From Hemp to Health: The Bold New Era of Period Care

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios, it’s time for Women In Motion. Brought to you by WBEC-West. Join forces. Succeed together. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here, another episode of Women In Motion and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, WBEC-West. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Women In Motion, we have Valerie Emanuel with Rif Care. Welcome.

Valerie Emanuel: Thank you so much for having me.

Lee Kantor: I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about Rif Care.

Valerie Emanuel: So, I’m one of the co-founders of Rif Care, and we are a period care company that launched two years ago. We make biodegradable period products, and we were the first company to launch that makes period products out of hemp fiber, so it’s a material innovation company and it’s also a women’s health company.

Lee Kantor: So, what’s your backstory? Were you always kind of inventing products?

Valerie Emanuel: No. I mean, I’ve definitely always been entrepreneurial since I was a kid. I was selling, you know, chips and candy out of my locker since I can remember. But I just really cared about the environment, and so I always grew up as an environmentalist doing beach cleanups and volunteering at parks, and just doing all these different things with my mom. And I kind of just took that into adulthood, and when I started to focus on my own health, I realized, wow, there’s so much with environmentalism and women’s health and just such an intersection there. And then, started to change all of my personal care products and just realized there was a gap in the market for materials innovation.

Valerie Emanuel: And, also, just, you know, if you haven’t seen the news last week, they found out that tampons had all these heavy metals. There was just, every week, a new story about how women’s health products were not the best and not that healthy. And so, I was like, I think this is why I’m making Rif Care.

Lee Kantor: And so, did you come up with the idea first or what was kind of the genesis of “Okay. I’m going to actually create a product here that’s going to, you know, solve the problem that I see.”

Valerie Emanuel: Yeah. So, I’m just a lover of hemp in general. And I had this idea, I went to a bunch of factories and I was like, “Why don’t we put hemp in period care? Like, we’re putting hemp in clothing and denim and t-shirts and bras.” And they’re like, “Oh. We can’t do that because it’s a non-woven material.” And I was like, “Well, I don’t understand why you can’t do it.” So, I just kind of dropped the idea for two years. I was in Portugal at the time and I thought if I’m here with all the manufacturing, I can figure it out.

Valerie Emanuel: But two years later, I ended up emailing someone in China who had a connection in Turkey, and they were actually making a tissue paper type of material with him. And so, they were able to use that same manufacturing to create the non-woven that makes our hemp top sheets. So, there were people working on it before, but we were the first people to be able to actually get it commercial into market.

Lee Kantor: And so, you have the idea, you find the right resource to help you kind of make it, then how many iterations did it take for you to get a product that you were happy with?

Valerie Emanuel: I mean, two iterations, honestly. It’s like from the time that I found the factory, it was actually when I launched my Kickstarter. I was talking to someone and he was an investor, and I was like, “I have this idea. I can’t let it go and I think it’s time for me to start it. I see there’s other companies trying to do it. They’ve been working on it for years.” And then, he was like, “That’s really interesting. I want to invest in you.” And I was like, “What?” So, I got the investment check. I started working on branding and everything else, and then I launched the Kickstarter.

Valerie Emanuel: And 60 days after launching the Kickstarter is when we had our first prototype. And they sent us two different types of prototypes with just different weights of material, and I ended up liking the second weight. And so, I sent it to all my friends, they all tried it, we all fell in love with it. And so, two months to prototype and then eight months later we launched, so really ten months since the inception of the brand and kind of telling people I was going to do it to actually launching. So, it was pretty quick.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, that’s blazing fast. I mean, that’s really unusually quick. Congratulations on having the ability to pull that off. That’s a great story just by itself. How did you kind of do the Kickstarter? Because I know a lot of folks out there listening maybe have participated in Kickstarter, but maybe haven’t done it. Is there any lessons learned from kind of doing a successful Kickstarter?

Valerie Emanuel: I don’t know if I would ever do crowdfunding ever again, just because the internet landscape has changed so much in the last few years. I honestly wouldn’t discourage anyone from doing it. I think there’s two things. Number one is set up your email list very soon. I mean, if you’ve been doing this in any business, but making sure that you actually have people who are going to come to your page on the first day, pledge on the first day is really important.

Valerie Emanuel: Number two, we set a really, really high number of $50,000. And so, in order to reach that number, because we didn’t have a big email list, I don’t even think I was taking any emails. I was just posting on social media and hoping people saw us. We had to really get some friends who were going to invest as angel investors to like bigger Kickstarter donations. My mom did a bigger Kickstarter donation. And then, we had lots of pledges that came in that were pretty big, but just making sure you have people and then setting a low amount.

Valerie Emanuel: So, don’t be like, “Oh. We want to raise $50,000.” Maybe you want to raise $5,000, because if you reach $5,000 in two days, it’s going to look great to the algorithm versus it taking 50 days to reach $50,000, if that makes sense. I didn’t know that’s how it worked either. And there’s also companies that can help you run ads and do all this stuff for Kickstarter. I didn’t know that. I wish I would have hired one of them before we started.

