that taboo into a strategic advantage with provocative marketing that generated buzz around their innovative product underwear for periods. Harvard Business School professor Rembrandt Koening wrote a case about the brand's innovation and marketing strategies titled Thinx Breaking Barriers in Feminine Care. He talked about it with Brian Kenny on cold call in 2020.

One thinks is a really interesting study in innovation by a female entrepreneur. Can you start by telling us what your cold call is when you walk into the classroom?

So the cold call for this one's fun. You walk into the classroom, look around, you've got 90 students there. And I generally like to lock eyes with a man in the class because this can be a little awkward to talk about. You know, people are a little nervous.

Sure.

No matter your gender orientation, it can be something that's difficult. And I'll look at them and I'll say, historically, why has there been so little innovation in the feminine hygiene market? And generally the response I get is sort of a little bit of sort of white comes over the face. You see the sweat bead come down the forehead and sort of a stutter. And they say, well, there's tampons and there's pads. And I sort of pause and say, hey everyone, this subject can be hard to talk about and sort of get a laugh out of the room. Step back and say, I myself don't have a lot of experience with it personally, but I've learned a lot from the case and we're going to learn from the discussion and. And then we sort of open it up from there and explore exactly how taboos have really shaped the economics of this industry. I think we think of taboos and social norms is something that sociologists study or something that's important for social movements. But it shapes a lot of economic action. And I think there's no better case than the feminine hygiene market where it's really shaped things like switching costs. If nobody wants to talk about it, it's very hard to learn about what the other options are. As you mentioned, there was no television ads till the 1970s. How are you going to get consumers to switch and do innovations and tell them about the innovations and then a bunch of other factors start playing a role too? You look at who runs companies like Procter and Gamble, it tends to be men. Are they just more likely to overlook the problem, Maybe dismiss it? Perhaps you think about entrepreneurs entering. We know female entrepreneurs who are likely to sort of see these problems. They have the experience, notice them, maybe less likely to overlook them. They have a hard time raising capital because essentially all venture capitalists are men up to like the last decade. And so there's all these forces that compound, sort of revolving around this idea of social norms and the uncomfortableness that lead to a market where people are really sticky in their purchase patterns. You don't get a lot of innovation coming in and you don't get much competition for companies like Kimberly Clark or Proctor and Gamble. It's an amazing place to be. I mean, their margins are like 50% on these products. It's a really big market. Something like a quarter of the world's population is your customer. It's a great place to be. And so that's where we start the conversation for the Thinks case.

That's awesome. That's a great way to start it. How did you hear about thinks? Like, how did you decide to write this case? How does it relate to the things you think about A scholar?

This one came from me looking around and being interested in how diversity impacts strategy. When we think strategy, we normally don't think sort of diversity. We're like, oh, that's something for organizational behavior or people studying hr. And my contention, that's not the case. A lack of diversity isn't just a problem for who works at your firm. It's a problem for the strategies you develop and in particular for the sorts of products that end up in markets. If we don't have women, if we don't have African Americans inventing, they're often the people who are most likely to see opportunities to invent for people like themselves. And so I was looking for a case along this and one of the co authors on the case, Ali, had a friend who had gone to hbs, Maria Mullen, who took over as the CEO of Things. And so we got connected to them and it just seemed like this amazing rollercoaster of a story. We could probably do three or four classes just unpacking this case. That's where it really came from was how can we sort of take this idea of diversity and explore it in the context of strategic decision making in terms of marketing places where sometimes it gets overlooked.

We're going to talk more about Maria Mullen. She's the protagonist in the case. Some great insights into her Leadership and what she's been doing since she went to Thinx. And I should say for our listeners, by the way, Thinx is spelled T H I N X. Even though it sounds like Thinx with a K S. We've already teased a little bit about the size of the industry, 35 billion globally. You mentioned a third of the world as your potential customer base. Who are the big players in this space and what does the market landscape look like?

