Innovating Women's Wellness: A Conversation with Alison Farrell of Red Moon In this episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Alison Farrell, the co-founder and CEO of Red Moon, a pioneering company based in San Francisco that has developed the first CBD-infused menstrual pad. Allison shares her personal journey with endometriosis and how it inspired her to create a product that addresses menstrual pain and discomfort in a natural and effective way.
In this episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Alison Farrell, the co-founder and CEO of Red Moon, a pioneering company based in San Francisco that has developed the first CBD-infused menstrual pad. Allison shares her personal journey with endometriosis and how it inspired her to create a product that addresses menstrual pain and discomfort in a natural and effective way.
Personal Journey and Inspiration: Alison Ferrell opens up about her struggles with endometriosis and how cannabis, recommended by her doctor, helped her manage post-surgery pain without resorting to heavy drugs. This experience led her to explore the potential of combining period products with CBD to help other women facing similar challenges.
Product Development: The conversation delves into the inception of Red Moon in early 2020, right before the pandemic hit. Despite the timing, Alison and her team pushed forward with research and development, eventually creating a menstrual pad infused with CBD.
Challenges and Persistence: Allison discusses the numerous obstacles they faced, particularly in getting their product onto major platforms like Amazon. After two and a half years of persistence and numerous rejections, they finally succeeded. She attributes their success to a combination of stubbornness and a strong belief in their mission to help women.
Customer Feedback and Education: The episode highlights the importance of customer feedback in refining their product. Allison notes that while most reviews are positive, some women do not experience the same level of relief. She emphasizes the need for continuous use to see better results and explains the science behind the product's effectiveness.
Educational Efforts: A significant part of Red Moon's mission is to educate women about their bodies and menstrual health. Allison shares surprising statistics about how little women know about their own reproductive systems and the harmful effects of conventional period products.
Empower Her Network: Alison talks about her involvement with the Empower Her Network, a global community of women in the cannabis industry. She praises the network for its support and the opportunities it provides for women to connect and grow their businesses.
Future Aspirations: The episode concludes with Allison reflecting on the journey so far and her hopes for the future. She expresses her commitment to turning her pain into passion and power, aiming to empower other women through Red Moon's innovative products.
Website: GetRedMoon.com
Amazon: Search for "Red Moon hemp pads"
Social Media:
Instagram: @RedMoonPeriod
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alisonferrell/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/getredmoon/people/
All social media links are available on their website.
Susan Burns: Hello, this is your podcast host, Susan Burns, as a cannabis lawyer by profession. Nothing delights me more than showcasing bodacious women in this very fascinating industry. Today, we have the pleasure of talking with Allison Farrell, and Allison is a co-founder and CEO of Red Moon, a company that's headquartered in San Francisco, California, and they brought us the very first period-friendly product, I think. Allison, welcome.
Alison Ferrell: Hi, thank you for having me.
Susan Burns: Yeah, so tell us a little bit about Red Moon and its mission and the products that you have or product.
Alison Ferrell: Sure, yeah. I founded red moon after many years struggling with endometriosis. And after my second surgery, I used cannabis actually by my doctor's referral to get through the pain without taking heavy drugs. And I found it so amazing and fascinating. I'm a long term cannabis user. So I always knew the benefits. But when going through surgery and having so much pain, not wanting to take strong, addictive pills to get through the process, using cannabis and CBD was amazing. So I wanted to do something in women's wellness, I knew for sure. And in the period industry, because I've been so affected by my menstrual cycle. So I thought, why not combine period products and CBD or cannabis? Originally, I wanted to do something more THC heavy, but I knew introducing a product like this is going to be really difficult because it's surrounding such a delicate part of the woman's reproductive system. So I developed the first menstrual pad that's infused with CBD.
Susan Burns: It's been very exciting. Yeah, that is exciting. So is your own personal story, like many of us that come to cannabis with a personal interest, and I guess that's probably true of other industries as well. How long ago did you actually start your company?
Alison Ferrell: It's a crazy story, actually. I started thinking about this in 2019, and I started to develop it the first month of 2020. I started to like actually sit down and conceptualize, file my business papers, and then the pandemic hit.
Susan Burns: Everybody still has periods. But everybody still has periods. If you're pregnant, menopausal.
Alison Ferrell: Yeah. So by the end of 2020, I was incorporated and starting research and development. All right. So I didn't know the pandemic was coming. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Susan Burns: And so do you sell in stores, online? How do you sell your product?
