Want to Launch a Sanitary Pad or Menstrual Pants Brand? Before You Find a Factory, Measure Your Track With These 4 Rulers

Before You Find a Factory, Measure Your Track With 4 Rulers

Over 25 years in fast-moving consumer goods — and the last 6 deep in the hygiene products industry — I've met plenty of people who arrive with an idea they're sure will sell. The first sentence is almost always the same: "Boss Li, help me develop a product — what's the sampling cost?"

My answer is always a question back: have you actually measured the track you want to enter?

In this industry, the most painful failure is rarely "we couldn't make the product." It's "we made it well, and it still wouldn't sell." Not because the founder didn't work hard — but because the track was wrong from the start. Pick the wrong track and every later step — development, bundling, selling — just pays interest on that first mistake.

So this piece isn't about products. It's about one thing: how a hygiene entrepreneur uses four rulers to pick the right first track.

Ruler 1 — Scale: is the plate big enough to feed you?

The first ruler is the simplest. Is this a big plate or a small one? A small plate under 100 million with no growth — don't touch it. No scale means no room for error; no room for error means one mistake and you're out.

But the reverse warning matters more: a big plate is not automatically a good business. Sanitary pads are the classic big plate — essential, high-frequency, huge volume, everyone wants in. Yet exactly because it's so big and so stable, the leaders locked their positions long ago. As a new player you walk into veterans who out-calculate you on cost and out-distribute you on channels.

Big isn't good. Small isn't meatless. Hold that thought.

Ruler 2 — Trend: is it still climbing?

The second ruler checks momentum. I keep one vivid contrast in mind: as birth rates fell, maternal-and-baby stores closed one after another down the same street — while pet-supply shops on that very street multiplied and expanded, because more people are keeping pets and spending freely on their "fur children." Same market, opposite directions. Enter the category still moving up.

Ruler 3 — Ceiling: how high can it go?

The third ruler is the one people skip: the ceiling. Scale is how wide the plate is; the ceiling is how tall it can stack. Some tracks look crowded but cap out low — you grind to the top and hit a wall. Choosing a track isn't choosing its current size; it's choosing how high it can still grow.

Ruler 4 — Brand concentration: what share do the top 10 hold?

The fourth ruler is, to me, the deadliest: brand concentration — what share the top ten brands hold together.

One rule underneath it all: the higher the top-10 share, the more the positions are taken and the harder a newcomer squeezes in; the lower it is, the more users are still shopping for new brands, and the wider the seam. Apply that to hygiene's sub-categories and you see completely different faces:

• Baby diapers: by Euromonitor retail figures, the top ten hold a steady 50–60%, still led by foreign names like Pampers and Huggies. That's not low, and with falling birth rates a newcomer should be extra careful — though the leaders' grip has been loosening, and domestic brands like babycare climbed precisely by riding the e-commerce channel shift.
• Sanitary pads: this one deserves a closer look. China's top-ten share sits around 33% as of 2025, and even the category leader (Sophie) holds only about 7–8%. Contrast that with mature markets, where concentration runs far higher: in Japan a single leader (Unicharm) holds roughly half the sanitary pad market, and in the United States the top two brands together account for over 40%. So China's sanitary pad market is still very much a "fragmented market" — and that's exactly how B&A's "Free Point" grew, chewing its way up from under 1% share year by year.
• Adult diapers: the top five hold roughly half (about 50%), with Hengan and similar players settled in the first tier; but below them a large field of regional brands and eldercare-channel players are still tearing open gaps — far from "a few names decide everything."

My rule of thumb: if the top ten exceed 70%, I'd advise against entering. None of hygiene's sub-tracks have hit that line yet — but the closer they get, the tighter the door shuts. The window isn't open forever. Enter early, enter narrow.

Folding the 4 rulers: three don'ts, three dos

Measured together, it compresses to one line — three don'ts, three dos.

Three don'ts: don't touch a small plate with no scale and no growth; don't touch heavy-capital, saturated tracks where concentration passes 70%; don't touch fake "save-the-planet" needs.

Three dos: prioritize dark-horse markets (not necessarily biggest, but trending up); prioritize compound cuts where you can add value; prioritize low-concentration categories where users are still choosing new brands.

So where's hygiene's small cut?

Put the four rulers on the hygiene industry and the answer is clear. The main sanitary pad track is large, essential, high-repurchase — but growth is slowing and leader mindshare is set. It's a mature track of "high certainty, but you compete on efficiency" — hard for a new brand to launch on alone.

The windows still open are in other categories: menstrual pants / period pants, adult diapers, disposable underwear. Their common thread — penetration still climbing, competition still fragmented, user brand-mind still unset. In other words, positions remain, and you can still squeeze in.

That's the small cut. It may not be the biggest, but it trends up, isn't crowded, you can enter, and it can still grow.

How to cut small? One word: add.

Finding the small cut isn't enough. The real players do addition on top of it.

In hygiene, the dimensions you can "add" are many, and they're all real, purchase-worthy needs:

• menstrual pants + postpartum care → postpartum moms' menstrual pants (wound-friendly, easy to move)
• menstrual pants + activewear → a gym-and-yoga version built for movement
• sanitary pads + sensitive skin → additive-free, cotton, mildly acidic, skin-friendly
• adult diapers + dignity care → products and content that let older incontinence users stay dignified

Every dimension you add moves you from a crowded mega-track into a smaller, less cut-throat, higher-margin seam.

A small cut is what tears open a big business.

Finally

The first step of a hygiene startup was never "find a factory and develop a product." It's taking these four rulers and measuring the track in your mind: enough scale? rising trend? high ceiling? low concentration?

Only after measuring do you know whether this step is worth taking, and where to take it.

If you're weighing a hygiene brand of your own — I'm Li Genyuan, Foreign Trade Manager at Guangdong Nafei Industrial Co., Ltd. Nafei runs an integrated manufacturing-and-trading operation: our own brands on one side, and OEM/ODM for sanitary pads and menstrual pants on the other, produced at our Guangdong facility. When you've measured your track and you're ready to produce, our OEM sanitary pads and private-label sanitary products lines, together with our menstrual pants manufacturer and sanitary pads manufacturer capabilities, are built for exactly this.

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