Danielle spoke with Susan C. Allen Augustin, Co-Founder & Chief Brand Officer of Here We Flo, which makes natural plant-based personal care for life’s messiest moments. They tackle sustainability and stigma with natural products and funny, feminist and fierce approaches. KEY TAKEAWAYS Susan shares how Here We Flo came about from meeting Co-Founder Tara in the toilets at The London School of Economics, to taking the business global. Menstrual care brands have always been built around being discrete. Susan explains how they had to cut through a lot of cultural shame and embarrassment around menstruating, and build a dedicated fanbase. Susan tells the story of how they won the Sky Zero Footprint Fund, which recognises brands that are committed to driving positive behaviour change and tangible impact towards a more sustainable future. This secured them £1 million worth of ad spend with Sky. Here We Flo launched their products in Tesco recently, Boots is a long term partner who’ve quadrupled their distribution and they are soon to be launching with the UK’s second largest grocer.  BEST MOMENTS ‘It was really helped by a lot of progress around the climate change movement and recognising the damage that single use plastics were doing in the ocean. As a small business, there's only so much pressure you can put on your manufacturers or suppliers to use alternative materials’. ‘There's a reason why funny is first, and funny feminists and fierce is really using humour to break the ice, because there is generally a stigma and a shame that's been socialised around these topics’. ‘Early on, there was a tendency to challenge or question what we were doing, but we met in one of the top universities in the world. We did the research and Tara wrote a dissertation on the business case for this so what we were saying, we weren't saying flippantly’. ‘We were really intentional from the start to spend the time thinking about our mission, our vision, our values, and then we got to design our recruitment processes, which is super important. That's how you're bringing people into the company and those values are a part of that from that first phone interview’. CONNECT WITH THE GUEST Here We Flo’s website: https://www.hereweflo.co/ Search ‘Here We Flo’ on social media ABOUT THE HOST - DANIELLE CLARKE Danielle Clarke is a Brand Strategist and spends her time consulting and working with health and wellness business owners to help them attract and retain their ideal customers. GRAB YOU 3 ACTIONABLE STEPS FOR BRAND GROWTH: https://danielle-clarke.ck.page/b1043e5d05 WORK WITH DANIELLE TO BUILD THE BRAND STRATEGIES YOUR BUSINESS NEEDS TO GROW: https://calendly.com/d/48p-6ck-vy4 CONNECT WITH DANIELLE ON LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielle-clarke-brand-strategy-consultant/ SUPPORT THE SHOW: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/danielleclarke  This show was brought to you by: The Media Insiders Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.