Miki Agrawal of Thinx on demolishing the status quo
Q: Why is the lightning rod personality more exception than the rule?
A: People are used to the status quo. And the status quo of the last hundred years has been “use a blue liquid, use a girl prancing in the field, talk about periods like it’s the most wonderful thing in the world – when it’s really not.” If you’re a company like P&G and you’re making a lot of money, you don’t want to change things and risk fucking up what you have. So it allows challenger brands like ours to really innovate.
Q: Thinx is an unabashed, unfiltered brand. As such, how do you know when you’re crossing the line?
A: I don’t think there’s a line. Our whole thing is to just be exactly who we are and be unapologetic about it. If you talk about something unapologetically, if you talk about something without embarrassment, then all of the sudden there’s nothing to be embarrassed about. We’ve been able to have very real conversations that people are dying to have. We are liberating people. I don’t think being too bold and open with what’s real goes too far. It’s refreshing.
Q: What were your biggest hurdles when you first conceived of Thinx?
A: If you are addressing taboos, that in itself is a huge hurdle to climb over. The period taboo was our biggest challenge to overcome because nobody wants to talk about it. Every time there’s a man in the room girls get red in the face and guys get uncomfortable. We had to get over that. 2015 was our big period feminist movement. We definitely led that. I realized that in order to change culture and get people talking about it, there needs to be three very distinct components.
The first component is you have to have an innovative product to break a taboo. It can’t be half-assed innovation. It has to be something that is truly revolutionary that people want to use.
The second part to change culture in our category is considered, artful design across every touch point of our brand. Our postcards, our packaging, our website, our Facebook ads, our out-of-home campaigns. We consider very carefully the artfulness and design elements of our brand. When someone is walking through a subway station and sees our ad, they think, wow what a beautiful ad. And then they think, it doesn’t even look like an ad, it looks like a piece of art. And then they look closer and we’re talking about periods and they’re like “whoa, whoa!” They think “I can’t deny that it’s beautiful.” And that helps open up that dialogue.
The third component to changing culture is accessible, relatable communication. If we’re talking about something technical or academic, we could be very clinical about what we’re doing. Instead, the way we write and the way we talk is like we’re texting our best girlfriend. It feels familiar. You can relate to it. It’s like I’m talking to you like a friend, not like an advertisement. All three components together really do transform culture.
Q: For every pair of underwear Thinx sells, you fund the production of seven washable cloth pads for girls in developing countries. How important is social entrepreneurship to your business model? And are you concerned that entrepreneurs are beginning to leverage the give back model as more of a marketing tactic than a genuine core philosophy?
A: The future of entrepreneurship is social entrepreneurship. I think it’s a buzzword when it’s used for marketing. I don’t think it’s a buzzword when it’s used authentically. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with incorporating a giveback if it really is authentic to you. It falls apart when people think they need to find a give back for marketing purposes. When people tell me that they want to incorporate a give back, I ask, “So what do you really care about?”
Interestingly, a lot of our audience doesn’t even know about our model. It’s only mentioned at the bottom of our website. Some companies do this for marketing. The one-for-one model has been done so many times now, it feels a little bit disingenuous. So we just did our own model. When people discover it, they think, “Wow, that’s beautiful.”
We’re launching our Global Girls Club under our Thinx Foundation in 2017. We’ve developed a six month curriculum. At the end of six months, these girls will get hard cash to start businesses. We’re launching this all around the world. These are the stories we want to tell. Like a girl in Nepal living in a cow shed with no prospects and no possibilities, she joins the Global Girls Club and in six months she can start a business and she’s out of her shitty situation. That’s what we’re going to do across the world for girls. This will be built into the Thinx model. For every pair of underwear sold, we’ll be helping a girl to get out of her current situation.
Q: What has been your toughest lesson since launching Thinx?
A: The hiring process is really hard. The partnership process often doesn’t work out between two people. It’s so important when you think about a co-founder or a partner that they have exact opposite skillsets to you. So if I’m branding, creative, design, PR, I need someone who’s awesome at operations, finance, manufacturing and product development. When you bring someone on who’s a friend and they want to do what you want to do, it hurts business. The thing I would do over again is really hire slow and fire fast. I won’t make that mistake again.