Lee Kantor: So, it’s one of those things where you kind of have to have a bunch of people in a list or a database of some kind that care about what you’re doing to begin with. It’s not a build it and they will come kind of thing where you just put out a great idea and then all of a sudden the masses are going to find you somehow.

Valerie Emanuel: Yeah, I wish it was like that. And I was hoping that we’d be picked up on one of these newsletters, these Kickstarter newsletters, or that they feature us as a company, but you just can’t rely on that at all. And in order to do that, we would have had to reach our goal, like within the first 48 hours, which we didn’t. In the first 48 hours, I think we got, like, $3,000, which was just what? Less than 10 percent of our goal, less than 5 percent.

Valerie Emanuel: So, yeah, but you should already be building these email lists anyway if you’re starting your company. If your company is going to launch in six months, launch the website today and start collecting emails today, it is the most important thing you’ll do.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. I tell that to people all the time that that’s kind of the foundational work you have to do before you even begin beginning. Because if you don’t have a bunch of people that care about you, it’s going to be hard to get that escape velocity.

Valerie Emanuel: Yeah. Social media, I mean, the ROI, you know, it’s okay for us. It’s like 2X. But our ROI on our newsletters, which are the emails that we’ve been collecting, is 20 to 40X just depending on the content.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. And you control it. You can put it out and everybody will see it as opposed to, you know, social media where you’re part of the algorithm and maybe a few percent are going to see any given post.

Valerie Emanuel: Totally.

Lee Kantor: So, now you have your product, you launch your product, you start getting momentum, how did you kind of level up and get to the point where you are today?

Valerie Emanuel: Oh. I mean, there was so much. I think we’re really strategic about our launch, but also just didn’t know a lot. And so, sales in the first few months were like, there was tons of days where we just didn’t have a single sale. But when we first launched, we launched into a grocery store that’s called Erewhon, the very popular grocery store. And we knew that if we could get in there and solidify ourselves as a brand that’s selling really well, this would convince people that we had a great product because it’s hard to succeed on a shelf like that. And then, we also launched into Amazon. So, those were two things we did in the first 60 days.

Valerie Emanuel: But we didn’t have a big marketing budget and tons of marketing spend, so in terms of acquiring new customers, that was kind of difficult because it was all through social media. I still didn’t have my email capture really set up that well. And I think another thing that we did was we launched into a bunch of small grocery stores, so that kind of kept money coming in. But still, like in the first few months, we’re talking, you know, $3,000 a month, then $5,000, then $8,000, then $8,000 again for the next four months, and then $15,000 a month, finally. You know what I mean?

Valerie Emanuel: So, it’s been a slow build, but now we’re kind of getting into those retail stores. And in the next six months where it’s like this store has got 50 locations, this store’s got 200 locations, and so that kind of takes the business you’re doing and just 5X’s it. And so, it’s definitely slow, though. Like in the beginning, you will have those days where you don’t have a single order and that’s really depressing, or some months where a grocery store just doesn’t reorder. But then, you start to know, like, this is what I need to do with marketing to turn that, this is what I need to do with social media to get that number higher.

Valerie Emanuel: And really figuring it out in A/B testing what your audience is actually reacting to, what makes your audience go into stores, and also what keeps the retailers coming back. Is that sampling the employees or sampling the customers? Is that making sure that everyone has a discount code so they can all try your product? It’s small things like that, but it’s very hands-on growth in the beginning.

Lee Kantor: Now, did you or your co-founder have a background in kind of working with grocery stores and those kind of retail establishments or was this something you were having to learn as you went?

Valerie Emanuel: Me and my co-founder had no experience in CPG at all. So, our experience has been luckily not putting out tons of money and making really expensive mistakes. But you do make some semi-expensive mistakes. We’ve only raised like $200,000 for the company. So, you know, there’s just been times where we had to really rely on other founders to give us information about how we should function with distribution, and should we be distributing ourselves and shipping ourselves, or leaving it to a 3PL.

Valerie Emanuel: Her background is in molecular biology, she used to work in a lab. And then, my background is in influencer marketing. And even with marketing, digital marketing versus influencer marketing, completely different subject. Like we were on Squarespace, I think, for the first eight months, and we had $20,000 in abandoned cards. And then, we switched to Shopify and completely changed that. I would not have known that we should have been on Shopify if I didn’t talk to a bunch of other founders. So, things like that, that’s why I think it’s important to be in community for whatever type of company you’re building.

Lee Kantor: And speaking of community, why was it important for you to join the WBEC-West community?