Alison Ferrell: We do both. We have had so many setbacks, honestly. We want to do online so we can reach more people. But getting a CBD infused period product onto platforms like Amazon, Google, even Instagram, all those things to advertise and sell has been really challenging for us. But we just, I'm not even kidding you. Two years, two years, maybe more than two years, we've been working to get on Amazon. Because you know, period products with CBD in them, dispensaries aren't really the place for us. Stores, a lot of stores aren't ready for us. We didn't really like think that part through, like Target, let's say, they're not ready for us. They don't even sell CBD yet. But when a woman buys a period product, where does she buy it? In the grocery store and Target or Walmart or Amazon. Drugstore. So exactly. CVS and Walgreens were working there. So we've been working with smaller like organic grocery stores, spas, places like that. So it's been a lot of outreach, a lot of our independent guerrilla marketing style, just going, introducing ourselves to the people who buy in small stores, getting in there, but also Amazon. After two and a half years of working to get on Amazon, rejection after rejection after rejection, just last week, we finally got our images updated and we're selling on Amazon now. Two and a half years. We were persistent. We were not giving up, even though Amazon, you know how it is with the small businesses, but it's a great place for our products, so hopefully we'll thrive there.
Susan Burns: Well, good. Congratulations. Thank you. One of my questions I like to ask people is, what are the challenges and how do you do this? How do you deal with them? But how did you, what made you stick in there for two and a half years? There must've been something promising about the rejection or are you just stubborn or?
Alison Ferrell: Honestly, we're, we're both stubborn and we're, I mean, we really believe in what we're doing. We want to help women. We want to bring this product to more women. We want to have, um, we know it's a good product. Um, we want, I guess mostly our stubbornness, but we really believe in what we're doing. We really believe in what we're doing. So we just kept going.
Susan Burns: Sounds nice when you say persistence. I was being a little tongue in cheek there, but, um, yeah, I know it takes a lot.
Alison Ferrell: You know what, actually at the end of last year, we both, cause it literally nine months. My co-founder was working on, I worked on it first, then she took over. And at the end of last year, we were like, we give up, we give up like Amazon. We're going to, we're going to stop. we're not doing anymore." And we did. We were like, let's pivot. Let's do something else. Let's try a new idea. And then I just went back on maybe like a month ago and started working on it, uploaded our images, and then suddenly they just appeared after we've been rejected so many times. Suddenly they just like appeared and it's live. We're like, oh my God.
Susan Burns: Is it because you decided you didn't want them and they couldn't take it?
Alison Ferrell: Yeah, maybe we gave up completely and they were like, oh, let's try it.
Susan Burns: Let's just see what happens. Oh, come on. So what are people saying about your product and how are you gauging customer reaction? what they like, what they don't like. And have you had any changes in your product development, like as you've gone along based on feedback from customers or did you want to develop it because you were a customer already?
Alison Ferrell: Yeah, I think we've, we've had, I think it's a different for every woman, but we've had mostly amazing reviews. Women love the product. Um, it does help with discomfort, but again, it's not like, um, it's not like taking an ibuprofen. Like people are going to expect like, Oh, you wear the pad. You're going to have amazing. You're never going to have period pain again. No, but it does help. It does calm. It does soothe. Um, we get a lot of positive feedback and we get some women that say it didn't do anything. So it's a little, it's, it's mostly positive. And some women say, Oh, I didn't, I didn't get a result. We've found that too. Um, using it. over time also helps get more out of it. So if you use it- And why do you think there is?
Susan Burns: I think you have to- How does it actually work? Because it's on a pad.
Alison Ferrell: Yeah, it's the same topical. So like how does a patch work when you put it on your skin, right? Like how does that work? Your skin absorbs it, right? Well, I don't know if many women don't know this, but your vaginal skin is actually 10 times more permeable than your other skin. So it absorbs 10 times at the higher rate. So you will get a higher benefit from having the CBD absorbed there versus like you put a patch on your stomach. It's not going to absorb as much. But it's the same idea, concept, as a patch. It's like you're patching your vagina.
Susan Burns: Okay. And the CBD helps to diminish the pain and discomfort?
Alison Ferrell: Well, CBD is anti-inflammatory. A lot of the receptors are in the vaginal canal as well, the endocannabinoid receptors. you get more benefit from having it there as well. Um, so there's a lot of benefits to it.
Susan Burns: Okay. And, and then back to the question that I asked, how do you, why do you think it works better if you take it over a period of time? Like what is it, what does it interact with the endocannabinoids receptors somehow or?
