We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Chade Lopez a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Chade, thanks for joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

My name is Chadé, and I’m the founder of Girlish, a vegan menstrual support brand, that specializes in offering solutions to premenstrual syndromes due to menses, through earth-sourced supplements, mild cleansers, educational materials, and holistic bundles.

While menstruation is a normal and healthy part of life for most, menstruation is stigmatized all over the world. Girlish can turn your period experience into a positive one.

How would I know? I’ve done it for myself! As a mom of two rainbow babies, I had to take a deep dive into why my feminine health was declining. I soon found resolute in progressive alternatives and committed myself to sharing these findings with my fellow menstruators and created a community of over 80k subscribers.

Finding a solution to any problem is a reason for celebration, but to understand my celebration, one must also understand my rock bottom.
A rainbow baby. A rainbow baby is a baby born after a miscarriage, still birth, or the death of an infant from natural causes. My first son Louis, now 5 years old is my rainbow baby, after experiencing a miscarriage just two years prior. My experience of loss was dark and lonely. I began to blame myself for my loss and lack of education. Some days seemed longer than usual, I used to remember anticipating the hour I was able to cover myself up and sleep away my anxiety. I needed to be still. How could this happen to me. Most importantly, why did this happen to me?

I became extreme. I took a deep dive into my menstrual health and realized growing up, I never had regular periods. As a matter of fact, I didn’t know much about what a “normal” period should look like. I mean, I wasn’t sexually active as an early teen, so I didn’t have much to worry about. Right? Wrong.
Looking back, I was ashamed to even say the word period. Mother nature is here! Ugh, red robin hood is coming to town. I wouldn’t even call a period a period. Shame? Definitely! Lack of education? Yeah, big time!
After losing my 12-week-old unborn child, I was able to grieve, and then set out to understand my true feminine. How can I stop another person who wants to give birth from going through what I went through? This became my cause. What is a menstrual cycle and why? Why are most menstruators so ashamed of them?
Then came Girlish. I became certified in holistic wellness and went back to school as a premed major to not only learn my body, but also, I became determined to find a natural resolute for other menstruators as well. I deserved a positive menstrual experience. We deserve a positive menstrual experience.
Throughout research and partnerships with chemist, I was able to achieve vegan formulas for menstrual support. Vaginal Steaming, vegan menstrual cleansers, herbal teas, and vegan supplements, these are all the things I used on my journey of making my menstrual health a priority. Sharing is caring. So, I shared.
The Girlish client needs to know that they have options that are safe and natural, that the shame associated with their period is unfair and untrue and that everyone deserves the opportunity to experience a safe, healthy, and “normal” period.
My customers use my products because they are safe! Safe means non-hormonal, earth-sourced, chemical free, and targets the source of their discomforts. My primary pain points for the Girlish customer are reducing menstrual cramps and heavy bleeding, offers antispasmodic and relaxing properties which are useful in calming the symptoms associated with PMS, has anti-inflammatory in nature and thus helps relieve period pain, properties that reduce nausea, vomiting and associated symptoms of dysmenorrhea.
Another important pain point is menstrual hygiene. Menstrual hygiene is a topic that most menstruators are not taught to upkeep, but often shamed into conformation. We offer products that is free of parabens, sulfates, alcohol, and dyes. Our mild menstrual wash, VMilk, reduces itchiness resulting from yeast infection, helps heal vaginal tissue, removes the foul odor, and eliminates all-day residue, but most importantly, offer education of how one would preserve their menstrual cleanliness!
With our products, not only are we offering a direct solution to an issue, but as well as education. Our clients then become more informed, collect a sense of confidence, relief, and education on how to better support their body!
The goal for Girlish is to become an oasis of support to all that experience menses. I strive to promote natural feminine wellness, inclusivity within the menstrual community, and remain period positive!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My journey is explained on the previous page. I’ve always been an entrepreneur at heart, but my experience as a menstruator ignited to want to learn more about my body and I fell in love with the process and the ability to share this information.

The ideal Girlish customer is a menstruator who is more progressive and is seeking alternative resolutions for their menstrual experience. He or she (because menstruators do not have a gender) generally range in age from 17-35 years old and is seeking more information on how to better support their flow. Our customer can be new menstruators, experienced menstruators, those actively seeking natural fertility options, and those experiencing post-partum.

Girlish has identified that although premenstrual syndromes can somewhat mirror your fellow menstruator, the actual source of mild to extreme symptoms due to menses can vary by menstruator. We have researched that many of times, those who speak up and have been undiagnosed are given meds to mask their pain rather than support the source cause of pain/discomfort due to their periods. This has a lot to do with the shame surrounding periods and other disparities menstruators undergo, including but not limited to women of color, as well as trans and non-binary people not having access to medical necessities.

I’m most proud of my ability to help another menstruator in need.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

Oh man! Girlish is now an employer. Wow! I can’t believe I just wrote that. There were many times I didn’t know if I’d make payroll. As a company that is still considered premature, or “small” (even though I prefer the term “growing”, sometimes you don’t know how you will make ends meet.

Sales can be unpredictable, especially in a time of extreme inflation and uncertainty.

However, a good CEO knows that the more manpower, the more powerful a business can become. I needed people. At the time of hire, Girlish’s bank was fine. It was actually doing fairly well, and we could afford to pay regularly. However, there was a dip in sales simultaneous to when gas prices went up. I had to make a decision, pay my employee out of my personal funds, or lose the much-needed help. We didn’t choose the latter. Our employees come first; they keep my dream afloat They’re the reason that I am able to work on Girlish and not in Girlish.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

Initial capital? Oh Hunny, my fulltime job was my investment! As a Black-Latina female, most traditional banks aren’t jumping at the opportunity to offer a business loan to me. Yeah, grants are available, still hard to get, so I budgeted my own funds from my very corporate 9-5 and I paid for and laid the seeds to Girlish.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.shopgirlish.online
• Instagram: @shopgirlish
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/chadelopez
• Other: tiktok @shopgirl.ish