Hello Period: Raising capital, growth, and global recognition
- Written by Hello Period
- Published on
Over the last 10 years, we've had the pleasure of raising capital for a diverse range of high-growth New Zealand businesses. In our latest blog series, we're revisiting some of those key company capital raises and checking in with the companies to discover what raising funds via Snowball Effect helped them achieve and their subsequent business growth and success.
In this article, we catch up with Hello Period co-founder and CEO Robyn McLean, who founded Hello Period with her childhood best friend and registered nurse, Mary Bond.
After years of struggling with substandard, wasteful and often uncomfortable period care, we identified a gap in the market for period products that were environmentally friendly and more comfortable than the status quo. We're also passionate about normalising periods, encouraging conversation, and promoting awareness, and we pride ourselves on being more than a business - we are somewhere people go to learn.
Hello Period has grown into an internationally renewed period care company and achieved B-Corp certification in 2021. We aim to divert one billion single-use period products from the world's landfills by 2030. We've won numerous local and global awards, including 'Best Menstrual Cup' by Cosmopolitan USA and Gold at the prestigious Best Awards.
We worked with Snowball Effect in 2021 to raise growth funds, successfully raising over $2.46m, well above our capital raise target of $1.5m.
Nothing prepares you for the ride that comes with starting a business, and when we realised we needed to do a capital raise to support our growth and vision, we didn't really know where to start. We were a small team, and raising capital is full on. We had no idea how time-consuming and emotionally challenging it would be. We knew people wanted to invest in and back us, but we had no idea how even to turn that into reality.
The best thing we ever did was sign up for Snowball Effect. They made the process a lot easier, and they really helped take the stress away. They believed in us from the get-go and had a great network of investors. It was a real thrill to watch the investments as they came in and to see how many people believed in what we were doing. I feel like we got over 300 new family members as a result.
Our Snowball Effect raise allowed us to invest in new product development and move from selling menstrual cups to expanding our range to include period underwear and reusable pads. It also helped us launch our Hello Disc. It also helped us to invest in exploring and growing other markets.
We're in a great place and are tracking to be EBITDA positive by the end of the year. We are thrilled to be in large retailers in New Zealand like Chemist Warehouse and Woolworths and are looking to be in similar places in the Australian market, where we have seen some great growth and awareness already. We have a new product coming to market soon which has been requested by many customers, so that will be exciting for us. We have also developed a workplace programme that allows businesses to support their staff with periods in a really meaningful way, so we will be looking to grow this new initiative over the next year.
