If you were to walk into an Ulta Beauty store right now you’d find Scarlet by RedDrop‘s period products next to the Fenty lip gloss and CeraVe moisturizers. Not hidden in the back near the pharmacy or the “feminine care” section that tweens have to nervously approach.
For Dana Roberts and Monica Williams, that placement is the entire strategy to why they created their business.
They spent years watching tweens and their mothers search drugstore aisles for pads and tampons that weren’t designed for 11-year-old bodies. The products were too big, the packaging talked down to girls, and the whole setup reinforced this idea that periods were something shameful (which they’re not). When Scarlet by RedDrop launched in over 350 Ulta stores this summer, the founders knew exactly where their products needed to be.
Roberts calls it the beautification of periods. They wanted to treat menstruation as part of wellness instead of something shameful that gets whispered about at home and hidden in bathroom stalls at school.
“We feel seen and validated,” Roberts says about the Ulta launch. “It sends the message to tweens and teens and their caretakers that beauty starts from within, with healthy self-love.”
According to a 2023 State of the Period study, 42% of teens felt confused and unprepared when they got their first period. One in four struggled to afford period products or couldn’t buy them at all. And only a tiny sliver of the menstrual-care market — less than one percent — is designed with younger bodies in mind.Scarlet by RedDrop is filling that gap with smaller pads, age-appropriate tampons, menstrual cups, and educational materials that teach girls what’s happening to their bodies without freaking them out.
That educational approach is personal for Roberts. When she got her first period, her grandmother immediately told her she could now have a baby. “It freaked me out,” Roberts remembers. Now she’s intentional about how Scarlet by RedDrop talks to girls about their bodies. “If we desexualize periods first and foremost, we can have a more open and non-traumatic educational experience,” she says.
Getting to Ulta required catching Pharrell Williams’ attention first, but not through networking or celebrity connections. By the time Roberts and Williams applied to Black Ambition (Pharrell’s nonprofit supporting Black and Latinx entrepreneurs), they’d already proven their model worked. Scarlet by RedDrop had reached more than 750,000 girls and they already had traction, revenue, and a clear thesis about the market they were entering.
The application process took nine months, and within that time window kept refining the pitch, and proving they could scale. When they finally delivered their three-minute pitch, they won the $1 million prize.
Williams is careful to point out what that money actually meant. “Pharrell’s mission isn’t just about funding; it’s about giving founders like us the platform and resources to build our own success,” Williams explains.
What made their case undeniable was the work they were already doing on the ground — school assemblies, church workshops, community demos — especially in Black and Brown communities. For the past two years, Roberts and Williams have been sponsors and educators at Sarah Jakes Roberts’ Girl Evolve Conference, teaching hundreds of girls basic anatomy and running hands-on workshops where girls test different pads to see how they perform. They donate thousands of products to school districts and partner with organizations like Marjorie Harvey’s Girls Who Rule the World, mostly in Atlanta where Roberts grew up.
Their focus on Black and Brown girls, especially because period poverty and menstrual inequality hit our communities hardest. “We are unapologetic in our outreach and educational classes to Black and Brown girls,” she says.
Williams doesn’t believe that mission-driven brands have to sacrifice profitability to do good work. For them, purpose and profit aren’t competing interests.
“When you design products that truly solve a problem for people, in our case, for girls and families navigating puberty, the business case takes care of itself,” she says. They track their margins, optimize sales channels, make data-driven decisions. The discipline is what lets them scale, and scaling means reaching more girls.
Since 2019, Scarlet by RedDrop has reached over 1 million teens and tweens. Their product line now includes period swimwear, hygiene wipes, educational booklets, and online prep classes. Everything is non-toxic, PFAS-free, and fragrance-free because Roberts and Williams are thinking about long-term health impacts, not just solving an immediate problem.
Long-term, Roberts wants Scarlet by RedDrop to become the number one puberty care brand serving schools nationwide. That means partnering with institutions where girls spend most of their day, where they should have access to quality products and adults who understand what they’re going through.
“We aim to impact generations of girls by removing the stigmas and taboos surrounding periods and transforming them into moments of empowerment and confidence,” Roberts says. She talks about the work expanding globally, particularly across Africa, but right now the focus is closer to home.
What they’ve shown is that the need was always there, but the industry just wasn’t paying attention to what 11-year-olds actually needed. Until they did, of course.