Period Poverty to Purpose: Breaking Taboos By Building Dignity & Social Impact, Cherie Hoeger, Saalt

From Period Poverty to Purpose: How Saalt Is Changing Period Care

On this episode of The Wild Party Podcast, host Stefanie LaHart sits down with Cherie Hoeger, Co-Founder and CEO of Saalt, a women-owned Certified B Corporation transforming period care through reusable products, education, sustainability, and social impact. What began with a family conversation about product shortages has grown into a company challenging a century-old industry and demonstrating what can happen when an entrepreneur builds a business around a problem worth solving.

A Conversation That Changed Everything

The idea for Saalt began thousands of miles from the company's eventual home in the United States. Cherie's mother is from Argentina, while her husband's family is from Venezuela. During a conversation with his aunt, Cherie learned just how severe shortages in Venezuela had become.

Food and basic household necessities were difficult to find. Pads and tampons were even harder to access.

That conversation made Cherie think about her own family differently. She and her husband have six children, five of them daughters, and she began questioning why something as fundamental as period care remained so dependent on an ongoing supply of disposable products.

"I started looking into what people were using in other countries," she explains. Her research led her to reusable period cups, discs, and eventually period underwear. Initially, she saw them as a practical solution for family members in Venezuela. Then she tried them herself.

"I was just blown away by how convenient and how comfortable they were," Cherie says. "I quickly realized, okay, wait a minute. These are actually a better solution."

That realization became the foundation for Saalt.

Building a Better Product and Taking the Risk

Cherie wasn't entirely new to entrepreneurship. She and her husband had previously built an ecommerce business around Capoeira, the Brazilian martial art where they first met, and had also worked together in real estate.

But developing an FDA-regulated period care product presented an entirely different challenge.

Cherie bought existing menstrual cups, studied their designs and looked closely at consumer complaints. She wanted to create a cup that was particularly approachable for beginners and comfortable enough that she could confidently recommend it to her daughters and friends.

Getting there required 14 design iterations. Manufacturing also came with serious financial risk: Cherie explains that the molds for the company's two original sizes cost approximately $25,000 each.

"If you had to change the mold, well, you just lost 50K and you're investing again," she says. With their own money and retirement funds behind the project, getting the design right mattered.

Creating a Brand That Could Take Period Care Mainstream

Saalt wasn't simply trying to create another menstrual cup. Cherie saw a branding opportunity in a category that seemed caught between two extremes.

Traditional period brands often relied on sanitized images, pastels and messaging that treated menstruation as something to conceal. Some newer brands went in the opposite direction, using what Cherie describes as "blood and body parts" for shock value.

She saw room in the middle for something elevated, natural and dignified.

Saalt's team even gave its desired brand voice a personality: "your best friend's older sister." She would be knowledgeable and trustworthy, but also approachable enough to answer the questions someone might be embarrassed to ask anywhere else.

That combination of thoughtful product design, packaging and positioning helped Saalt accomplish one of its earliest goals: becoming "Target worthy."

At a retail conference just months after launching, Cherie met with a Target buyer who had already been watching the emerging menstrual cup category. After examining Saalt's product and packaging, the buyer told Cherie and her husband that she believed their brand was "best positioned to take this mainstream."

By its second year, Saalt had launched in Target stores nationwide. The company has since expanded into additional major retail channels, including Walmart.

When Education Becomes Marketing

One of the most interesting lessons from Saalt's growth is that sometimes the biggest obstacle isn't convincing consumers that a product is better. It's helping them feel comfortable enough to try something unfamiliar.

Cherie's background as a technical writer became an unexpected advantage. She understood how to take complicated or intimidating information and make it understandable.

Saalt uses instructional content, infographics, social media, videos and live conversations to answer the questions consumers may be reluctant to ask. TikTok Live has become particularly valuable because customers can ask questions in real time.

"The number one thing we can do to bring awareness to these reusable products...is just talking about them more, having more conversations," Cherie says.

In other words, education isn't separate from Saalt's marketing strategy. It is the marketing strategy.

Making Social Impact the North Star

Saalt's mission reaches far beyond selling reusable period products. Cherie describes ending global period poverty as the company's "North Star."

According to Cherie, Saalt has donated more than 160,000 products across 56 countries and helped fund 1.3 million days of school for girls. Its impact work extends beyond product donations to address the infrastructure that can prevent girls and women from managing their periods with dignity.

In Uganda, that meant helping build private latrines and handwashing facilities at schools. In Nigeria, Saalt helped fund boreholes providing thousands of gallons of clean water each day to communities where women and children had previously traveled significant distances to retrieve it.

For Cherie, these projects demonstrate that a relatively small company doesn't need to wait until it becomes enormous to create meaningful change.

"I see a problem and I figure out what's the first step," she says. "What can I do to change some lives today?"

It's a philosophy that applies equally well to entrepreneurship. Saalt began because Cherie encountered a problem, became curious about a better solution and was willing to take the first step. Today, the company is changing not only the products people use, but the way we talk about periods, sustainability and the role businesses can play in creating a more equitable world.

CHECK THEM OUT at https://saalt.com/