I’m Kim Rosas, founder of Period.Shop and a trusted reusable period products expert.
I started my ecommerce store Period.Shop in 2020 to bring top quality brands of menstrual cups, discs, pads, period underwear, and cleaning accessories under one roof. Our store is paired with expert educational resources including our product matching quiz because there is no such as thing as a “one size fits all” approach to period care; Period.Shop helps you navigate the buying process to ensure a “one size fits you” experience.
In 2012 I tried a reusable menstrual cup for the first time and the experience was so much better and less wasteful than using tampons. I kept a blog at the time and began sharing videos and articles about my experiences making the switch to a menstrual cup. The content proved to be popular and within a few years I found myself teaching workshops across the US. I became known as one of the top experts on the products and people trusted my advice. At that time the best source for reusable period care was Amazon, however shopping there has always felt counter to the mission of sustainability and presented ethical concerns. That platform was also overrun with questionable quality products. In 2020 I launched a new business; the first reusable period products store in the US, and used my decade of experience to curate a more trustworthy selection of products for mindful consumers.
The challenges were numerous – in 2020 we were still in the thickest part of Covid and I had just left a previous business to build a new one from scratch. I was in charge of my children’s virtual school while simultaneously working 10-12 hour days to launch a new business. Rather than begin small by shipping from home or renting an affordable small office we found a local 3rd Party Logistics warehouse that could accommodate our growth no matter the speed. Sourcing brands was an early hurdle – some were reluctant to work with a new store and others only sold to brick and mortar locations.
I used my connections and reputation in the menstrual products industry to secure the brands that were critical to our store. After many Zooms with the CEOs of each company to explain the vision for Period.Shop every one of those meetings resulting in a wholesale relationship, even from boutique brands who refused to sell via online only retailers.
Now, in our third year of business Period.Shop has secured many more wholesale partners and even exclusive products with our brands. For the first three years of business we relied mostly on our social media presence and educational videos to organically grow our sales. Joining Scale Up CLT has come as a crucial time for us. Sales remain strong but our growth is now less of a straight line up and more of a gentle slope. Learning more about how to grow our sales pipeline in other ways is going to prove important to us over the next few years.
