Since 2020, social enterprise Pixii has installed free period products in 700 sites across Australia and New Zealand, including schools, universities and offices, but also fire stations, mining sites, power plants, and more.
For founders Nina and Dean Tavener, the goal is for period products to be treated as any other hygiene supply, such as toilet paper or soap — freely available anywhere one could conceive of people who menstruate existing.
Pixii also donates 50% of its profits to girls’ education.
So, for this business, growth is directly correlated with impact, both locally and around the world.
With Nina currently offline on maternity leave, we sat down with Dean to explore how Pixii has approached growth, and funding, as a social enterprise with impact at its very core.

A social growth story
Pixii’s model is to provide locally manufactured and specially designed dispensers for bathrooms, to businesses or building managers, allowing them to provide free, 100% organic cotton, period products to their staff, guests or visitors.
Products can be easily re-ordered and re-loaded, with the whole process designed to be seamless, swift and easy.
With little invested in advertising or market education, Dean says most of Pixii’s growth has come about organically, driven not by anything the founders have necessarily done, but by broader societal changes.
First, there has been a change in expectations, driven in part by mandates for period products to be provided in government-funded schools.
“That creates a whole generation of students who expect period products, just like they expect soap,” Dean notes.
“They come out of school into university, workplaces and other parts of society with that expectation.”
Second, Dean puts some of Pixii’s growth down to (in his words) “FOMO”.
Early corporate adopters of free workplace period products include Apple, Amazon, Canva and Google. Companies with influence.
“When it starts with those everyone-wants-to-be-like-them brands, there’s basically a trickle-down, and other companies start to mimic those behaviours set by that echelon of employer.”
Equally, many businesses are focusing more on diversity, equity and inclusion.
“Obviously, things like comprehensive, gender-equal parental leave policies are much more financially impactful for staff, but they’re also a lot more complicated and a lot more costly,” Dean explains.
“A lot of organisations see period products in the bathroom as a really cost-effective way to make a start on gender equity measures.”
Finally, Pixii has grown through word of mouth. It’s not unusual for Dean and Nina to onboard one business in a particular industry, and then see a wave of interest from others in that space.
The same trend applies to employees naturally moving around, from job to job and office to office. If a worker moves from an office with free period supplies to one without, “it’s something they might bring up with their employer”, Dean notes.
“We just focus our time on customer service, product, fast delivery, and all of that, to help that.”
Funding inventory growth
Pixii is a product-based business that’s doubling, year-on-year. That means inventory demands are doubling too.
“We have constraints on lead times of production and shipping,” Dean explains.
“And we need to have a certain amount of inventory on hard to make sure we can always cover orders, and the growth in orders over the next six months.”
For Dean, debt capital was the most sensible way to manage increasing inventory costs. It allowed Pixii to meet the demands of a steep growth curve, and maintain that momentum.
“Debt capital lends itself very smoothly to inventory because it’s such a simplistic relationship for a working capital need,” he explains.

“We know what our gross and net margin is … so when we buy more inventory we know how much money it’s going to return back.”
This is the first external funding Pixii has received, having previously balanced the books using credit cards, and through savvy negotiation with suppliers and customers.
Dean recalls a time when he and Nina considered seeking venture capital. In retrospect, he says, they didn’t need it.
“Working through that period without any financial support forced us to find efficiencies and grow revenue and cut costs, while still maintaining quality of service and product,” he explains.
“We came out a more efficient, bigger organisation, without having given up any equity or entered any debt,” he adds.
“We improved our margins by 50%.”
Ultimately, the founders held off on any funding until not doing so would cause a crisis — in their case, becoming under-stocked and unable to fulfil orders.
But a more streamlined business means faster and more significant growth; efficient operations allow debt funding, and inventory, to work harder.
Funding social enterprise
As well as being the right choice for Pixii’s inventory requirements and growth goals, Dean feels debt funding is well suited to social enterprise startups in general.
The venture capital path can be incredibly challenging for profit-for-purpose businesses — especially those committed to donating half their profits.
“That obviously reduces the pool of interested investors a little bit,” Dean says.
There are, of course, impact-focused funds in Australia, and examples of startups with similar models raising huge amounts of money. But they’re not the norm. And even if they were, finding the exact right investor is like finding a golden needle in a haystack.
“With a social purpose business, you have all the usual business goals and strategic barriers to overcome,” Dean explains.
“On top of that, you’ve got your social outcomes,” he adds.

There are more potential points of friction, and more pressure points if things start to go south.
However, if you can find the investor who aligns exactly, on all the right points, you may indeed have struck gold.
“If that alignment is really good or close to perfect, that investor is going to be an incredible support,” Dean says.
“They’ll arguably be a better advocate and internal supporter than anyone who is just aligned on making money.”
Find out more about Pixii here: www.pixii.com.au