The market landscape is highly concentrated. So these are classic consumer goods. You've got your big players, your proctors and gambles, your Johnsons and Johnsons, your Kimberly Clarks and then a lot of really tiny firms. So it's super highly concentrated. And the way these firms compete is brilliant. Not competing by trying to lower prices or out innovate the other person. It's a little bit about marketing and in a lot of cases, it's a little bit about just getting your product on the shelf at a Target or at a Walmart or at a cvs. People are going to come in, they're going to buy it. Historically, it's something people have felt awkward about buying, so they want to just sort of pick the one on the shelf, put it in their bag, get out of the store as quickly as possible. There's some great history around this. When pads were first invented, you'd go into the store in the 19th century, you wouldn't even say the name of the product. You'd walk in. If you were a woman, you'd put your money in the slot, they would hand it under in sort of a secret bag and you'd walk out as if the transaction never happened. So that's sort of the history that you're facing. And what these companies, brilliantly, from a business perspective, I'm not so sure, from a societal perspective, right. Is that they were able to sort of take the fact that when nobody wants to talk about something, it's very hard to compete, it's very hard to steal customer share. And so they've kind of been in this very happy equilibrium for a number of decades, sort of up to around 2010, printing money, not really have to worry about it. Doing sort of minor process improvements, but nothing sort of fundamentally disruptive.

I was going to ask if there's brand loyalty, but it doesn't sound like it's brand loyalty as much as it's just too much trouble to change brands. I mean, you start with something, and I would have guessed it's generational too. Moms recommend something to their daughters and so on is that safe to say.

From talking to Thinx, who comes in and starts innovating? That was the sort of the research that they did is that mom passes it down to daughter, there's a conversation that happens, and then the conversation kind of never happens again. And so you sort of stick with that brand, you know, and to be clear, there are real risks of potentially trying new products. As soon as you get something that you're trusted and, you know, works, there's a lot of reticence to switch to new products.

And, you know, the case does a good job of describing some of the dire consequences of this taboo. Because, you know, it's one thing to have it be kept on the down low in the transaction, in the store, but there are some real serious implications in some cultures about the taboos surrounding menstruation. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah. So if you look in India, for example, you see as soon as women start menstruating, what you find is that they're much more likely to stop going to school. They miss days of school, they'll just drop out of school. You see similar sorts of patterns in parts of West Africa and sub Saharan Africa. You end up with this taboo fundamentally shaping people's opportunity even to go outside the home or get an education. So those are the most extreme cases that we see around the world. So this isn't just an issue of. I feel a little bit embarrassed, but in a lot of cases changes people's opportunity in life. That's something that I think is lurking in the background here when we think about these norms and taboos shaping the market.

We're going to get to thinks in a minute. But before we do that, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the lack of innovation for decades, centuries, I don't know how long. And it hasn't changed a whole lot going back for many, many years. Why is that?

You see an explosion of innovation in the early 20th century, combination of women's rights, changes in material science and technology. So you get sort of more absorbent pads invented in late 19th century, really the early 20th century, the tampon comes on the scene out of actually innovations where nurses were treating wounds during both world wars. They see this super absorbent material, they put two and two together, the tampon gets invented. The big invention is the plastic applicator, and then there's nothing. And I think that goes back to what we were talking about in terms of that cold call, which is that you couldn't advertise. So if you invented something really cool new. How do you tell people about it? People are uncomfortable talking about it, so word of mouth isn't going to solve your problem. Further, these firms are making really good money. This is classic innovator's dilemma. If I've got a product that's got 50% margins and people are buying on a monthly basis, and I know that thing is going to sell and get turns in the pharmacies where they're being sold, I have very little incentive to try to disrupt myself. I'm happy sitting on this stream of income that I know is going to be coming into the future. And so you essentially get no innovation for a long time. And then when Thinx gets going in the 2000s, you start seeing an explosion of different products to address these sorts of issues, and suddenly the market becomes a lot more vibrant.

What was the problem that Thinx was trying to solve? Like, what makes them different and how did they establish themselves in a market that is pretty much dominated by these huge players?

