Thinx is on the move.
Just in time for International Women’s Day, the period-panty brand is entering 558 Walmart stores, as well as walmart.com.
It’s the next step,” Maria Molland, chief executive officer of Thinx, told WWD in an exclusive interview. “We still have quite a few people who don’t know about the category, don’t know about our brand. Therefore, getting on the shelves and being in front of these folks is going to be key to us really disrupting the space and being in more underwear drawers.”
The Walmart partnership follows Thinx expansion into the mass channel a year ago, when the brand entered Target stores and its e-commerce business, as well as CVS, Urban Outfitters and London Drugs in Canada, at lower price points than Thinx’s own direct-to-consumer business.
Molland said the expansion into the mass channel was so successful — which she said early last year was worth about $10 million and grew more than 200 percent in 2021, year-over-year — that the brand is now turning down third-party offers.
“We just don’t have the operational capabilities to do a ton of retailers all at the same time and to do them all well, which we know is important,” she explained. “So we’ve been very thoughtful about which ones we roll out. We’re looking to launch in [third-party retailers] that have large sets of customers that we think are really complementary to our current customer base.
“We’re already in Kohl’s and we have been talking to Costco,” Molland added. “They have an interesting model. We might actually go into a premium line there just because of the nature of the customer and the price points. And then we have a lot of international [partners] that we’re looking at and we’re also looking into grocery.
Thinx, which debuted online in 2014, is now available in the United Kingdom at Boots, Amazon, the FSA shop, Nordstrom, and Selfridges. In addition, last year, the brand introduced a co-branded product in Australia with Kotex and Kimberly-Clark. Thinx will most likely introduce more co-branded products in a few Asian countries this year, according to Molland.
