Go buy her products dedicated to menstruation as one would go out to buy fruit, books or clothes.
To break the taboo that persists around menstruation, Léa Détruche, 26, is working on the ambitious PemLab project: a shop that centralizes all information and all professions on the subject.
This place, dedicated to intimate and menstrual well-being, should open in Paris by 2023.
Concretely, the PemLab store would combine three solutions: a menstrual store, a consultation space and an event space.
“The project is really to create a third place that would become a kind of community”, Léa aims.
For this type of market, there is no need to compete with advertisements to attract customers.
“The market is ready, a demand exists, explains the founder, with the ease of one who has already pitched her project many times to aid organizations.
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In search of funding for this place which should cost "around 300,000 euros", Léa Détruche can count on the few sales receipts from her site, which has just been launched, on which around twenty references are already available, in collaboration with around ten of partner brands.
"I have also applied for funding from the BPI and I should soon launch a crowdequity campaign on sowefund.com (
a crowdfunding mode in shares, open to investors and individuals
)", explains the young woman from Seals (Hauts-de-Seine).
Give women a choice
Barely out of her law studies in Lille, Léa wanted to move towards entrepreneurship, but not just any business.
“I've always wanted to be useful in my work and do something that has a social and environmental impact,” she explains.
The theme of menstruation has become almost obvious.
“It is important to create a place to give women a choice.
Today, young girls have little information on the different solutions available to them”, on these issues.
Because if the offer exists, it is not necessarily relayed to young women in detail.
“We can get out of the reflex of buying tampons and pads at the supermarket, wants to believe Constance, 23, a landscape architecture student who uses menstrual cups.
I deeply believe that there is a solution for every woman, but she just needs to be aware of what is available to her.
»
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A project all the more promising as the new generation is gradually turning away from conventional hormonal contraception, the pill in the first place.
"As soon as we have a problem, we are referred to the pill as if it were the miracle solution", observes Lisa, a friend of Constance.
At PemLab, we are well aware of this movement but we assure: “Certainly, it is necessary to have the possibility of turning to alternative medicine to calm certain pains, but it is also necessary to have general practitioners and gynecologists to detect pathologies which can be more serious, which is why our treatment area will combine the two.
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Support from the City of Paris
The PemLab project is welcomed by Anne Souyris, assistant to Anne Hidalgo in charge of health.
“When initiatives of this kind are put in place, I see them favorably because they destigmatize the rules, explains the assistant.
This allows us to talk about it, to come out of a solitary experience.
»
To materialize their support, shouldn't the public authorities take responsibility for this type of place?
“Léa's project should soon be integrated into our Urban Lab incubator, explains the Health Assistant.
This means that she will benefit from the assistance of the City of Paris to carry out her project.
What encourage Léa to go to the end of this adventure, convinced, she says, of the importance of “the social dimension of my project.
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