In 2025, Lorna Joyce made a painful decision every entrepreneur dreads: she shut down her business.

Binti Marvels, the femcare startup she had spent years building, was struggling under the weight of rising import costs and unstable supply chains. What had once looked like a promising venture — offshore manufacturing and importing affordable sanitary towels into the Kenyan market — had become increasingly difficult to sustain.

“It was devastating,” Lorna recalls. “You start wondering whether you made the biggest mistake of your life.”

Yet instead of a mistake, the temporary shutdown is proving to be the reboot she needed to put the business on a firm growth path. When she eventually reopened a few months later, Binti Mavels was built on a different model, one shaped by the lessons of trial, financial pressure and the realities of running a fast-moving consumer goods company.

Spotting the gap

Lorna did not begin her career in manufacturing. She spent more than a decade in aviation, eventually rising to become Head of In-Flight Operations, a role that involved managing cabin crews, passenger experience and operational standards across dozens of flights every week.

But the job also exposed her to stark social contrasts across cities and communities.

“Working in aviation gives you a different lens,” she says. “You see the disparities between places and you realise that some very basic needs are still not being met.”

One of those needs was menstrual hygiene.

Growing up in Mukuru slums, Lorna remembers how access to sanitary products was a privilege few girls afforded. Even as an adult, she noticed that many products on the market did not seem designed with African women’s bodies in mind.

“I started Binti to fill two gaps: access to affordable, high-quality sanitary towels, and products that actually fit the Kenyan woman’s body,” she says.

Across Kenya, the market has long been split between international brands retailing at between Sh120 and Sh180 per packet and low-cost generic alternatives selling for as little as Sh40 to Sh60, whose quality can vary widely. Lorna believed there was room for a reliable mid-market option.

The first model

When she left her aviation job in 2020, Lorna invested about Sh5 million of personal savings into the venture.

“In hindsight, I now see we probably needed closer to Sh15 million or Sh20 million to start comfortably,” she says of her partnership with the firm's co-founder Beth Karagu who is based in the US.

At the time, however, she was focused on getting a product into the market as quickly as possible.

Beth helped handle research and high-level strategy. Together they established a manufacturing partnership in China that could produce sanitary towels meeting medical-grade absorbency standards at a cost local startups struggled to match.

The strategy, Lorna says, allowed Binti to balance quality and affordability while avoiding the heavy capital investment required to build a factory.

In December 2020, she received the company’s first shipment: 50,000 packets of sanitary towels. The delivery marked an important milestone. For the first time, the business had enough inventory to move beyond small-scale testing and begin distributing to schools, NGOs and retailers.

Encouraged by early demand, Lorna formally registered Binti Marvels Ltd — Binti Pads’ parent company — in 2021. A larger shipment of 100,000 packets followed, allowing the company to begin commercial operations in March 2022.

But building a consumer brand from scratch proved far more difficult than launching it.

Survival mode

Binti began with a small team: a warehouse manager and three salespeople. Without the resources to hire a larger staff, Lorna found herself performing almost every function in the business.

“I did everything,” she says. “I was the driver, the accountant, the salesperson and the customer service person.”

She would often load cartons of sanitary towels into her car and spend the day visiting retailers across Nairobi, persuading shopkeepers to stock a brand they had never heard of.

Without a marketing budget, Binti Pads could not compete with multinational brands that spent millions on advertising. Instead, Lorna focused on building relationships with neighbourhood retailers.

“You cannot compete with companies that spend millions of shillings on marketing,” she says. “So you compete on trust and consistency.”

Slowly, the brand began gaining traction. Word-of-mouth referrals brought new customers and small retailers started requesting additional stock. But the financial pressure of running the business remained constant.

“Passion is one thing in business,” Lorna says. “But quickly you realise it takes far more than passion to sustain it.”

At times the strain became overwhelming. “I have quit — in my head — several times,” she admits. “I have even been hospitalised because of the stress.”

Mrembo sanitary pads on display during an interview with Binti Marvels Ltd Co-founder Lorna Joyce in Nairobi on March 5, 2026.
Photo credit: Lucy Wanjiru | Nation Media Group

The turning point

The real turning point came as external factors began squeezing the company’s margins.

Because Binti relied on imported products, the business was exposed to fluctuations in the exchange rate. Currency movements could dramatically alter the cost of each shipment.

“You might import when the dollar is at Sh110, and a few months later it moves to Sh130,” Lorna explains. “Suddenly your margins disappear.”

Shipping delays created additional uncertainty. Containers could take weeks or even months to arrive, leaving retailers without stock and customers without products.

“At one point the numbers simply stopped making sense,” says Lorna.

In 2025, she made the difficult decision to temporarily close the business and re-evaluate its structure.

Rethinking the model

The shutdown gave the entrepreneurs time to examine every part of the operation — from pricing and supply chains to distribution.

One conclusion became clear: long-term sustainability would require greater control over production.

“When you produce locally, you can agree on a price for the year and plan your business around it,” says Lorna.

The shift also aligned with her broader ambition of building a Kenyan manufacturing brand. Out of this restructuring emerged a new product line called Mrembo, a sanitary pad designed for the mass market.

Unlike the original Binti Pads, which were imported, Mrembo is produced locally through contract manufacturing.

Local production has allowed the company to stabilize prices between Sh55 and Sh65 per packet, positioning the product between expensive international brands and the cheapest generic alternatives.

“In fast-moving consumer goods, consistency is everything,” Lorna says. “Customers need to know that the price will still be reasonable the next time they walk into a shop.”

What's the one lesson that has guided her through the highs and lows. “Just start,” she says. “If you don’t start, you will never discover what you are capable of building.”

A different distribution

As the business rebuilt itself, Lorna also rethought how the products reached consumers.

Rather than focusing primarily on large supermarket chains, the company prioritized neighbourhood minimarts and kiosks serving densely populated communities.

“Our biggest customers are the small shops,” she says. “They are closest to the people who actually need these products.”

Binti has also begun experimenting with direct-to-consumer sales through social media and WhatsApp ordering.

“Pads are emergencies,” Lorna says. “If someone needs them, they need them immediately.”

The road ahead

Despite the progress, scaling the business further will require significant capital.

Lorna estimates that about Sh30 million would be needed to establish a dedicated production line and expand distribution nationwide while reviving the original Binti Pads brand.

Accessing financing, however, remains difficult. Banks typically require collateral such as land or property before issuing loans, assets Lorna says she does not have.

“I grew up in Mukuru,” she says. “I don’t have land to present to a bank.”

Instead, she has begun exploring partnerships with impact investors interested in businesses that combine financial returns with social outcomes.

“There are investors who look purely at profit,” she says. “Then there are those who also care about the social impact.”

The mission that first motivated her has not changed: making sanitary products accessible to women and girls who might otherwise struggle to afford them. “This is about dignity,” she says.

Lessons in entrepreneurship

The experience has reshaped Lorna’s understanding of business and success. Entrepreneurship, she says, has a way of stripping away the illusion of control.

“If I had stayed in my job where I was earning more than Sh500,000 monthly, life would probably have been comfortable,” she reflects. “But I would always have wondered what might have happened if I tried.”

The journey has been unpredictable, financially demanding and emotionally draining. Yet it has also revealed something fundamental about building a company from scratch.

“You may not know everything when you start,” Lorna says. “You will make mistakes.”

Then she pauses before offering the lesson that has guided her through the highs and lows.

“Just start,” she says. “If you don’t start, you will never discover what you are capable of building.”

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