So when you go back to the original founding story of thinx, it was sort of, why are there so few options? A concern about the environment as well. There's a lot of plastic that comes off tap ons, they have to be thrown away, they can be uncomfortable, you have to replace them. You can't wear them for a long time. So the founder comes up with this idea for sort of a period underwear. You can sort of think of this absorbent material, like locked into this underwear. You put it on, you can wear it for a long period of time. It's absorbent, it's comfortable, you can sit, sleep in it, you can move around in it, you can exercise in it. Has this great idea, thinks it's going to revolutionize women's empowerment. Has trouble raising capital where she go? Well, to this new website called Kickstarter. At the time, I believe it's 2013, they go on Kickstarter, raises $65,000, uses that to get a prototype of the product, get some funding from a manufacturer in Sri Lanka, and it's sort of off to the races in terms of really intense grassroots interest, particularly in New York City, where they start, they drive that interest by doing something that's super clever. And I think a really nice strategy, a really nice marketing tactic as well, when you're confronting these sort of taboo or uncomfortable industries is you turn it around and you break that taboo, you break those social norms deliberately to drive interest and show people in some sense how absurd they are. So they do this amazing campaign. I Actually remember seeing this in the subways in New York City and the MTA in New York City. The subway agency pulls the ads. The controversy from the MTA pulling these ads got them enough free exposure in newspapers and discussion online that I think they probably 10x, if not 100x, sort of the eyeballs they saw for the amount of money they spent. And so that was a great grace to get sort of that grassroots movement and show people that we're at the forefront of innovating, of changing the norms in this space so that there'll be more innovation, so there'll be more entry. They do a similar sort of thing and this one blew my mind. They go to Selfridges in London and. And Selfridges wouldn't let them use the word period in their display in the store.

Yep. Boom.

Gets covered by the London press. Lots of great interest drives that growth.

Yeah. So let's talk about Maria Mullen then. She comes in after things has already been around for a few years. She's stepping into a difficult situation because the founder and CEO has left the company under shadowy circumstances.

There's a sexual harassment allegation. Things get complicated. The culture is coming off the wheels at the company. The founder leaves and Maria gets tapped to come in. Graduate from Harvard Business School, worked at ebay, worked at Yahoo, has experience in sort of consumer tech and is really interested in working in women's health and is a little nervous about coming into this company. It's around 30 some odd people at the time and trying to sort of right the ship, but decides to take on the challenge and come in as CEO. There's a lot going on. They've got really strong, loyal customers, but a lot of the rest of the company is kind of a mess. There's some amazing talent there, but there's no process. And so she has to come in and work out how are we going to build a company that can't just be a couple million dollars a year in revenue, but could potentially be half a billion dollars a year in revenue? She wants to grow the next great consumer product here. And that's the challenge she faces when she enters and takes over things.

So how do you even begin? It sounds daunting to even figure out where to start in a situation like that. Where does she place her bets?

I think she does one thing just to start that's like 100% right. It's like, take a deep breath, calm yourself down and look around at what's working and what's not. And what she found is that they had an amazing product that there was a lot of demand for. They had amazingly loyal customers, but internally they weren't ready to scale. They had built a company around a purpose and it was really very focused on changing the world and changing gender norms and a very sort of liberal view of women's rights. Though she was very much for it and wanted to support these employees, she also knew that if this product was going to make a difference in the world, they couldn't just focus on the message and the purpose internally. They needed to make sure they put routines so that they could actually scale that innovation. Because otherwise the company would end there and you wouldn't see the Thinx product being used in places like Omaha or Canada or Japan. Would it only be used in Greenwich Village in Brooklyn? That's not an outcome that really changes the world and makes women across the world better off. So she decides that she's going to really focus on the business needs of the company along with larger social purpose of the company, puts in metrics to incentivize those business needs, make sure that they're putting in better cultural routines. Things like actually maternity leave, you wouldn't think of this, but the company had no maternity leave policy.