Alison Ferrell: Yeah. I think because you're getting more absorption over time. So if you use it for two or three days, you use it for two or three periods, you're going to, you're going to see better results. versus just wearing it for an hour and then saying, oh, this didn't work.
Susan Burns: Oh, that I can see. Yeah. OK. Any other challenges that you had? You said that you have a partner, a co-founder. So how is that relationship and any challenges there? And if so, how do you work through them? A lot of questions at once.
Alison Ferrell: I do have a great relationship. No issues between us, we've worked really well together. I think our biggest challenge has just been the fact that it's a CBD product and a period product and finding our place has been harder. Because again, a lot of stores aren't ready for a period product that has CBD in it. And then online platforms just don't know how to, the algorithm has not known how to place us. when we do advertising. So it's like we get a lot of rejection, a lot of rejection. And another piece that's been difficult is educating. I didn't know how much, not how much, how little women knew about their vaginas and their periods until I started this company. You would be surprised how many women don't know that their, for example, their vagina is 10 times more permeable than any other skin on their body. There's just so many things that women don't know about their own bodies.
Susan Burns: How would we know? How would you know?
Alison Ferrell: Nobody teaches you. Yeah. And there's a huge disparity of women who just don't know. They don't know that if you like certain period products, if you're like, for example, tampons, a lot of women don't know that every time you use a tampon, microfibers get left behind in your vagina. It doesn't matter if it's organic or not. Every time you use a tampon, microfibers are getting left behind in your vagina. Not a lot of women know that. Actually. I didn't know that. You're absorbing that into your body. So if you're using non-organic, you're really doing a high risk with the most sensitive, permeable part of your body. Which is why I think, and this is just a speculation, we're seeing such an increase of issues with reproductive systems in women. And there's very little research to date on what's causing fibroids and endometriosis and all this stuff. Women have been inserting polyester into their vagina for more than 30 years.
Susan Burns: And what's polyester made from? What's polyester made from?
Alison Ferrell: Synthetic materials. I think it's oil-based, isn't it? And chlorine. They also bleach it with chlorine. And so even if you're wearing a pad, you're still putting this chemical on the most sensitive part of your body and expecting there not to be some Reaction, there's going to be a reaction, especially over time, because you use it. Our periods, most women have them for 30 years of their lives or more every single month. So you're this. It's crazy. So a huge part of it's been education to educating women on their bodies.
Susan Burns: Well, that makes sense to me, because there is an education on our bodies. So how would we know? I mean, I've been through the whole the whole gamut and I didn't know what you just said about the fibers and I'm sure that the tampon companies don't want us to know.
Alison Ferrell: No, they're not advertising it. They're not putting it in the publication of women's education. You can do a quick Google search and find that out for yourself.
Susan Burns: Yeah, but what would make you think of that? I would never have thought of that. I wonder if it leaves little microfibers in my body like that, you know, even all the skin products with the little beaded things that, oh, you're polluting the world. Oh, I didn't know that, you know?
Alison Ferrell: Yeah, yeah. You don't think about it.
Susan Burns: You don't think about it. You're just going through life trying to get along. Yeah. So good for you. I think that's great that you're educating too. Are you doing any, do you do a lot of outreach? Do you do, well podcast is a good platform for you, but how do you, how do you get the word out?
Alison Ferrell: Through blogs, through online, we're just working on a partnership with period.org. Have you heard of them? It's a very large organization. It's a youth activist organization who they work to educate and give products to young girls and women across the US who are in need, but also just to raise awareness around periods and period poverty and all of the issues surrounding menstrual wellness, which is often forgotten thing, but it affects women and girls for most of their lives.
Susan Burns: Yes, it does. Significant part of your life. Yeah.
Alison Ferrell: Yeah. And we've been conditioned and trained to kind of disregard it, to hide it, to be ashamed of it, to keep going, to push through pain. It's gross. Yeah, yeah. And historically, women were meant to rest, to rejuvenate, to work with the cycles of their bodies, with nature. But now we're like, you have to perform, you have to swallow it. If you're in pain, take a pill, go to work, keep putting a smile on your face. And I think it's a negative thing in society, because the menstrual cycle is such a big part of femininity. It's, it's a cycle that we work with nature and it's every month, every week is a different part of your cycle, not just the period part of your cycle. It's all connected. And so educating women about that is, I think it's becoming more prevalent now, but I mean, for a long time, it was not.
