We recently connected with Katie Krick and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Katie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?
After having my daughter five years ago, my own menstrual cycles changed a lot. They went from being a five-day blip on my radar to a really difficult two weeks. This caused me to stop and think a *lot* about the role that the menstrual cycle plays in how women experience decades of life. Combined with how critical menstruation is to, you know, humanity as a whole; for weeks I wrestled with the observation that we as a culture do not treat periods with the respect that is in any way commensurate with their value or impact.
At first, I just wanted to find some source of validation for myself – some kind of acknowledgement that what my body was doing was a big deal. I wanted a present to show up on my front porch when my period started – something to delight me for a minute, that would deliver support and connection to other women. Surprised as I was to find that there was really nothing on the market that did that specific thing, I started to talk to my friends. I scratched my head, wondering why such a subscription didn’t exist yet. It would be so simple to do, I said. It would be a box, curated like a care package made by a friend – filled with nice things that help pick you up when you’re feeling down. Why couldn’t this be done?
For the first 3 or 4 months of this concept brewing in my head, my biggest focus was on having as many conversations as possible with people about it Could they see themselves subscribing to something like this? What would prevent them from trying it? What kinds of products would they want to receive? What price point felt fair?
A very fortuitous meeting with a friend resulted in an introduction to a local woman who had successfully started (and later sold) a different subscription box company. She was very generous with her time and experience and shared some tips about pain points around subscription box businesses; packaging; margins; customer service, and more. I basically cold-called manufacturers to find a company that would produce a low volume of custom-printed cardboard boxes, and found suppliers of products for inside the box in similar ways. I sketched out the cost of goods sold with as much accuracy as I could – including things like projections for the labor of packing the boxes, variations in weight that would change shipping costs, etc. Once I determined that I could source fair-trade products from women-owned businesses without the price per box being “too high” (but everything is relative!), I also knew that I had the cash on hand I’d need to stand the concept up and give it a go – largely because with a subscription model, I wouldn’t need to pay for a large volume of inventory up front. I needed to create the bones of the business and just get started with a small amount of product first.
What I didn’t expect was for my brain to so quickly be obsessed with the idea. It seems like plenty of people have side hustles now, and I had every intention of continuing to work in the insurance industry, which had been my career for eight years. But pretty quickly, my time and attention were being pulled so strongly by the concept of bringing periods the respect they deserve, that I wasn’t thinking about my day job as much as it deserved and decided it was time to jump into executing this idea with both feet.
The biggest pain point by far was figuring out the best way to manage the timing of orders be placed vs orders being fulfilled. In “normal” ecommerce situations, the date an order is place is indicative of the date the company fills the order. For me, the date a customer places an order indicates nothing at all – they specify when they want to receive the box. Believe it or not, this tiny difference has *not* been a simple or cheap thing to figure out. We’re almost there, but we rely on more manual processes than I would like to.
I am still very much in the early stages of things. We have only been on the market for four months, so my energies are focused on testing concepts, logistics, and markets. The next phase for us is creating content with expert partners who can support my customers through their periods in other ways: Working with functional medicine doctors, health food companies, mental health experts to create and provide a “members only” experience so that in addition to the box itself, customers are also receiving quality information that they can use to create longer-lasting change.
Ideally, there will be a product for teens, a product for people who are battling infertility, a product for women in perimenopause and menopause, etc. Each woman has such a different relationship with their period and I want to hold space and create support for those differences. I launched with as much simplicity as possible and I’m really glad that I did, otherwise I would still be working on the project, but without revenue to support that development.
Katie , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Ultimately, The Period Pick-Me-Up is propelled forward by the belief that women deserve to menstruate comfortably within a society that supports them. There is a fundamental mismatch between the impact menstruation has on menstruators, and the support and respect our culture offers menstruators in return. The Period Pick-Me-Up exists to right the ship.
Our part in this is to support women in creating better period experiences for themselves – inviting them to consider how their life would change if their menstruating body was regarded with care, support, and respect – instead of brushed off, hushed, shamed, or ignored.
We do this by delivering those elements of care, support, and respect in a box: Sourced from fair-trade, woman-owned businesses, our subscription boxes are packed with products that just help you feel good. Like a care package that a friend would make for you – except your friends are hundreds of women across the world who have handmade the products you’re using. The vendor partners we work with vary from international organizations that support economic empowerment in developing countries, to stay-at-home moms who create spa products as a side hustle. The end result is that every period, our customers receive a gift box with items that help them feel good – and that they can feel good about.
We’re different from other “period boxes” in several key ways: We don’t include tampons, pads, or pills – many women use menstrual cups or don’t want medicine; they want moral support. We’re also committed to sourcing these feel-good products from fair trade, woman-owned businesses – instead of large corporate manufacturers. This means our price point might be a bit higher, but the products inside are higher quality, too. Finally, other feel-good period boxes are (at this point) limited to single purchases on gift box websites. We offer the option to subscribe to ongoing boxes at a frequency that you specify.
The next phase of development for the business is to establish a membership that offers expert advice from a variety of health professionals – doctors, nutritionists, life coaches, yoga instructors, and more. Hopefully, that addition will be thriving by Q1 2024!
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
The biggest pivot in my life is also the biggest pivot in my career. Prior to founding The Period Pick-Me-Up, I was an insurance agent for eight years. During the last three years, my husband and I were planning to purchase the independent agency that I worked for, along with another partner. We spent significant time and energy creating business plans, writing vision statements, establishing goals, org charts, and stock piling as much cash as we could for the purchase. We adjusted our entire financial plan with this goal in mind and got so close to the finish line….at just about the same time when I realized that my heart wasn’t in it anymore, but in the new venture I was developing “on the side.” My would-be business partner was so graceful and compassionate during our “break-up” conversation – I’ll never forget it.
While there are big differences between buying a functioning business and starting a business from scratch, it’s amazing to realize that that prep work really wasn’t wasted at all. It’s just being applied to a different business than I initially thought.
We’d love to hear your thoughts about selling platforms like Amazon/Etsy vs selling on your own site.
I sell on my website, and I also sell on Etsy. The Esty thing is even newer than my website. To be honest, I was pretty torn on using it, but it’s just smart to leverage the sales channels that already exist, in addition to building a new one. So far, it’s attracting people who want to buy the box as a gift for others (not that surprising), whereas my website is built around the concept of a person buying the subscription for themselves. It’s too early to decide whether I will maintain the Etsy store for the long haul, or add a gifting option to my website. So far, the separation has been more helpful than harmful because Etsy has a huge customer base already, so it really increases brand exposure. Etsy also maintains customer analytics for sellers, so I’m able to compare/contrast a lot of data and I think this is expediting business development. For now, both are working together well.
Contact Info:
- Website: pickmeupbox.net
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theperiodpickmeup/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100087901660859
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katie-krick-94b80193/
- Other: it’s not great timing for this article, but the website is migrating to theperiodpickmeup.com. Traffic will be redirected, of course.
Image Credits
The Portrait Lounge