That's remarkable.

Which is remarkable, right? Serving women. But it gets lost in the mission because they were so focused on one particular problem and didn't think about it a little bit more holistically and really sets up from a strategic point of view, sets the groundwork so that they can think about how they're going to scale this innovation that they have, scale this product they have, and so sort of retreats from growth for a year or two, sets up the team, hires some really great talent and sort of after a year or two is then ready again to think about how do we actually maintain and even grow our position as the market leader.

The case also describes, if I'm not mistaken, that as she kind of looked across the social purposes that were driving a lot of the company's activities, she had to pull back from some of those. They weren't all consistent with what finks needed to focus on. And she lost some people as a result of that. I mean, this is the millennial generation who cares very much about the purpose driven aspects of the organizations that they work for. And here people might have signed up for something and then got soured on the fact that a new leader comes in and is turning away from those things.

I think this is one of the things where going back to this idea that we need diversity in Our companies and the markets we're serving, they were having trouble in terms of their employee base of thinking about how they could extend to the rest of the market. And so they have these two Personas that I think is a really helpful way to think about this. Elena is their Persona of the young 20something, works in Brooklyn, probably doesn't have kids and is really excited about trying things like Thinx and other companies. And they do a great job of tapping that market. But what they find when they do an analysis is that where their larger market is is probably what they call. Diane has two kids, has a high powered job, is thinking about how she might one day pass down her traditions and the product recommendations she has to her daughters, is also thinking about what would be good for herself and make her life easier. And the issue was the company didn't have a lot of people could speak to that segment in further. What they found is they were getting a lot of demand actually from places like Texas or Florida or Louisiana that are more right leaning and they were excited about those products even if they didn't hold necessarily the same political views as the company. And this created a lot of tension. How do we adjust our message to keep empowering women at the core, but make sure we aren't alienating people who might hold different sorts of views? This is where you get a lot of turnover in the company and they have to do a good job of diversifying who works for their firm and speaking to that broader audience. I think what Maria did here was just really brilliant in terms of saying we can't solve every message and every problem. When we talk about a strategy, it's as much about what you don't do as what you do. And in her case, she decides this company is going to be about empowering women to deal with their periods, to get the products and the help they need. Sometimes having to focus in terms of what your corporate purpose is so that you can actually achieve it.

What is the strategy that they pursue as they kind of move down this path? They've got their Personas, they've made a push into retail and there's been some bumps along the way in that. How does the strategy begin to unfold?

Great question. So they've got this Elena character, she shops online. They've been selling direct to consumer like a Warby Parker or Casper, everything going straight to the consumer. They're exploring a little bit, pop ups, physical locations. But what they realize is where the vast majority of the sales are, where the Dianes are still shopping, are Places like Target and Walmart. And so the core question, what channel do you sell through and how do you sell through these different channels? Do you go on Amazon, do you go on Target? Are you going to sell a lower price point? It's worth mentioning here that things are more expensive, they're reusable, so over time they can actually be cheaper, but it's just a much more costly upfront purchase. And so the decision is for her, do we try to go omnichannel or do we stay focused just on the direct to consumer channel?

The cost issue becomes relevant and a decision has to be made about whether or not they're going to create a lower cost version of the product and if so, what does that do to the brand? Does that somehow chip away at the value of the original product set? Talk a little bit about that.