Susan Burns: Yeah. And I see a lot of like coping skills that people use are, Oh, I'm kind of crabby. I have my period, you know, like, okay, just. Instead of there's nothing about honoring and it's like just excuse me Yeah, yeah, no, you know, it's it's it is negative I agree with you on that point Sure, how about how about for you anything that since you started this business? Anything that happened that you're thinking? Oh my god. This is so awesome. I never in a million years dreamed this would happen Becoming part of the empower her network
Alison Ferrell: I think it's such a beautiful thing. I think it's such a beautiful thing. And it actually came to me. I joined the network when it was just like 70 people. And I think now it's over 450 women or something.
Susan Burns: Tell our listeners about the Empower Network.
Alison Ferrell: It's a network of women in the cannabis industry globally. that, what are the women's name who founded it?
Susan Burns: The two women- The only one I remember that sticks in my brain because I've communicated with her is Heidi Whitman.
Alison Ferrell: Heidi and, oh gosh, but two women that founded this amazing network. I joined when it was 70 women. And again, now it's over 450 women globally, all different levels in the industry, CEOs, lawyers, marketing, growers, everything. Retailers. Yes, it's such an amazing network of women to watch it grow from 70 to so many in just a few months. It's amazing. I think it's really powerful and I can't wait to see what comes out of all the connecting that's going on.
Susan Burns: This is one of them. That's great. Yes, it is. That's been fabulous. I was It's been, go ahead.
Alison Ferrell: I was just saying it's been just beautiful to watch it grow and evolve and see women connecting in different ways and coming up with ideas and on how to grow their own businesses or just to connect with each other. It's been beautiful, very beautiful to watch.
Susan Burns: It's a great resource and support and fun.
Alison Ferrell: Yeah, I think. I went to London. I want to look up her name real quick because I went to London. Becca is the other one. I have a friend from Spain who was helping me with the CBD development. I said, hey, I'm going to London. Do you have any connections there? I'd love to meet with anybody in the industry just to have coffee or whatever. just to connect. And he connected me with Becca on LinkedIn. And I wrote her. And I didn't hear from her the whole time I was in London. So I was like, Oh, that's a bummer. But I completely forgot about it. And then like, two or three months later, she wrote me and was like, Hey, like, I'd love to chat with you. And then we jumped on a Zoom call and she told me about this network, but also just to hear her story of everything she's been through and she struggles with. She had, I think, some sort of lung cancer and also she has endometriosis and issues with her body. And I was just like, her story is so beautiful and amazing. So it was like a surprise connection that came way after I was supposed to be in London.
Susan Burns: Maybe I can coax Becca into coming on and telling us her story, too.
Alison Ferrell: You should. Her story is phenomenal. She's such a strong woman. And she started this, actually, with Heidi. Yeah.
Susan Burns: Yeah. Cool. So speaking of strong women, you have to be strong to have come this far in your business. And I want to know what makes you, as do our listeners, what makes you uniquely bodacious?
Alison Ferrell: I would say in this, turning my pain into passion and power. Endometriosis is something that I still struggle with every day. And my main goal was to take that pain and empower myself with it. And so I think I'm doing that.
Susan Burns: Well, thank you for doing that. Yeah. And where can our listeners find you?
Alison Ferrell: Getredmoon.com.
Susan Burns: GetRedMoon.com.
Alison Ferrell: And on Amazon.
Susan Burns: Now and on Amazon. Red Moon products on Amazon?
Alison Ferrell: Yes, Red Moon hemp pads, because we can't say CBD.
Susan Burns: You can't say CBD?
Alison Ferrell: You can't say CBD. Okay, why? You have to say hemp. Language, I guess. I don't know. You can't say CBD. You can only say hemp.
Susan Burns: So stupid. Oh, I suppose because CBD, you can derive it from the marijuana side of cannabis as well as from the hemp side. So I get it. Because they don't want to be anything federally illegal.
Alison Ferrell: It's semantics.
Susan Burns: It's all silly. The whole thing is silly. But anyway, that's how we are right now. OK, so getredmoon.com. Free shipping to Amazon Prime Memories.
Alison Ferrell: Yes. Yes, exactly. Free shipping to our, if you buy directly from us, it's free shipping as well.
Susan Burns: Okay, cool. Yeah. And then how about social media? Are you on social? Can we follow you?
Alison Ferrell: Yes, Red Moon period on Instagram. And I think it's GetRedMoon on, you can, all of our links are on our website on GetRedMoon.com. But on Instagram, it's Red Moon period.
Susan Burns: Okay. Awesome. Great name. Thank you so much for making time to talk with us today.
Alison Ferrell: Yes. Thank you for having me.