Sunny's Journey: Building a Revolution in Period Care from Idea to Impact

Written by: Cynthia Belardo

Many of you know the challenges that startups face, especially with the need to stay lean and take the risk of making progress under immense volatility of external factors. Well, I want to share our story with you.

Drew and I started Sunny because our periods sucked. Like anyone who bleeds will tell you- there's the extremely painful cramping (a study from University College London shows that the pain of menstrual cramps are comparable to that of a heart attack), the mood swings, the uncomfy feeling of bleeding and bleeding for 2-7 days, mental exhaustion, for example: the constant switching of products to keep from leaking onto your clothes and a hyper-awareness of how much time as passed so you can switch your product before getting close to the risk of toxic shock. And now on top of all that, a recent study finds traces of heavy metals in tampons.

In order to solve a problem for ourselves and meet our need for a safe, convenient and manageable period care experience, we had to create a new product. That was only possible through our decisions as young 20-year-olds to start learning about period care. Little did we know that our curiosity would take us both to pitch and win prizes for our new ideas, win grants to start R&D, and build a new company over the past 5+ years together (during a global pandemic). We have gone on to raise $2.8M to complete R&D, market research, branding, build our nationwide 6+ part vendor supply chain, protect our IP with design and utility patents, and create the dream team. This team cultivated a community of 23,000 pre-order customers, which equates to $850k in pre-order revenue, ship out our first 5,000 units of version 1 of our product, and achieve the first and only FDA 510k Clearance for a menstrual cup and applicator. 

However, throughout this journey, Drew and I have faced imposter syndrome every single day as underrepresented founders - young women who represent BIPOC, second generation immigrant and LGBTQ+ communities. It took us some time to find our way in an older, cis white male dominated industry. We've faced team layoffs of that dream team which broke our hearts, constant runway stress as a capital-intensive consumer and medical device company, unsustainable manufacturing and supply chain challenges, delayed shipments to customers, rejections from investors because they didn't understand the innovation, rejections by vendors who didn't wish to be associated with a period care product, and much much more.

Despite the barriers we face, we've learned how to do more with less because of our strong dedication to our mission. We’ve decided time and time again that we have an incredible opportunity to be the representation that we so strongly want to see in our industry. It always was and always will be this: to co-create better solutions with our community for all of us, for all our bodies. To commit to seeing everyone wholly - sustainability, honesty, giveback, inclusion and mental health.