COMPANY

Name: OHNE

Legal Name: OHNE Ltd

Location: London 

Founded: 2018

Founder(s): Nikki Michelsen and Leah Remfry-Peploe

Website: https://ohne.co/

Social Media: 12.7k followers on Instagram,  290 followers on LinkedIn

Industry: Global Feminine Hygiene Product Market

Size: $24.5B in 2018 (Source: IMARC)

Future: $35.3B by 2024 (Source: IMARC)

Introduction

OHNE is a brand that seeks to make it possible for women to have maximum awareness and control over managing their periods. It retails 100% organic and biodegradable cotton tampons, in the form of a flexible subscription service. The website also sells period products such as the UK’s first pro-period CBD oil, holy cramp – to manage symptoms of menstruation. What’s more, it offers women regular access to data and support to better understand their period cycles.

The Product

The OHNE subscription box lets you choose the tampon type, count and absorbency. You can also tailor the frequency of delivery to match your period cycle. The subscription cost starts from £4.90.

“Not everyone has a 5-day cycle that lasts 28 days and we wanted to reflect this – our subscription allows our customers to tailor their order to the needs and length of their cycle,” said the founders to Glamour Magazine.

The tampon subscription and feminine health brand also offers menstruation management products such as Holy Cramp CBD oil, and a daily ingestible CBD supplement called Yours, Hormonally. 

To make their products accessible, OHNE even partners with some of the UK’s leading private members clubs and lifestyle brands, such as Allbright. The OHNE range is offered up to members and shoppers in the bathrooms of these organizations.

They even have a corporate offering for companies interested in women’s welfare (especially during their period). Organizations can get their employees special discount coupons for OHNE subscription boxes and free organic tampons in the office washrooms.

The startup also actively promotes a relevant cause – ‘alleviate period poverty’. OHNE donates 5% of its revenue to educate young women about periods and also help them make reusable pads via the Menstrual Health Management program.

Origin and Founding Team

OHNE co-founders, Nikki Michelsen and Leah Remry-Peploe, are best friends who met in 2010 while studying at the University of Sussex. The seeds of OHNE were sown during passionate discussions the duo had about the unrealistic imagery and stigma surrounding periods promoted by mainstream period care companies. From there on, they started coming up with ideas for the ideal period brand.

“We were tired of companies putting out period product advertising which claimed to de-stigmatize menstruation but never actually discussed it. We were incredibly frustrated by the way that period products have historically been marketed to women and horrified to learn the full ingredients put into most mainstream period products,” said Michelsen to Standard. 

Eventually, they decided that they wanted to build a company that makes it easy for women to manage their period according to their period cycle, needs and convenience. Thus, OHNE was born in January 2016 and was officially incorporated in 2018.

Performance and Trends

In August 2019, OHNE raised funding from the founders of online sex toy retailers – Matches Fashion and Lovehoney.