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'Like Santa For Your Vagina': Tampon Startup Hello Flo Takes On That Time Of The Month

This article is more than 10 years old.

Usually, when a YouTube video racks up 4 million views in four days, you might reasonably expect Justin Bieber to be involved. Not so for Hello Flo's first ad, a clever, ever-so-slightly subversive viral hit called 'The Camp Gyno'. Instead of the Bieb, it stars a precocious tween, her bunkmates and a handful of tampons.

Hours after the spot went online, Ad Week named it Ad of the Day, and from there the plaudits snowballed. It's "the best tampon ad in the history of the world", says the Huffington Post; it's "amazing", "hilarious" and "perfect" according to Buzzfeed. Judge for yourself, above.

What the ad also did was get the virtual cash registers ringing for Hello Flo, a monthly tampon subscription service that launched in March to a few mentions in the tech blogosphere but little else. "What took me a month, I now do in an hour," said Hello Flo founder Naama Bloom.

Hello Flo's model is a familiar one, pioneered by cosmetics sampling service Birchbox and razor delivery outfit DollarShaveClub, both now heralded as e-commerce success stories. In this case, subscribers pay between $14 and $18 per month and receive a discreet box including tampons, sanitary pads, pantyliners, and a few treats like candy. The service ensures delivery is timed to a woman's cycle.

The aim of Hello Flo, says Bloom, is to take the tedium, embarrassment and uncertainty out of that time of the month. As she writes on the company's site: "One day, after yet another lunch time run to the drugstore for an emergency box of tampons I decided there had to be a better way to manage my period. I didn't want to trek through my office with a practically see-through plastic bag with tampons; I didn't like being surprised (again) when my period hit; and I didn't want to add to the three half-used boxes of tampons and pads under my sink."

Bloom, 40, spent nine years in marketing, first for American Express and then a tech startup, so she isn't exactly going into this blind. So far, Hello Flo is entirely self-funded, with her greatest expenditure to date on her slick ad, written and directed by a team at top New York agency BBDO. Bloom did try to raise money late last year, giving that up after being met with skepticism. She said the overwhelming success of 'The Camp Gyno' and the corresponding surge in sales has given her hope. "I just wanted to prove I could do it," she said.

For now, Hello Flo's monthly care packages are filled with well-known Procter & Gamble brands Tampax and Always, but Bloom's goal is to start her own brand of organic feminine care products, having spotted a gap in a market filled with plastic applicators and chemically-derived scents. Research firm Euromonitor pegs the value of the growing sanitary protection industry at over $27 billion worldwide, with the U.S. accounting for about a tenth of those sales.

"We're doing it in stages," said Bloom of her plan to reinvest money she makes with Hello Flo into an organic tampon line. "This has been very careful and deliberate."

Starting in September, Hello Flo will offer a Period Starter Kit for young girls like the one amusingly portrayed in 'The Camp Gyno'. For $34.95, a mom can ensure her daughter is prepared for what can be an unsettling time, with not just tampons and pads but care guides, treats and a Feby bracelet that helps identify the natural cycles of a woman's body. "Subscription commerce is a good business model," says Bloom. "But my end goal is to empower girls and their moms."