Tampons, CBD and sustainability: how Daye is raising the standards of feminine healthcare
It’s a new age for feminine healthcare, and sustainable hygiene brand Daye is leading the charge.
The young brand is on a mission to redefine our approach to female health care issues, and with their CBD tampons making waves throughout the market, they’ve proved themselves to be the new and environmentally conscious alternative to the tried and tested household names we’ve relied on for as long as we can remember.
Growing up, founder Valentina Milanova never had anyone to turn to for answers on her health as a woman, so much so that having her first period left her panicked in the emergency room.
Having to learn about her reproductive system on her own, she began researching common female health issues like PCOS or endometriosis, in an attempt to get a better idea of the issue she was dealing with, ultimately discovering the therapeutic qualities of industrial hemp in the process.
This led her to create Daye, the go-to source of female health resources and products for many, with their CBD tampons being their standout offering aiming to revolutionise the female health industry.
Since their launch in 2018, Daye has over 60,000 customers and has raised over $20M in funding.
So what can we learn from their journey?
⚡A strong founder story and a mission-focused brand
While their CBD tampons are at the forefront of their product offering, they are leading a much bigger movement - raising the standards in gynaecological health.
In her early research, Valentina found that 90% of women experienced period pain, yet funding for scientific research on erectile dysfunction is five times more that the funding that goes to research for female health. Crazy!
Rectifying this gender gap is something Valentina is really passionate about (we’ve heard her speak and she is incredibly compelling!) and it comes across clearly in everything they do.
Having such a powerful mission at the core of the business is a great way to capture the hearts and minds of their audience, beyond selling really good products.
⚡Evolving an age-old product to make it fit for purpose
With this mission to raise the standards in gynaecological health, from a product point of view, Daye are focused on bringing period care products up to date. Given the tampon hasn’t really evolved since it was invented as a by-product of the war-industry, surely there’s room for improvement?
While researching the properties of hemp at university, Valentina discovered two interesting characteristics:
- its extracts could act as a pain reliever
- its fibre was absorbent
This ultimately fuelled the idea of their pain-relieving CBD tampon, the first of its kind, essentially creating a market that didn't exist.
Their drive for innovation didn’t stop there, but extends to the entire product - even their packaging. When you consider an individual will use somewhere between 5 and 15 thousand pads and tampons, the vast majority of which will wind up in landfills as plastic waste - that’s a huge impact on the environment.
So Daye found a way to make their packaging more sustainable too - something that’s really captured attention, as demonstrated by this video of their dissolvable wrappers going viral on Tiktok (1m+ views).
⚡Putting their customers at the heart of their business, and ultimately their growth
Early on, Daye established an ambassador program. Inviting early customers to join an exclusive community that gave them early access to products, discounts and to be part of this movement in improving the standards of gynehealth. T
This group essentially became influencers that amplified their message and helped to spread the word in an authentic and cost-effective way. 5% of their growth comes through this ambassador programme, and their customer referral scheme accounts for a further 16%. Giving their customers the tools and incentives to help them grow has really been working.
⚡Tapping into a ‘taboo’ topic
An impressive 32% of Daye’s growth is through organic search. They have created a very rich library of female health content that attracts over 200,000+ unique monthly visitors.
This works because very few other brands cover this topic well - and there’s a huge audience for it. They tapped into an unmet need, and work hard to share useful, informative and inclusive content about female health.
Another element of Daye’s strategy is to go deep on a topic before launching new products to seed SEO discoverability.
So what can we take away from Daye’s story? Valentina building a new-age solution to solve an age-old problem to a willing and ready audience is the unicorn factor propelling Daye to the masses and championing a new era of feminine health.
