Fémme de la Fémme

By Rhiannon McGregor 13 : 09 : 2016 Femme : Yoai : Feminine Care

China – Fémme is a new sanitary product designed to combat the taboo of tampons.

Only 2% of Chinese women use tampons as opposed to 70% in the West
The packaging has been designed to rebrand tampons as a high-end product

Creative design and branding agency Pearlfisher worked with the Chinese brand Yoai to create the new tampon range. Taking a more luxury approach to packaging, Fémme uses the Chinese symbol for womanhood as its logo and a simple sans serif typeface to resemble other high-end retailers.

‘We wanted to use design to symbolise femininity without overtly communicating the concepts of tampon or period,’ Natalie Chun, creative director at Pearlfisher, tells LS:N Global. ‘Everything from the identity to the packaging structure to the auxiliary brand material was designed with the intention of injecting confidence and positivity into a category defined by apologetic expressions of femininity.’

Tampons account for just 1% of the £60.7bn ($80.7bn, €71.9bn) feminine care product industry in China. According to research by Daxue, the retail value of the feminine hygiene sector in China is set to grow by 47% by 2018, so the untapped potential of tampons is enormous if brands can combat the perception that tampons are bad for the user. Only 2% of the population use the product at present because of the widely held belief that tampons compromise the user’s virginity.