Sustainable period care brand The Flex Co. has acquired sexual health education platform Allbodies Health.
Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. It marks The Flex Co.’s third strategic acquisition. In 2016, the year it launched, The Flex Co. acquired menstrual disc specialist Softdisc. In 2018, it acquired Keela, a pre-launch company with an early prototype for a menstrual cup that would eventually become The Flex Co.’s menstrual cup Flex Cup. The Flex Co. has raised $20 million in funding from investors such as CircleUp, Halogen Ventures and Quest Venture Partners.
Allbodies will be absorbed into The Flex Co., and Allbodies co-founder Lauren Bille will stay on as the company’s head of PR and community. Allbodies co-founder Ashley Spivak left at the end of 2020, but has remained a close advisor and may support Bille with future initiatives at The Flex Co., including press and community outreach.
“I’ll help Flex establish a strong leadership voice and stance in the period health space, become a household name, keep growing and deeply engaging our customers and those who love them,” says Bille. “I know how to activate people and build movements.”
Allbodies began in 2017 as Cycles + Sex, a series of in-person women’s health educational events in New York City. The Flex Co. was a sponsor of one of its early events, and that’s how Bille met The Flex Co. founder and CEO Lauren Schulte Wang. Schulte Wang and Bille have similar reasons for starting their respective companies. They felt let down by doctors and educators ostensibly there to help people understand their bodies. The information provided to them was often woefully insufficient.
“I had grown up in Georgia where we had abstinence-only education, and I did not learn until I was 25 that you pee out of a different hole than your vagina,” says Schulte Wang. “That’s not something that I’m proud of, but I am not alone. People might think because I run this period company that I always knew everything about vaginas, but the truth is I’m still learning every day.”
Once the pandemic hit, Bille and Spivak moved Allbodies’ in-person educational platform online and brought together subject matter experts across medical and holistic health to educate people digitally. Schulte Wang says, “People could ask questions that they otherwise might be embarrassed to ask or learn about things that they’ve always wondered about, but never really had a resource to do or really connect the dots in their own mind about their own experiences or just trying to lead to better health outcomes.”
Allbodies has 94,000 Instagram followers. On its website, it offers 50-plus sex, mind, body and culture online classes priced from $15 to $50. Members can have access to the entire library of classes for $9.99 per month. Among the classes are How The Heck To Have A Threesome, The Truth About Birth, Talk Dirty Like A Pro, Intimacy After Trauma and Tools To Manage Anxiety.
As part of The Flex Co., Allbodies will resuscitate Cycles + Sex in-person events. They’re slated to feature all-day expos with panels, workshops, pop-ups and other activations and be held across the country. Panels will cover an extensive array of topics, from periods and birth control options to gender and sexuality. Along with informative content, the purpose is to connect attendees with practitioners, resources and products. Bille notes that The Flex Co.’s acquisition of Allbodies speeds up a plan the platform always had to expand into products.
The Flex Co. first became profitable in 2018 and has returned to profitability again after over a year and a half of focusing on amplifying education and awareness. The brand’s bestseller is $16.49 Flex Disc, and it sells a $34.99 reusable version of the disc that lasts up to 10 years. Aside from discs, it sells $29.99 Flex Cup, gummy supplements $32.99 PMS Eraser, $32.99 Chill Pill, $32.99 In The Clear and $20.99 Under The Moon. The Flex Co. is available in about 30,000 stores at chains like Walmart, Target and CVS. It’s sold more than 130 million menstrual discs since 2016.
The women’s health space has seen a spate of mergers of late. Last week, natural period pain relief company Somedays announced it acquired Aisle, a B Corp-certified period underwear company. In July, sustainable period care brand &SISTERS acquired Mooncup, maker of the world’s first silicone menstrual cup. Last year, menopause care brand Joylux acquired postpartum specialist Mommy Matters.
Conglomerates have been active in the period care space, too. In 2019, Procter & Gamble acquired organic cotton tampon maker This is L. In 2022, Kimberly-Clark acquired a majority stake in reusable period and incontinence underwear brand Thinx. Also in 2022, Essity acquired Thinx competitor Knix.
