Hengan Started as a Small Workshop Too: What Made It an Industry Giant

 


Hengan is unavoidable in China's feminine hygiene industry. Today it is a listed company worth billions. But the old-timers remember it differently: a small workshop run by a boss who started as an ordinary factory worker.

This is not a motivational story. It is a product strategy case study.

Small workshops can become giants. Hengan proved that. But the path is narrow: obsess over the consumer, and get the product right generation after generation.

Every upgrade in this industry — from straight strips to side guards, from standard cores to ultra-thin cores, from pads to period pants — is a response to consumers changing. The brands that catch the change move forward. The ones that ignore it get washed out.

I have seen too many factories run by smart bosses who calculate costs precisely and negotiate payment terms aggressively, but never ask the one question that matters: what does the consumer actually want? When the product does not sell, they blame R&D, blame production, blame luck. The real problem is usually at the very beginning — they never defined who the product was for.

I made the same mistake early on. I spent energy on models, incentives, and recruiting agents. The product was good, but I forgot to keep asking what users needed. Later, when we returned to the product — a thin, breathable, secure-fit period pant that ranked first in its category — I finally understood. Scale comes from product, not from tricks.

So when young peers ask me how to build in this industry, I always say the same thing: do not rush to cut costs to the floor. First figure out who your user is, when she uses the product, and what she is afraid of. There are no shortcuts. The only shortcut is to keep making the product right, one generation after another.

For OEM buyers

The brands that last are built on product discipline. If you are selecting a feminine hygiene OEM partner, ask how they gather user feedback and how often they iterate the product. A factory that only copies bestsellers will always be behind.

At Nafei, we develop OEM sanitary pads and menstrual pants around real usage scenarios. Learn more about our approach: What to Expect from a Feminine Hygiene OEM Partner or visit OEM Sanitary Pads.


Li Genyuan is the founder of Hunan Nafei Biotechnology, a feminine hygiene OEM/ODM manufacturer in China. He writes about building a real product business in the pad and menstrual-pants trade. More at hnnafei.com.

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