The earliest sanitary napkins

The earliest sanitary napkins

The earliest prototype of sanitary napkins can be traced back to World War I, when French nurses used bandages and medicinal cotton to make simple dressings for wounded soldiers, which inspired the invention of sanitary napkins. In the 1920s, Kimberly-Clark Corporation of the United States launched the world's first commercial sanitary napkin "Kotex". It was originally made of fiber cotton and fine gauze, and was fixed to underwear with pins. Although it was not very convenient, it opened a new chapter in women's menstrual care and gradually evolved into today's comfortable, convenient and diverse modern sanitary napkins, providing important hygiene protection for women's menstrual periods around the world.

The "first sanitary napkin" story is fun at dinner, but what buyers should take from it is simpler: this category has been engineered for over a century, and most of the gains came from material science, not marketing. Cellulose, then super-absorbent polymer, then breathable films. That lineage is why a modern pad is thinner and drier than what our mothers used.

If you're choosing a supplier today, the China sanitary pad manufacturer guide breaks down what actually separates a good OEM from a weak one.