Yeah. One of the things you see is that the original entry strategy that this firm view was breaking the taboo down, doing these provocative ads, telling people that this is comfortable to talk about, telling people that they can go find these alternatives to tamper if they're unhappy with what they have. The problem is as soon as you start educating the customer, you're building a freeway other competitors, other cars can drive on. You've done all this education, telling people it's okay to talk about, but remember there was no innovation and these companies were making so much money because nobody wanted to talk about it and nobody was switching. So that reduced competition, suddenly things is coming in and to get their customers, they're breaking the taboo. This is a classic entrepreneurial strategy problem. You've kicked open the door, but now you've got to work out a way to close the door behind you. And so this is where the cost really comes in. Do they stay very high price and premium and demand from that greater brand, or do they think that eventually people are going to be like, oh, there's competitors that look kind of similar. I'm just going to go with the cheaper option. They're concerned as well, because if they want to compete not just in the DTC channel and they want to compete in retail, they need a lot of turns and they need a lot of customers to get people like Target or Walmart or CVS interested, otherwise they're not going to want to carry these products. And so there's a real tension that they've done this fantastic job of building out an entry strategy. And now Marie is at this point where she has to think about, do we double down on the entry strategy, but maybe that caps our growth or do we shift our strategy to be broader based, maybe lower cost, to try to find those cost efficiencies, the competitive advantage from scale that in the long term would allow us to be the market leader in this space.

Does any CEO ever say, we're going to stick with the status quo and cap our growth? I mean, it seems like the answer is always, yeah, we got to grow more. Is that the wrong answer?

Sometimes it can be. I think it's really interesting thing and that comes down to the economics of the market and it comes down to the ambition of the CEO. And I think one of the things that I often push back on here is I think when we hear a Elon Musk or a Jeff Bezos say I'm going to the moon, literally to the moon, which I think what they're both trying to do, everyone you know, it's, hey, maybe they shouldn't be that wealthy. But it's applause for the ambition. And as soon as we move to female CEOs, I see over and over again we get these questions of should they be quite so ambitious? Should. Maybe they should stick with the regular strategy. One of the things I push back here is I think she's right that we want to really go for scale here. Maybe there's an argument to stay really niche, but if we look at the history of consumer packaged goods, you need scale. These are things where there are scale economies in production. You need lots of turns in stores. I'll give you an example that's similar. Sounds kind of like things is Spanx. They started niche, very high luxury, and then moved out to a much broader set of categories. I think the question though is how you do it. Maybe there's a way to expand just on D to C. Maybe retail is the right option. How do you think about this in terms of timing too is really important because if you're making these great margins, how long can you milk that before competition is going to come in and start driving down prices in these markets?

One thing we haven't talked about either is they did have an incontinence line of products as well, which with an aging population globally, you would think that that would be an equally lucrative market to expand in. But it doesn't sound like that was an area that they saw as much promise in.

The technology is absorbent material. Cleverly, they work out that they could use this for incontinence as well. And exactly like you said, huge growing market, equally taboo to talk about. They get really good traction initially with it. What they realize Is just a little bit more complex to enter that market, Particularly in terms of getting eyeballs to buy the product. So if we go back to Elena, who they were selling to initially, they got her through Instagram, they got her through Facebook. They were able to do the ads there. The older population is less likely to be super active on these social media platforms. And so you're talking television ads. People are still uncomfortable with that. And it was harder for them to educate because one of the things they do is when you go through Instagram or when you go through Facebook, it takes them to the Thinks homepage. And the page isn't just about selling. It really is about educating. So they have a bunch of tools to sort of explain different sorts of products and what might work for you, how to wash and handle the garment, all this sort of stuff that might be a little bit uncomfortable. And there's no one to ask in the store. They can educate online. And so without that online channel, they had a hard time going on a little bit of initial success to sort of scale up beyond that.

Yeah. So the original funding was a Kickstarter campaign, and that worked when they were young and scrappy and trying to get started. Maria's entering at a different phase, but still can't go it alone. So they do need funding. And this is where Kimberly Clark comes into the picture. Can you talk a little bit about the dynamic of how she was able to make that happen and how important it was to their strategy?

Maria decides they need capital to expand. If they want to be this big company, they're going to need money for more advertising, to expand production, to hire a workforce who can really help the company grow and goes on the road to raise money and ends up hitting it off with the corporate venture capital of arm. With Kimberly Clark, big incumbent in the space, they see these disruptors coming and they make an investment. Crucially, she makes sure she retains a lot of control over the product, that she can compete independently so they don't shut off that competition channel. But that money's huge. And beyond the money, the partnership is important because it potentially gives access to a whole global distribution network over the long term, as they start thinking about scaling.

