Becoming a force for change
When two high-school friends launched an inspiring social enterprise, they had no idea what they were doing – and that was a good thing.
Most final-year high-school students are focused on their own futures but Eloise Hall and Isobel Marshall wanted to improve the lives of others. After attending a leadership conference in the summer holidays before Year 12, they left with the conviction to start a business with a social purpose.
That purpose, they later decided, would be to tackle “period poverty”, supporting women around the world – including in Australia – who are unable to afford sanitary products. Selling organic, sustainable cotton pads and tampons by subscription, they would put 100 per cent of net profits towards making period-care products available in developing countries, as well as funding local outreach programs.
They settled on the brand name TABOO and found a supplier that met their strict sustainability standards. Learning curve? Steep.
“I’m a huge advocate of healthy naivety,” says Hall. “We had no idea what we were doing and that’s probably the best gift we could have been given because you don’t know what you don’t know. We were really passionate so we just went for it.”
Crowdfunding in their home town of Adelaide raised enough money to begin and the first shipments of TABOO products were sent out in 2019.
“My dad was always warning me, ‘Postage is going to kill you!’” recalls Hall. “He said this to me every day or two when we started.”
So the friends chose Australia Post as a convenient and affordable solution for delivering TABOO products, which, by their very nature, need to arrive reliably and on time. “You don’t want your customer to be ‘caught short’. We need to make sure it’s there when they want it,” says Hall.
“MyPost Business saves us hours every week on labelling with the integration with our ecommerce platform,” she adds. “And it’s really beautiful to watch the increase of orders and the decrease of postage rates – seeing prices slowly fizzle down has been really helpful.”1
Australia Post helps in other ways, too. With subscriptions for their products skyrocketing, making their own ultra-sustainable packaging from recycled boxes is no longer viable for the young entrepreneurs. “We just spend so many hours origamiing our own boxes,” says Hall, who is now working with Australia Post to find a sustainable branded packaging alternative. “We’re grateful they can help us with that.”