How LOLA uses their Recharge subscription to empower members to give back
LOLA came onto the subscription scene fast in 2015 with the announcement of a personalized subscription service shipping period products right to customers’ doors. Game-changer.
In fact, LOLA’s allure was not just that customers could customize their monthly delivery, but also that all LOLA products are made with high quality, natural ingredients—something their competitors weren’t promising.
“LOLA was founded on ingredient transparency,” says Anna Stearns, Director of Digital Product for LOLA. “We like to say that we were founded by women with sky-high standards—not just in ingredients.”
While LOLA initially set out to make tampons from the safest organic cotton available, the company soon realized they wanted to expand to be a resource for all sorts of reproductive health issues, from period support groups to offering accessible health resources online (including their “Ask an Expert” feature answered by top gynecologists) to tackling legislation that fights for reproductive equity.
More than just a product
This shift to offering more than just a product drove founders Alexandra Friedman and Jordana Kier to ultimately create the first lifelong brand for reproductive health.
With this in mind, they set out to find new ways of supporting their customers along their entire reproductive journey.
“We love our members; they are really at the heart of everything we do here at LOLA. One of the biggest gaps we all realized is that there wasn’t a great place to talk about women’s issues, and moreover, there was still this bit of taboo around it,” says Stearns.
“We work with top-tier gynecologists, health advocates, and educators on our LOLA Collective to help drive our content and answer questions that our customers have about their health through a dedicated “Ask an Expert” space on our blog The Spot, and share information on a myriad of issues that go well beyond the period. In pre-Covid times, we even held an in-person period support group at our offices in NYC!”
The LOLA mission
“This mission to be there, we take quite seriously,” says Stearns. LOLA thinks about this mission across their product, content, and giving program, and it comes to life in a few ways:
- To provide—and disclose—quality ingredients in every product.
- To offer trusted and accessible health resources from their collective of experts.
- To drive access to essential period products through their LOLA Give Back program.
Giving back, the Recharge way
“LOLA fosters an environment of giving,” says Stearns. “Our community really has a “give back” identity that is something we here at LOLA are incredibly proud of.”
That mentality, paired with Recharge’s subscription capabilities, lets LOLA community members add a donation product to their monthly subscription deliveries. Recharge handles the initial checkout and recurring monthly payments, and keeps track of the inventory getting donated.
Since starting checkout donation around the holidays this past year, the LOLA community has fully embraced this extra way to give back. Currently, upwards of 15% of members have opted to add in a monthly donation to their own subscriptions. Since 2016, LOLA has donated over 6 million period products to shelters and communities in need.
Among those communities: LOLA’s longtime nonprofit partner I Support the Girls, an organization that community members now have the opportunity to donate to directly via the partnership with Recharge. The organization seeks to ensure women never have to choose between feeding themselves and purchasing things like basic necessities that impact their personal health.
As founder Dana Marlowe says, “Pandemics don’t stop periods.” In 2020, with the coronavirus, I Support the Girls has seen a 35% uptick in requests for donations, which LOLA and other brands are passionately addressing.
So, what’s next for LOLA?
“I mean, with the power of a strong network of a dedicated community,” says Stearns, “anything is possible.”