Valerie Emanuel: Oh. I mean, every week I’m getting emails about different phone calls we can have about finances or trademarks or IP. There’s just so many resources. I also think getting the women-owned certification has been so important for us, because as a small brand, there’s just so many pluses to having the women-owned certification. It’s like waived slotting fees and also being able to be women-certified on Amazon. And, honestly, it’s been such a positive thing for our business to do, especially as we’re this small and still 100 percent women-owned.

Lee Kantor: Now, is there a story around the name Rif?

Valerie Emanuel: Yeah. So, funny story is I lost a trademark battle when we first started. The name was going to be Reef, and I thought our entire brand would be around ocean plastic and I was like, “Oh, maybe we’ll make, like, tampon applicators out of ocean bound plastic.” And like, “I don’t think consumers really like that.” And there’s also a brand called Reef that makes surf gear, so they were like, no.

Valerie Emanuel: But I also liked that R stood for regenerative, so Regenerative International Female. I don’t remember if me or my ex came up with it or we came up with it together. But after talking to him one day, after being super sad about losing that trademark battle, that’s how it came about. And then, I actually was still pronouncing Rif, reef. And then, I was like, no, it was too close to the other thing. Let’s just make it Rif, so it’s like maybe German sounding or some like Bavarian language just to make it kind of hard Rif. And then, we added Care because my co-founder was like names that have C sound in them consumers remember, so added Rif Care.

Lee Kantor: And then, has the brand kind of expanded beyond the initial products that you started with?

Valerie Emanuel: Yeah. I mean, we’re not making tons of products, but we do have, let’s see, one, two, three, four, five, six SKUs at the moment. And so, we have our pads regular, super, and overnight, which are made with hemp, first on the market, really proud of those. And then, next, we launched period underwear. Those were actually made with hemp eucalyptus fiber and organic cotton. They’re BFA-free and they’re just reusable underwear that you bleed into, you wash and repeat. And then, we also have tampons. But we’re super proud of everything we’ve done so far and the way we’ve been able to to innovate in products. So, yeah, we’ll continue building eventually. Just nothing new maybe for the next 12 months.

Lee Kantor: Now, are you building a community with the people who are buying the products?

Valerie Emanuel: Yeah. I mean, we’ve had such amazing feedback on social media lately. Earlier this year, we did a reality show called Side Hustlers that we gained a few hundred followers from that. And we also found that from that, we were getting so much more engagement. Because I think with social media before, it felt like we were just posting things and they were going nowhere. Of course, there were videos that went viral and there were videos that people responded to and sent us DMs about.

Valerie Emanuel: But I think people getting to see me and my co-founder on TV and getting to know our personalities a little bit better, and then just putting ourselves out there a little bit more has changed things. There was an article that was picked up at The Daily Mail on this video we did that went viral about childbirth. And just things like that have kind of inspired people to come and talk to us about their periods and their health and their body. So, it’s all been pretty positive just putting ourselves out there.

Lee Kantor: And then, with your background as an influencer, is that a lesson that other entrepreneurs can learn from? That be vulnerable, put yourself out there, and if you are part of the brand kind of lean into that?

Valerie Emanuel: Yeah. I mean, I think I put myself out there more than many other period care founders. There’s me and one other, and we’re changing our pads and talking about tampons and talking about our bodies in a way that is shame-free. I mean, my platform is really about health, beauty and women’s health in general.

Valerie Emanuel: But I always tell other founders like, “Look. You don’t need to be the face of your brand. But if you don’t have tons of money, you’re going to have to do it for a little bit.” And, also, you want to be able to set the tone of your brand and the company culture so that when you bring someone in eventually, there’s already kind of a blueprint for how you want the look and feel to be of your company.

Lee Kantor: Right. I mean, you’re the culture. I mean, you’re kind of the voice, face at the beginning, but at some point it grows beyond you.

Valerie Emanuel: Totally.

Lee Kantor: So, what do you need more of? How can we help you? You mentioned more stores to put your product in. Do you need more funding? What do you need and how can we help?

Valerie Emanuel: I mean, right now we’re actually raising a bridge round through angel investors. So, we raised $100,000 from that TV show I told you about via Ashley Graham, who’s a supermodel and just author, all around amazing woman entrepreneur. So, we’re raising $400,000 more. So, currently talking to angel investors and just anyone who’s interested in Rif, because there are opportunities for some of the biggest stores in the United States and also global opportunities that we want to do. But, you know, we’re growing small and we’re growing smart, so we have to think about how we can actually fund those opportunities.

Valerie Emanuel: Another thing is just check us out, give us a follow at Rif Care online. Interact with us. We have so many [inaudible] that we always put in our stories and on our posts, which is even interacting or sharing with a friend is always so helpful.

Lee Kantor: And that’s R-I-F-C-A-R-E.com?

Valerie Emanuel: R-I-F-C-A-R-E — sorry. R-I-F-C-A-R-E.com or R-I-F-C-A-R-E on Instagram and TikTok.

Lee Kantor: Well, Valerie, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Valerie Emanuel: Thank you for having me.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Women In Motion.