In my defence, I've been busy running a business by myself, part-time, around a full-time job. But better late than never: Luckies Knickers was featured in Inside Small Business, in a piece called "Taboo commerce — the small business saying what bigger brands don't dare." Which, if I'm honest, is exactly the kind of headline I'd write about myself if I had the confidence.
Here's the thing about taboo commerce: someone has to say the word "discharge" out loud eventually. Might as well be me.
The dinner party that started it all
People ask how Luckies happened, expecting a tidy founder story. The real one involves lasagne. A guest at a dinner party made an offhand comment about "snail trails" in his wife's knickers, everyone laughed it off, and I didn't. I went home and couldn't stop thinking: why has nobody actually fixed this? Period underwear was having its moment, but periods are maybe six days of the cycle. Discharge is the other twenty-five. I hated the staining, the smell, the damp feeling — surely I wasn't the only one.
So I pulled out my sewing machine, made a genuinely terrible first pair, and then realised I could never make them myself. So I found a way (google, phone calls and lots of failed samples).
Running City2Surf in my own underwear
I've now run the City2Surf three years straight wearing nothing but my Luckies and a shirt that says "Got Discharge? Get Luckies." I'm doing it again this August.
I've also stood on the streets of Bondi and Newtown in a sandwich board reading "Discharge isn't Dirty! Free undies for women brave enough to talk to me on camera" — which remains one of the more nerve-wracking things I've done as a grown adult with 26 years of corporate experience behind her.
I used to talk around the problem Luckies solves, because saying "discharge" out loud felt like too much. Then I figured: if I don't say it, nobody will. So now I say it in emails, in ads, to strangers in sandwich boards. Turns out that's the whole job.
Why a small business gets to do this and a big brand won't
Big brands have had decades to solve this and didn't bother. I think it's because doing it properly means saying the uncomfortable word, choosing the better (more expensive) fabric, and designing for bodies outside a narrow default — including transgender women, who deserve underwear that actually works for them too. None of that survives a boardroom P&L meeting. It survives because I'm bootstrapping this myself and every decision has to count.
Women are getting more deliberate about who they hand their money to. I'd like to think that's good news for small, slightly braver businesses like this one.
Anyway — I made the press. Three weeks late isn't ideal, but neither is damp undies, and I fixed that too.
Read the full Q&A on Inside Small Business.