After posting about LOLA, the feminine hygiene industry's newest and coolest kid on the block, I caught up with founders Jordana Kier and Alexandra Friedman to learn more about their company, use of cotton, and what's to come.

We initially envisioned LOLA as a subscription service for existing tampons. We were able to get our groceries, our beauty products, and our dry cleaning delivered to our door, but for some reason we were still making last-minute runs to the drugstore every month.

As we began to research the tampon market, however, it quickly became clear to us that the more pressing issue than delivery was lack of transparency about the ingredients that went into tampons. Trying to figure out what went into the products we had been using since we were teenagers was a guessing game — a result of the fact that feminine care brands aren’t required to disclose exactly what’s in their products.

Contrary to popular belief, cotton isn’t the primary ingredient in most tampons. In fact, they’re typically made from a blend of the artificial fibers rayon and polyester. To us, it just didn’t make sense. If we care about everything else we put in our bodies, this shouldn’t be any different.

So we set out to create LOLA, a modern approach to feminine care. Made from 100% cotton certified by Cotton Inc., our products are hypoallergenic and don’t contain any synthetics, chemicals, or dyes. LOLA tampons are wrapped in a BPA-free compact plastic applicator so you don’t have to compromise simple and natural ingredients for comfort. In addition to full ingredient transparency, we provide women the freedom to easily tailor the absorbency assortment and frequency of deliveries to fit their schedules.

The choice to use cotton is simple. Cotton is the most widely used natural fiber in the world: it’s breathable, comfortable, strong and soft, and we already use cotton in pretty much everything we keep close to our skin. Additionally, it is more environmentally friendly than products containing artificial fibers, as LOLA cotton is 100% biodegradable. Given the choice between materials we understand and ones we don't, we would choose cotton every single time.

Our goal right now is for women to feel good about what they’re putting in their bodies and have peace of mind about what’s in their feminine care products. A lot of people mistakenly assume that tampons are already made out of cotton, so our efforts start with first raising awareness for consumers.

We’re focusing first and foremost on improving the tampon experience, and we have plans to expand our product offering in the future. LOLA’s vision is to provide all types of feminine care products for women in a relatable, straightforward and honest way. We’ll always use 100% cotton for our tampons because it’s a natural material we trust.

We want women to feel empowered to ask questions about her feminine care and informed enough to make educated decisions about her product choices. Since launching LOLA, we’ve already been surprised by the overwhelming amount of women willing to share their own personal stories and engage in a larger conversation about transparency in the industry – we think we’ve already opened up a dialogue on a topic that, for a lot of reasons, has flown under the radar for too many years. For us, LOLA is an easy and attainable solution for a woman who wants to make a small but important tweak to her life. We feel confident that, while most women don’t necessarily enjoy their periods, LOLA can offer one less thing to worry about.

We love working on a product and brand that we actually use ourselves. Every time we use our product we are reminded that we are changing the status quo for ourselves and for our customers. Tampons are just the tip of the iceberg for us, as there are many other products that we ourselves or our friends and family use that have similar industry transparency issues. We aren’t going to stop until we have developed a full line of natural products for ourselves and for our customers.

We are also continually motivated by the women around us – from our customers who constantly remind us of that “a-ha” moment when they realized they had never given thought to what was in their tampons...to our growing team which brings a new level of excitement and commitment to our mission with each additional member. At the end of the day, women deserve better from their feminine care brands and we want to lead the way to a more thoughtful, personal and natural feminine care experience.