This photo provided by Happy Moonday Inc. shows its CEO Kim Do-jin.
SEOUL, Jan. 16 (Korea Bizwire) — Many women might dream of someone taking full care of their period every month, ordering quality sanitary pads in a timely manner and answering embarrassing questions about menstruation and related symptoms.
Happy Moonday Inc. — a Korean startup for femtech, which refers to products and services that support women’s health — provides the service for women, ranging from selling eco-friendly sanitary pads and offering a subscription service that delivers pads tailored to customers’ menstrual cycles.
“Happy Moonday is a healthcare company that offers services, products and content to help women manage their health based on menstrual cycles,” its CEO, Kim Do-jin, said in a recent interview with Yonhap News Agency.
“Menstruation is a very old topic and important for women’s daily health. But we’ve put the focus of female health on pregnancy and childbirth.”
Kim, 31, said she set up the company in 2017, a year after a controversy over a social taboo on menstruation and toxic chemicals in sanitary products rocked South Korea.
She wondered if she could use cleaner, better sanitary napkins or get more precise information on female health and decided to produce the menstrual pads on her own.
This photo provided by Happy Moonday Inc. shows its CEO Kim Do-jin.
Happy Moonday has a lineup of pads and tampons that use organic cotton, eco-friendly bioplastics, and paper packaging and menstrual cups, along with other female hygiene products and items for sexual life.
“I deal with the entire process of production from planning, developing, selecting raw materials, and producing facilities and delivering,” she said. “Each product has different producing partners. Some of our partners are foreign businesses.”
Its feminine hygiene products were only sold online in the first few years, but their cleanliness and comfort have gone viral among Korean women, and Kim decided to extend its selling channel to offline to meet rising demand.
Happy Moonday’s pads are now available at Korean beauty chain Olive Young.
Kim said Happy Moonday’s merchandise is closely connected with its menstruation management app, Heymoon, which posts a cumulative 1.5 million downloads.
The app helps women predict and understand the physical and emotional symptoms that they experience in the lead-up to a period by taking note of their period cycles and premenstrual syndrome patterns, asking questions about their symptoms and buying adequate sanitary products.
“Users can count and predict their next period date and ovulatory cycles, and observe their physical and emotional changes,” she said.
“We’ve developed an algorithm that precisely predicts the period cycle and provides subsequent healthcare programs.”
This image shows the front page of Happy Moonday Inc.’s website.
The highlight of Heymoon’s service is a subscription-based program that sends hygiene products to customers based on their menstrual cycles.
The monthly delivery schedule is flexible in accordance with a change in the cycle and the customer’s physical conditions.
“Each woman has a different menstrual cycle, and the cycle is affected by her mental and physical condition,” she said. “Heymoon gives the individually-tailored delivery service.”
Happy Moonday’s comprehensive female healthcare products and services have stood out not only in South Korea but also outside the country.
U.S. business magazine Forbes placed Kim on “Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia” list in 2021, a cohort of 300 young entrepreneurs, leaders and stars from the Asia-Pacific region.
She was one of the 30 potential young business leaders in the retail and e-commerce sector.
“I think Forbes got interested in Happy Moonday’s products and services, and our development in femtech,” she said.
“The talk of menstruation has been a taboo for a long time. The more we talk about it, the better solutions we can achieve. I want to contribute to the trend.”
(Yonhap)
