This Unique breaks down the taboo around menstruation and offers customisable boxes with products related to cycle care. In respect of the body and the environment.
In many cultures, menstruation renders women impure and even dangerous. This is (fortunately) not the case in Italy, but one need not look far to find that menstruation is most often not spoken about, and is rarely mentioned without feeling provocative. This Unique is attempting to break down this taboo by promoting the menstrual (r)evolution in Italy.
The startup, founded in 2021 and admitted to the LifeGate Way ecosystem – the group subsidiary whose objective is to create a network of sustainable startups with a focus on open innovation – accompanies women throughout the entire menstrual cycle with a range of accessory products that are revitalising a market that has remained static for many years. And it does so with a keen eye on environmental sustainability.
To understand the environmental impact of traditional sanitary pads and tampons, one only needs to look at the numbers: in Italy there are 21 million women of menstruating age. And each of them needs around 4 or 5 sanitary pads a day for approximately 5 days. If we also consider that each traditional pack of sanitary pads contains 2.4 grams of plastic and that every single pad takes around 500 years to disintegrate, it becomes clear that something needs to change. This is precisely where This Unique steps in, with a range of compostable and plastic-free products.
It is April 2020 when three friends, Lisa, Vincenzo and Ludovico begin discussing how widespread taboos still are in society, starting with that of menstruation. After around a year they found the startup, which was subsequently accepted into the acceleration programme run by LVenture Group, promoting a new way of experiencing the menstrual cycle. Attentive to people and the environment, as the name suggests.
On the website, customers can put together boxes to be received at home as a one-off or monthly via a subscription, choosing the quantity of products and the frequency with which to receive them. Not just sanitary pads, tampons and panty liners, but also accessory products related to cycle care, such as a recently launched natural oil, 10 (PM)S Cramp Oil, which helps relax the uterine muscles during the cramps typical of premenstrual syndrome, or the trio of herbal teas that will soon complete what they internally call the Premenstrual Kit.
That This Unique is destined to grow is borne out by the numbers: just a few months after its launch, the startup already counts 15,000 customers, a figure that continues to rise, and 700 active subscriptions. A result achieved also thanks to the considerable work put into communication between This Unique and its community through social media and the startup's magazine, Periodica, a space for dialogue that gives voice to many issues on which followers and supporters are invited to engage in order to break down those walls we have inherited from the past and that are continually being built around us, first and foremost that of social inclusion.
