Aunt Flow tampon supplier transitioning to selling to businesses

Aunt Flow, the Columbus-born tampon subscription service, is pivoting toward sales to employers.

The social enterprise is moving to supplying universities and businesses, said founder Claire Coder, expanding on its consumer-focused " buy one give one" system.

“If you’re offering toilet paper, you might as well offer tampons too,” Coder said.

Bulk sales to businesses have accounted for 70 percent of Aunt Flow’s sales in the past month, she said, declining to disclose revenue figures.

The new model has been a “huge success,” Coder said, in part because Aunt Flow is essentially alone in providing businesses with low-cost tampons and “a great PR play.”

Companies who supply Aunt Flow tampons to employees at no cost will receive an Aunt Flow bathroom certification and will be featured on the company’s website. That program had a soft launch last month.

It's similar to an initiative by Columbus entrepreneur Nancy Kramer, whose Free the Tampons campaign encourages all public women’s restrooms to offer free sanitary products.

Aunt Flow tampons are already in some corporate and university bathrooms, including Harvard University and the Columbus Idea Foundry. Coder said more contracts are pending.

“We’re in a really, really exciting growth stage,” Coder told me.

The move didn’t come out of nowhere. The business supply model has long been a goal for Aunt Flow, Coder said. But first, she needed to get people comfortable talking about menstruation, and she’s made some headway — the enterprise has drawn widespread media attention.

In the new model, for every 100 tampons a business purchases, Aunt Flow will donate 10 to an organization that supports women in need of feminine hygiene products.

Consumer subscription sales haven’t fallen by the wayside, however. Coder said that portion of the business will continue, though starting on Aug. 19, tampons with plastic applicators will no longer be available on the site. It is switching to branded, non-applicator tampons that will be cheaper to produce and easier on the environment, Coder said.

The new tampons will be manufactured at an undisclosed facility in Germany.

At 20 years old, Coder was this year named Business First’ s youngest ever 40 under 40 recipient.