A Diaper Is Not One Product Resized

I started my career in mother-and-baby products, so baby diapers are a category I can never quite stop looking at. And there is a mistake in that industry that is so common most consumers never notice it.

A veteran engineer put it to me plainly: many diaper brands, going from newborn to S, M, and L, are basically doing one thing — scaling the same product up and down. Same materials, slightly higher absorption, different size label. It sounds reasonable. It is not.

A three-month-old is not a small one-year-old

Different ages are not the same child printed at different scales. The engineer broke it into three differences.

First, skin. Newborn skin is thinner and still developing. Its tolerance for the same material is simply not on the same level as a one-year-old's.

Second, movement. A small baby lies still most of the day. Then she learns to roll, crawl, and run. The mechanical stress a diaper absorbs — twisting, stretching, compression — is completely different at each stage.

Third, what goes into the diaper. Breastfed babies produce frequent, loose stools. A toddler's input is entirely different in volume, frequency, and consistency.

A product that only changes size answers none of those three differences. It is the same answer given to three different questions.

The design that stuck with me

He told me about a diaper from Kimberly-Clark that solved a real problem with structure instead of material. The topsheet used raised points at the front and recessed points at the back. The raised points helped fluid pass through quickly. The recessed points worked like tiny pockets that helped hold runny newborn stool where it landed, instead of letting it spread everywhere.

Front and back, same product, two opposite structures — because the two ends of the baby do different things. That is what designing for a real user looks like.

What this has to do with pads and period pants

I keep this story in mind when we design sanitary pads and menstrual pants, because the temptation to "resize one product for everyone" exists in our category too. A pad for a student sitting through classes and a pad for heavy overnight flow are not the same product with different lengths. A period pant for sleeping and one for a working day differ in rise, in waist elastic, in where the absorbent zone sits.

Segmentation is not a marketing trick. It is where product design starts. The group you are willing to design into the bone for becomes your loyal group. Before we develop anything, we decide who the product is for — and just as importantly, who it is not for.

If you are building a brand and your supplier offers one base scaled into ten SKUs, ask them what actually changes between the SKUs. The answer tells you whether they are designing products or just cutting material.

Li Genyuan is the founder of Hunan Nafei Biotechnology. Before feminine hygiene, he spent fifteen years in mother-and-baby distribution in Hunan. More from Founder's Notes.