Meet the Social Innovation Lab Accelerator Cohort 2021–22. For this interview, we spoke with Erica Duffy, founder & CEO of TamPal. Erica is a graduate of the Design Leadership MBA/MA offered through Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and MICA. It was during her graduate degree that she developed the concept for TamPal, and subsequently won $35k to further develop her venture during the UP/Start Venture Competition.
TamPal is a products and services company aimed at making access to tampons and pads as easy as toilet paper. Period.
SIL: Tell us about your company. What are you working on?
TamPal is a products and services company aimed at making tampons and pads as accessible as toilet paper in bathrooms. Period. This mission is in service of a greater vision to end period shame once and for all.
We have three products in development: our @Home dispenser; a free period product locator app; and a commercial dispenser.
The @Home dispenser aims to make period products of all types (including tampons, pads, menstrual cups and period underwear) easily accessible from the toilet at home when needed. It also breaks down the stigma that usually starts in the home that menstruators should hide these products.
Our second product in development is an app to connect college students with locations on campus where they can access free menstrual products. Many colleges have student-led period advocacy groups that have lobbied to install dispensers in different areas throughout campus. This app aims to help students locate these dispensers and bring awareness to dispensers that may need refilling to increase reliability.
Lastly, we are developing a commercial tampon and pad dispenser, specifically with middle schools and high schools in mind, that will help combat stigma and make access to period products more equitable.
SIL: Why did you decide to start this? Where did the idea come from?
In 2018, I was frustrated by my own bathroom setup. I had a water closet where there was no place I could easily store, let alone rest, my menstrual products when I used the bathroom. I went online to find something to buy, thinking that surely someone had developed an at-home solution to easy period-product storage from the toilet. I found DIY solutions on Pinterest, like crafted boxes that said things like “Tampons.” I wanted a solution that looked clean and intentional that a person would come to expect to see in a bathroom, like a toilet paper roll holder. I started drafting the idea for TamPal @Home — a small convenient storage solution meant to be installed right next to the toilet.
While working on this at-home solution, I was also curious about what existed to make products easier to access in schools and broader commercial spaces. During this research, I learned that one-in-four students in the United States cited a lack of access to period products as the reason for missing class. However, I also learned some good news — eight states in the U.S. required school bathrooms to have dispensers with free products for students. Today, two years later, 10 states now require that. However, these dispensers were stuck in the 1970s, and so were the products in them. These old-style, quarter vending machines weren’t designed to show what kind of product they had inside, and the best solution I saw were machines where minor modifications had been made so that the device could vend for free.
I started working on a design that would be approachable by making the product visible and putting the power in the hands of the users to choose the brand of products that could be stocked in them, rather than the dispenser dictating a subpar product.
SIL: What constitutes success for you?
Success to me is TamPal becoming one part of a movement of companies founded by menstruators creating solutions for menstruators to eliminate the shame and stigma surrounding periods.
We are working to change this narrative so menstrual products can finally be viewed as what they are — necessary sanitation products, like toilet paper, that should be supplied and taxed as such.
SIL: What have you accomplished so far?
TamPal has been busy at work bringing our concepts to life. We just completed the first prototype of our @Home design and are getting ready to conduct user testing. Our Period Product Locator App is in development and is expected to be ready for testing this summer, which we will do with the support of a Johns Hopkins University student-led menstrual advocacy group called Wings. Lastly, we are continuing to iterate on our commercial dispenser design to make it as accessible and equitable as possible for users.
SIL: How can people get involved in supporting you in your venture?
Join our community of period people (and period people advocates) today! — Head to our website www.tampalproducts.com and join our mailing list to stay up-to-date on what is happening with TamPal. If you are connected with a school that could benefit from our dispenser, reach out as we would love to talk further about how to assist young menstruators.
Help us pilot our app — If you are a college student on a campus that has free period product dispensers, let’s connect to discuss how we can partner in launching our Period Product Locator App on your campus.
For period education (and some period puns) — Follow us on Instagram @Tampal_products and on TikTok @tampal_products.
Help us fund our mission — Bringing our physical products to life has some significant design and development costs. Reach out of if you are interested in funding any of the following:
- First-run manufacturing of our @Home product
- Development, design and production of our school dispenser prototype
- Programming and testing of our period product locator app
SIL: What have been some of the biggest challenges in scaling your venture during the pandemic?
The first product we were working on for commercial development was a dispenser specifically designed for schools. As students left classrooms during Covid and were spending more time at home, it made us turn back to what originally made us start working on TamPal — making period products more accessible in the home. This made us pivot to developing our @Home product at the same time we were continuing to work on our school dispenser.
SIL: What do you like most about the Baltimore entrepreneurial community? What would you like to see more of?
What I really like about the Baltimore entrepreneurial community is that everyone is very supportive of helping one another. All the entrepreneurs that I have met want to help in any way they can, from making a connection to being a sounding board when you have a new idea. Being a founder can be lonely, but in this community, you can always find some that has been through a similar success or setback that you can connect with and learn from. I would love to see our community of entrepreneurs continue to grow and expand and get the national recognition it deserves for all the positive work it is doing.
SIL: What advice do you have for would-be social entrepreneurs thinking about starting a venture?
There will always be hard days, but we need more of you doing the work that matters. Rome wasn’t built in a day and your business doesn’t need to be either, as long as each day you are helping one more person than you did the day before.
SIL: Why did you apply to SIL? What attracted you to SIL?
I have participated in some other really wonderful incubators but what attracted me to SIL was that I knew I would be surrounded by other companies that were grounded in a social mission. I was excited to learn from other business leaders on the best way to lead a for-profit company in a way that ensures its social mission remains at the core of its business decisions. I also saw several organizations that I looked up to also participated in SIL.
SIL: How have you grown personally during your time in the Accelerator?
I am an introvert through and through, so the thought of getting on a stage or cold-calling a random stranger makes me want to climb in bed and throw the covers over my head. But now I feel this less often. I have learned to focus on the parts of these experiences that I do enjoy, such as connecting with others that feel strongly about period equity or educating those that are unaware about the extent of this issue.
I have been able to pitch and develop decks for several different incubators and other applications prior to SIL, so I also enjoyed bringing previous knowledge of pitch-deck construction to my cohort. I also learned it’s OK to ask for help. I know I sometimes feel I have to do it all but being surrounded by a group of founders that have expertise in different areas I learned to reach out and learn from them so that I could do things smarter.
