#Interview: MY HOLY and the secrets of branding for women with creativity
By: Fernanda Sigilião
Tags: Marketing, Branding, Brand Strategy, Business Strategy, Entrepreneurship

Throughout history men have been trying to understand periods and not surprisingly feminine care products have been designed mainly by the male perspective. The “building empathy” part of the marketing equation was definitely a factor to be improved and not too long ago, many new brands made for women, by women started to appear globally. The idea of joining this segment came to Fiona right after quitting her job as a strategist consultant. At that time, she read a lot about entrepreneurship and enrolled on a course to learn how to code at the Le Wagon coding bootcamp. She came across the American brand MY LOLA, that produced fully organic cotton tampons, and immediately felt there was a real market demand for a similar proposition in France.

In the beginning of 2017, absorbing panties weren’t yet a big thing in France and no other brands were addressing the need of transparency regarding the internal absorbents composition. She was in the right place at the right time and the next steps to start executing the idea were clear: Finding a good supplier and building a strong brand.

Find your people

Alongside with good timing, finding people to join your entrepreneurial journey is a huuuge element of a company’s success. With a strong business idea on her mind and €20K euros in her pocket, Fiona headed to Spain to meet a potential supplier. She encountered a family business, with 15 years of experience, willing to create the first My Holy products with her and happy to build a long-term relationship.

“I think they’re the type of people that understood that when we can and when we want, with 20 thousand euros, we can create a great brand”. Fiona

She also started a partnership with Gabriel Pimont-Nogues, which she met at Le Wagon. She says finding a partner who have different skills and personality than you is crucial to grow a business.

Gabriel and Fiona worked together during 3 months to test how they’d get along professionally and then decided to move forward with the adventure. He has 49% of the company and she has 51%. Although, the idea came from her, she tells me it’s the execution that matters the most and that having people who take ownership of the project is what makes the brand vision come true.

Build your own brand universe

Without money to hire an agency to create the branding part of the business, she was faced with the challenge of searching for the “creative spirit” in herself. She selected some brands that inspired her, the type of brands that made her want to buy it without rationalising why and asked herself “If I could pick any brand in the world, which one would I like to have created and why?”. Then, she started exploring some creative directions on a mood board that would set the tone for the brand’s visual universe and personality.

My Holy launch night @ Appear Here

She told me about the importance of being intuitive when building a brand and that in order to build something bigger than the product itself, a pivotal point is to know what the brand wants to express. On My Holy’s case, it was the feeling of being free, its own “art de vivre” and the intention of talking about women’s health in an accessible and cool way.

All these ideas were translated in a coherent way through their colour palette, the funky illustration of Tiffany Cooper and by bringing other elements that weren’t at all part of the medical/health segment.

“Our strength was to bring the cosmetics codes to the world of intimate hygiene”

Lucie Bascoul — My Holy Film

Design your business for the people it wants to serve

The other building block of creating the business was designing the revenue model and making sure they’d have an accessible price. They came up with two different ways of capturing value: A subscription model, where they offer cotton bio tampons, delivered in France directly to their customers mailbox every month for a €5 subscription; and a one time charge model where customers can buy the My Holy tampons on-line directly from their website. Fast, safe and with real people on-line to help in case a client might need some help. Little by little their portfolio expanded and they now have a classic box with 16 tampons, a refill format and a traveling format. All products have a price range going from €5 to €15 euros.

Their idea in the near future is to continue listening to what their customers want and to expand their portfolio. They’ll soon be bringing tampons with applicator and pads. One step at a time as if they were crafting all the building blocks of a solid house. With patience, lots of creativity and hard work as all great business should be.

Looking forward to see how the next steps will look like!

You can follow My Holy on Instagram.