What's your 30-second elevator speech?
Have you ever been at work or school filled with fear of blood trickling down your leg? If you haven’t, you know someone who has - 85% of women have experienced this.
You can go into any bathroom confident you’ll find toilet paper when you need it. Why is it any different for another basic hygiene need? Period products should be freely available in all bathrooms, but our bathrooms are sexist.
Gender equality has to start with basic hygiene needs.
Pixii supplies Australia’s most eco-friendly period products, and Australia’s only entirely plastic-free tampons, designed for free access at schools, universities and businesses through our custom dispensers or display boxes. Plus we donate 50% of profits to educating girls, so you can support people, the planet, and periods all at once.
Who inspires you the most to be the best you can be as a person?
My wife, Nina! I look up to her a lot, so I’m continually glad and honestly sometimes still surprised that she agreed to marry me, and then co-found a business with me. But she’s definitely a brilliant partner for home and for work, and inspires me to bigger achievements and greater kindnesses all the time.
Can you tell us a little bit about your business, and the areas you specialise in?
Pixii is a young social enterprise startup, growing quickly in 2021. Right now we’re halfway through the University of Sydney award winning startup accelerator program, Incubate, and are increasingly specialising in providing eco-friendly period products specifically for schools as QLD, NSW, and SA have all pledged or begun implementing free period products in schools.
We’re the only period products provider with a custom-built dispenser and bulk packs designed for high foot traffic environments like schools and universities, so this legislative backing is great news and step in the right direction as Australia slowly catches up on this front, with places like Scotland, England, Wales, New Zealand and France.
Can you tell me about one of your client success stories?
For a private girls high school in Sydney, we’ve put dispensers in every one of their bathrooms with free eco-friendly pads and tampons for the students. When the students were told about this new supply at the start of the year, they cheered! That’s the best client feedback we could ask for.
What’s your favourite thing about working at Motive Coworking?
There’s some great variety available amongst the space, with a different feel between downstairs and upstairs to help change up the pace, plus so many nice extra touches. The ice cream, coffee, basketball stress-buster and more make breaking up the day into efficient chunks an easy thing to do.
What does life look like outside your business profile? What do you like doing for fun?
This year’s been a bit too busy for that so far, but I’m looking forward to getting back in the surf! We’ve got a 1 year old too, so some more playground time and getting to be a kid again at places like the zoo, is definitely on the cards.
Is there anything you would like to share? Or anything you’d like to offer help with?
You never know what can come out of a chance meeting or conversation - chat to as many people as you can! Some of our biggest leaps forward have come out of unexpected places. I’m not sure what I could help with, but have covered a lot of startup topics like raising funds, exit strategies, share splits, IP and sales tactics recently, so if you’ve got pretty much anything on your mind I’m up for a chat.
Bonus Question: If you were a sandwich, what sort of sandwich would you be and why?
Toasted cheese - simple but reliable.