Dignity is about choice: introducing subsidised OI cups

Dignity is about providing choice and options to people and allowing them to make the best decision for them.

Building the Machine

Since the inception of Dignity, we’ve wanted to incorporate choice into our offering.

At the beginning of our startup journey, in 2016, we wanted to do it all – provide subscriptions for consumers and business, have tampons, pads and menstrual cups and have the lowest price point. We wanted to grow Dignity into a movement across all ofNew Zealand with the greatest impact possible. And we knew that successful businesses are those that think, plan, and execute

From the day the news story came out about girls missing school in 2016, we wanted to find monetary solutions and donations for that school. But we it’s not that simple – we didn’t.

To create any business, initiative or movement it needs to be sustainable.

We chose to partner with Organic Initiative and provide choice for their range of tampons and pads. We refined our model and grew, gaining our first corporate partners of Flick, Xero and ANZ in 2017. This allowed us to not only help one school, it ensured that we could help 33 schools to have free access to sanitary items every term in 2017 – This has since grown to 45 schools since Term 3 of 2018.

Why now?

We’ve always been supportive of menstrual cups and have wanted to find the best way to include this in our Dignity initiative.

We’re happy to announce that for workplaces that have Dignity, employees are able to purchase a subsidized OI cup from us – delivered to their home or workplace.

We want to reward those workplaces that have taken the step to acknowledge periods, period poverty and normalising access to sanitary items at work. By having a subsidized cup we feel this makes these items affordable and accessible.

Limiting this to businesses who subscribe to Dignity means that our core focus – our tampon and pad subscription model – still operates as our buy one give, one model and meets the expressed need of the students and women we support. We’re also informed by such research as that which KidsCan released in 2015, shedding light that young girls’ preference was to not use menstrual cups. With this in mind, at this stage we have chosen to not include a buy one, give one model to this product.

We are, however, going to conduct research with our schools in Term 3 and 4 to gauge if this has changed in the past couple of years and will evolve our initiative should certain schools find the desire for supply is present.

We are also aware that much of the time, the product requests we receive from schools involve around 80%, and at times 100%, pads only. There are numerous possible reasons for this, including religious or cultural beliefs that we believe are fundamental to the Dignity of the students.

With regard to the businesses we supply, these tend to get orders for 50% pads and 50% tampons, including all sizes from Organic Initiative including mini, regular, super and applicator.

It’s about choice

At Dignity, we are strong believers in women having the choice. The ability of female employees from workplaces with Dignity to be purchase subsidized OI cups is an extension of this choice.

We want women to be able to access the sanitary items of their choice. We want all women to have Dignity – will you join us?

Read Sophie’s blog on using an OI Cup and traps for young players.

Contact hello@dignitynz.com if you’d like a subsidized OI cup!