2026
PERIOD UNDERWEAR
SAALT HANKY PANKY
We entered Product of the Year for several reasons:
- Building a New Channel of Trust: In period care, trust isn’t a preference — it’s a requirement. This provides a third-party seal of confidence.
- Large-scale Consumer Feedback: Entering gives us a macro-view of how our product fits into the daily lives of 40,000 diverse voters.
- Bringing Period Care to the Forefront: The femcare category is often not spotlit in innovation circles; we entered to highlight that this category deserves the same design and tech focus as any other industry.
We believe this win was driven by our no-compromise standard. For too long, consumers have been made to choose between style, comfort, and reliability when it comes to period care. By bringing together the industry’s thinnest, driest patented gusset with a legacy lace design, we’ve created a product that allows people to feel like themselves every day of the month. We hope voters feel that hanky panky+ (powered by Saalt) is the antidote to settling for ‘good enough’ in period care—giving them the freedom to move through their day exactly how they want to.
The greatest benefit is the social proof it provides at such a massive scale. When it comes to leakproof underwear, the barrier to entry is often a very real, emotional fear of product failure. The POY seal acts as a green light from 40,000 real people, helping to democratize high-performance period care by signaling to the shopper that this technology is a functional, vetted reality.
We’re leveraging the win by featuring the seal across our digital channels and social platforms, using it as a conversation starter to bridge the trust gap for those who are ready to make the switch to high-performance, reusable leakproof care.
Our community is at the core of all we do. We maintain loyalty through direct customer integration, which is a fancy way of saying we really listen. At Saalt, we go beyond basic surveys to host empathy interviews and build feedback loops that uncover the physical and emotional pain points people face during their cycles — ultimately translating those human needs into functional product innovation.
This win reinforces our design thinking process (Empathize → Define → Ideate → Prototype → Test). Seeing such a positive response to this collaboration proves there is a massive appetite for ‘form meets function’ in the femcare space. Moving forward, we are dedicated to looking both in and beyond the period care aisle — drawing inspiration from apparel trends and materials science — to continue bringing the best in tech and style to our community. We’re not just making period products; we’re innovating the future of what underwear can (and should) do for you — every day of the month.
