Introducing BeYou - the what and the why

Post number 1 (hopefully of many!)

It’s a big day when you finally launch a business you’ve been working on for over a year! One full of anxiety, yet the starry eyes of wishful hope. Hope that we can help young girls and women all around the World. To really understand that last sentence you need a bit of background.

Our flagship product (the one we are launching with) is an all natural patch which helps soothe period cramp pain. Now it’s no secret that no woman is created equal, but when it comes to period cramp pain there is a pretty standard bell curve:

Graph showing a normal distribution of period cramp pain among women

Some girls just don’t get any cramping pains (jealous much?! 😠); you get some who experience debilitating pain to the point where trips to the hospital go hand in hand with their period - and then you have the majority who get cramp pains on a sliding scale somewhere in the middle!

Even at an individual level, not all periods are made equal either. There are so many factors which can make some months worse than others. From hydration and what we eat, to what we’ve actually been doing in the days leading up to that dreaded time of month.

We all have women in our lives that fit into each of those three categories. And all of them have a different way of coping. The two most common things we do are popping pills (which nobody really wants to do), and hot water bottles. Now there are huge negatives to both of those.

Water bottles last for a very limited amount of time, and you have to lug it around all day. Not to mention the million and one ways you’ve tried keeping it in place without holding on to it! On top of that, hot water bottles just aren’t discreet (and why should they need to be?).

Then there’s the whole putting-chemicals-into-your-body thing. This one is pretty self explanatory, but so many mothers we know are stuck in a dilemma. They want to help with the pain their daughters have (especially when they first start), but at the same time they hate the idea of periodically (pun intended!) giving them chemicals to help deal with the cramps. Not to mention that absorption takes time, is generally known to not be that effective, and the human body in all its wonder can respond in a million and one ways!

There just isn’t a natural product out there to help alleviate the pain.

Enter the BeYou Period Cramp Pain Relief Patch.

People often turn off when they hear about natural products, but a lot of the time it’s because (a) the product is a scam and has no scientific basis, or (b) they can’t understand why it works because many ‘natural-only’ companies do little to explain the science behind their products. We want to be transparent so that you know EXACTLY what is being used on your body. There’s a whole host of information on our site, and widely available on the internet as to why the ingredients in our patch work. It’s a proprietary combination of menthol and eucalyptus oil.

You can read more about the science here.

But the proof, of course, is in the pudding. Over the last year we’ve been giving out the patch to friends, friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends… basically anyone who would need it! We needed to see if our product worked as well as we thought (we even created a placebo group just to be sure!). Once we started getting some really great feedback, parents (family friends in particular) started getting interested and asked us for samples for people they knew whose daughters are known to get severe cramp pains.

The results spoke for themselves.

We couldn’t have been happier, to start out with 47 of the 50 girls we gave the real sample to LOVED it. They said they felt a weird tingly feeling and then their period cramp pain subsided for hours. To be thorough we asked those 3 girls why they didn’t like it. One said it just didn’t work (although she still asks us for more every month… you know who you are! 😜). The other tester said she was simply used to her hot water bottle and that she was expecting it to provide heat so it was just confusing. We actually changed our packaging at this point because she wasn’t the only one who said they were expecting heat, but instead got a tingle! What is the tingle you ask? It’s difficult to explain, but it’s definitely not heat! That link above should help though.

By far the best moment we’ve had to date though, is when a family friend of one of the founders mentioned they knew someone who had been hospitalised because of the severity of her pain. Naturally, we were curious. Could our product be THAT useful? She absolutely LOVED it! She said the patch genuinely helped to make her period more bearable. Bear in mind this is someone who’s regularly on prescription medicine, what she loved the most was that it was a totally natural product. In some ways that conversation was a catalyst because she actually gave us another call telling us to get the business up and running ASAP so she could get more!

That was by far the most rewarding moment so far

Hearing about these experiences has really helped us keep going and we’ll definitely be getting some of these girls to share them with you in the coming weeks and months.

A higher purpose

Time to get serious. Why is it that everyone squirms even at the idea of a period? You don’t even have to mention it, and in some places you actually can’t mention it. It’s totally natural and we’re tired of the taboo surrounding it. Gone are the times where women’s intimate health was something only to be whispered, like it doesn’t exist… and why? Just because men thought it was gross? The really surprising thing about this is how long it’s taken people to wake up to – and face up to – the negative impact that this weird sense of societal shame over periods has had on women. Along the way we’ve encountered it over and over and we want to change that.

We’ve all experienced it. Whether you find yourself hiding a sanitary towel or tampon up your sleeve on the way to the toilet, or you’re too embarrassed to tell your new boyfriend that you’re on; deep down you have that niggling feeling that you can’t explain. Something that feels wrong. But why?

We believe that it’s not good enough for us just to create natural products for women, we need to change perceptions. We want to empower women to be able to talk openly about periods (if they want to). Why does everyone always talk about discreet period products? If you don’t want to talk about periods because they gross YOU out, then we’re all for it. But if you don’t talk about it because you feel like you can’t (because of what society has conditioned into us) then join the movement!

So yeah, it’s not good enough to just create natural products, we need people to understand and appreciate all that is natural about a woman. That is our calling. And we’ll be working hard to fight for it. We know we’re not the first to say that, but we hope we can make a difference in our own way - it’s not just about women, it’s about all of us.

In fact, while we’re at it, why do so many people think natural or herbal products are inferior to over the counter drugs? Yes there have been plenty of scams over the years, and no, not all herbs are better than chemical medicines. But there is often so much science behind all natural solutions which demonstrate they not only work, but are better for your body! Generally speaking, there are fewer side effects, and your body doesn’t need increasingly higher doses. If you’ve ever thought about eating clean, conceptually, it’s the same thing - your body is your temple! So why put chemicals into it all the time? While there are plenty of examples out there of companies which only create natural products, we believe there’s plenty of room to improve perceptions.

If you’ve made it all the way down here, thanks so much for reading! You’re statistically in the minority of people who read articles this long. Its probably cheeky to ask if you want to be an ambassador and help us spread the word (well, both words - the product, and the movement). But hey, it’s worth a shot. If you ARE interested, please do get in touch (email, social media, whatever works for you) and hopefully we can make a difference together!

We’ve had a fun journey so far, for all of you who have joined us already, thank you. And for all those yet to, hop on! It’s going to be a fun and rewarding ride!

Stay tuned - and in the meantime, BeYou.