And I guess the benefit for Kimberly Clark in this is that now they've got a foothold into this market as well. And you can be sure that their competitors are all moving down in this direction. I mean, the innovation that thinks brought to the table is something that I would imagine that the incumbents are trying to figure out.

It's something that Incumbents have a hard time doing. I was listening to my colleague Emily Truelove talk with you, Brian, about P and G trying to do their own internal innovation teams and how difficult that change was. And one way to sort of sidestep the difficulty of trying to change your organization to be more innovative is to acknowledge that you're really good at being an incumbent. You can do the big media campaigns, you can optimize distribution, you can optimize manufacturing and say, let's outsource. Let's have other companies do that innovation and set up a corporate VC arm. And that's what Kimberly Clark does here, is they take the opposite model of set of trying to come up with the innovations in house. They're going to make investments in all these new sorts of consumer goods so that they can sort of benefit from these new. These new innovators entering the market.

So can you describe a little bit about what the marketing campaign is? And as they enter this mass retail market, how do they again, sort of create a little bit controversy to draw attention to their product?

Maria's got the new team assembled. I think they're roughly 100 people. And this is right before the pandemic. And they're sort of considering, do we stick to dcc? Do we move into selling through retail? I mean, how are we gonna build awareness so that if we do go into the retail channel, that we can really get people interested? So they come up with this provocative ad campaign called Menstruation Men. All cap locks. And the idea is, what if we lived in a world where men had periods? And I encourage people to go Google these ads. I think they're clever and provocative and really get you to think of, what if men had to go through this? How might power dynamics in the world be different? How might we sort of treat menstruation very differently as a society? Fantastic ad. Think they're building on all the controversies that come and they're sort of waiting to see will this ad be effective as the case closes.

Yeah, that's fast. So I hope there's a B case, because I would love to hear how.

Those ads play out, which is fantastic. I can say the ads don't go as effectively as you would hope, which is really interesting. There's a silver lining in the pandemic, though, that I think is worth mentioning. They have a lot of troubles, as many retailers and companies did, but with everybody being at home, they were more comfortable trying products like things.

Interesting.

If you're not out and about and worried about a leak bored at home. Let's try some new products. They got a surge of interest from that. Being at home actually allows you to do things that you wouldn't be comfortable to do in public and changes behavior. Fascinating to think about for a host of different sorts of companies.

Yeah, that's super interesting as we move.

Into this more digital mediated world.

Ram, this has been a great conversation. I'll send you off with one last question, which is if you would like people, our listeners, to remember one thing about this case, what would it be?

I think the one thing they should take away from this case is that diversity, or a lack of diversity isn't just a problem for your HR folks, isn't just a problem internally in your company. It's a problem for innovation, it's a problem for strategy, and it's a problem for who benefits from what business is built. Not only do we see labor market bias, but that spills over into product market bias. We see too few innovations aimed at women, at African Americans, of underrepresented communities of all sorts. And so as you're thinking about building a strategy moving forward, I think one really exciting place to find opportunity is to see where there's been these biases, where there has been a taboo, where these norms have maybe prevented people from coming up with innovations and innovating for those communities. Because not only can I think you build a really successful company, you can do a lot of good for in the world at the same time.

That was Harvard Business School Professor Rembrandt Koening in conversation with Brian Kenny on Cold Call. We'll be back next Wednesday with another handpicked conversation about business strategy from Harvard Business Review. If you found this episode helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues and follow our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there, be sure to leave us a review. And when you're ready for more podcasts, articles, case studies, books and videos with the world's top business and management experts, you'll find it all@hbr.org this episode was produced by Robin Pashas, Craig McDonald and me, Hannah Bates. Kurt Nickish is our editor. Special thanks to Ian Fox, Maureen Hoch, Erica Truxler, Ramsey Gabaz, Nicole Smith, Anne Bartholomew, and you, our listener. See you next.