Women's underwear gets an upgrade

The next product is obvious: Pants.

http://www.dumbingofage.com/2014/comic/book-4/02-i-was-a-tee...

would be interesting to hear a woman's opinion here. My understanding was that panties are usually bought on the merits of fit and, especially, quality of material. Is the built-in pad an improvement or gimmick?

Not a woman, but its well known they buy several pairs of "period panties" as to not ruin their nicer ones. This seems to be tapping into that market by making an explicit "period panty" that'll last longer, come in dark colors, has a pad, etc. So instead of buying a cheap set of disposable panties and using those, you'd buy a few pairs of these that are specialized for the task.

No idea how pricing works out. In the end, it might be smarter to just buy a box of 10 granny panties at Walmart for 12 bucks than pay $20 a pair for these high-tech ones. (The 5 day set is $180.) Especially if they can only hold 2-6 teaspoons of liquid. Seems the 'help a girl in the third world' narrative is pretty disingenuous here at those prices. Pads cost a fraction of that. This seems like something a western woman would use on top of a pad or tampon.

Does every startup need to be about "changing the world" and "helping the third world?" Its practically self-satire at this point and was expertly mocked in HBO's Silicon Valley series. This is a luxury good, not a charity.

This is an interesting yet drastically different take on a similar story from India. Some of you may remember articles about Arunachalam Muruganantham, an uneducated man who lost his family, friends and whole way of life in order to bring affordable sanitary pads to girls and women in India. Now he helps rural villages install, run and make money off of machines which produce sanitary napkins for pennies on the dollar, and at the same time teach local women how to use them and break cultural taboos. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26260978

So when I read this article about THINX, while I want to be positive about anyone who works to make people's lives easier and less stressful, all I see is commerce. These are basically luxury items that are intended for people who already have access to sanitary pads. It almost seems like the whole story about being inspired by a girl in South Africa is a marketing ploy to get people to purchase their product by preying on people's sympathy for an unrelated issue. If they really wanted to help women around the world, donating a small portion of sales to one African country is not what I would consider a realistic approach to that goal.