AUGUST

August is a consumer menstrual-care brand launched in January 2020 by Nadya Okamoto and Nick Jain and headquartered in New York City. The company sells period products, including pads made from 100% organic cotton that are plastic-free and, according to the founders, biodegradable within about 12 months, compared with conventional pads that the company says take centuries to decompose. The brand positions itself as a lifestyle period brand aimed at menstruators broadly, with a particular focus on Gen Z consumers, and pairs product sales with content and community intended to reduce stigma around menstruation.

Product and marketing decisions are shaped by a customer community the company calls its "inner cycle," originally built through word-of-mouth outreach with attention to diversity of age, race, geography and political views. The community was hosted on the group-chat app Geneva and grew from a few hundred members to more than 3,200 members across 12 chat rooms, which the founders consulted on product design, marketing tactics and events; some of the company's employees were recruited through it. As of mid-2022 the company had eight employees.

Founding story

Co-founder Nadya Okamoto entered the reproductive- and menstrual-health field at 16, when she incorporated and then led for roughly six years a youth-focused nonprofit, Period, which distributed free menstrual products in Portland, Oregon, and later built a national presence with campus chapters and volunteers; during her tenure as executive director the organization handled upwards of 25 million units of period products. Working with donor brands, writing the book "Period Power," and running a Gen Z marketing practice led her to conclude that existing period products could be more sustainable, more gender-inclusive and more openly discussed. She hired an executive director to take the nonprofit forward and, at the beginning of 2020, stepped away from her other roles to found August with her friend Nick Jain, who described menstrual care as a category where young people are particularly underserved. The pair spent roughly the first year to eighteen months building a customer community before scaling the product business.

Business model

Direct-to-consumer sales of menstrual-care products through the company's own website, including one-off purchases and subscriptions.

Revenue comes from consumer product sales, with many customers purchasing subscriptions after arriving on the website.

Traction

August reported $1 million in booked revenue since its 2020 launch, verified by documentation reviewed by Business Insider as of June 2022. Its customer community had grown to more than 3,200 members across 12 chat rooms, and co-founder Nadya Okamoto's TikTok following was reported at 2.4 million in the Female Startup Club interview and 3.2 million as of the June 2022 Business Insider article.