After finding success in her online business, Gayneté Jones made the decision to start a product-based business by introducing a new menstrual cup, just in time for Women’s Health Month.
Gayneté is the Founder and CEO of Best, Periodt., and G.A.M.E. Changing Industries. She’s a leading business consultant, keynote speaker, best-selling author, podcaster, and the creator of Cubicle Ditch Academy. Earlier this year she founded Best, Periodt., a unique femcare brand changing the game.
“Multi-passionate entrepreneur” is a trendy buzzword these days, but it’s hard to find someone doing it successfully, which is why I loved Jones’s journey. She’s assembled an A team with strong systems to make sure all of her ventures not only serve her audience, but are built to scale.
I was able to catch up with Gayneté to talk about Best, Periodt. and how she’s managing it all.
Meet The Entrepreneur Disrupting The Femcare Space | Stephanie Burns
Deanna Williams
Stephanie Burns: After finding a lot of success in the online world, what made you decide to start a business in the women’s health space?
Gayneté Jones: “Inspired to create my own product after interviewing a product creator on my Freedom Slay Podcast, I decided to create a product that was better than what’s out there. I’ve known for a while now that menstrual cups are a healthier option for our bodies, the environment, and can save us money as they’re reusable. With this knowledge, I gave them a go and I just was never satisfied with the cups I’d used in the past as they leaked and didn’t have enough capacity for heavier-flow days. I found myself still having to buy pads and found the lint-producing baggies they came with to be inconvenient.
I got to work and created a list with all of the must-haves for my cup: higher capacity, comfort, a cute hygienic carrying case, a unique base and stem to make insertion and removal easier, a US manufacturer, FDA registration, OBGyn approval, detailed full-color instruction booklet newbies could easily follow and more.
The aforementioned list started as things I wanted to change about cups I’d tried in the past. I also spoke with my target audience and learned that many not only hadn’t tried cups, but that they were turned off by them and knew very little about them. I dove deeper to get an understanding of their hesitations around cup use. I knew that from the onset, Best, Periodt. would have to be an education focused brand, helping to break stigmas and misunderstandings around not just cups, but periods in general.
I identified a major gap in the market and an audience that had been ignored. The personal care and femtech space plays it very safe and as a result, the language tends to be stiff and branding all looks the same – pastel and clean minimalist brands. With this knowledge, a whole lot of research and working alongside experts in this space, Best, Periodt. was birthed.
Burns: How are you managing your online business and this product based business?
Jones: This isn’t just a menstrual cup company, we have more products to come. I’ve been saying from the start that this is the genesis of a mega brand. As such, from the onset, I set out to run it like a billion-dollar company. My Operations Manager, LaRitta Webb, is the best in the game when it comes to supply chain management and fulfillment logistics. She runs the backend for me and ensures our sales projections are solid to avoid gaps in fulfillment. She’s a 2x engineer with an MBA in Supply Chain Management. With her education and experience she is much better suited to handle this portion of the business than I am. I’m all for delegating where it makes sense to delegate. My husband is the financial guru. As a VP banker and Head of Operations at his day job, he acts as the CFO for Best, Periodt. We also have a legal advisor with decades of experience and a few agencies contracted. My team is small but mighty. I used to think that in order to do something correctly, I’d have to do it all myself. I’ve since learned that delegating to people who are experts at what they do is the best thing you can do for the health of your business.
With the help of 1863 Ventures (an accelerator program for high potential minority entrepreneurs), I’ve created decision trees and systems for both daily tasks and more complex happenings at Best, Periodt., to allow for smoother growth. Scaling a company is never easy, but there are certainly things that we can do to make it less difficult. And with the rate we’re growing, I need all the assistance I can get!
In addition to having solid assistance and systems, I have a deep understanding of the market, and more importantly, my audience. Our focus at Best, Periodt. always comes back to what makes the most sense for our customers. We create unique solutions to some of their most common problems when it comes to menstruation.
While we launched just this year, from the second the company idea came to mind, I began not only researching, but building a relationship with my customers to find out their problems and desires, making it our mission to help them to have their best period experience, periodt.
Meet The Entrepreneur Disrupting The Femcare Space | Stephanie Burns
Gaynete Williams
Burns: What makes your product unique and what kind of impact are you seeing?
Jones: Our cups are very high quality, super comfy and have a higher capacity than most on the market, which means fewer changes. We’ve had many users share that our cups make people often forget that they’re even on their periods. In addition to this, ours has done away with the inconvenient lint-producing baggies for a counter-cute, hygienic, breathable storage case.
I really wanted to get this right and solve a real problem for my customer with something fresh. I could’ve easily white labelled a cup that already existed and put in our branding. In fact, that’s what many companies do. Not us, we had a custom mold designed and created for our brand with an easy-grip base and stem that makes insertion and removal easier.
Beyond the features, we have a $1 giveback built in. For every cup sold, $1 goes towards helping put an end to child trafficking. We also have an option to donate a cup on our site to assist with period poverty and have partnered with 3 different charities in this initiative, who distribute cups in the USA, Bermuda, and Sierra Leonne.
Burns: What’s next for Best, Periodt.?
Jones: Best, Periodt. will continue to grow brand awareness and we expect to be in over 100 retail doors by its first birthday. We want to be a household name synonymous with periods and comfort and are doing everything in our power to make it happen.
We are launching our next game-changing product before end of year. We will continue to expand our offerings and I think our next product launch may come as a surprise to some. We are laser focused on our customers and move based on audience need and not what competitors are doing around us. While still focused helping to make the period experience better, we do not plan on taking the traditional approach of offering pads, tampons, period underwear or feminine wipes.
