What You Need to Know About Ladies’ Panties (and Why)

Those of us in the disposable hygiene industry involved in manufacturing sanitary napkins have heard about consumer sentiment regarding pad attachment: 

They don’t stick. 
They keep shifting. 
They make users feel self-conscious. 

These little gripes are in reality a very big deal! Feminine pads and similar products for light urinary incontinence can’t effectively do their jobs if they don’t stay in place. Just as importantly, using the product should relieve user stress and anxiety—not cause it. 

According to disposable hygiene adhesive expert Dianne Toonen, Global Director of Strategic Marketing for Bostik Nonwovens, “Performance was something women tended to remember, for good or otherwise. We thought it was very important to go beyond just doing the traditional test methods for peel, ‘in use’ peel testing, and residue testing, and truly understand the variables.” That’s why we decided it was time to look at the stay-in-place issue surrounding pad attachment from a different perspective.
 

Examining the impact of consumer choices

For a moment, set aside the pad’s design and the adhesive itself. Think about the one thing affecting adhesion that you as a product producer don’t choose: Their underwear. 

Toonen explains, “A good understanding of a woman’s choice in underwear—and how it affects stay-in-place performance—is necessary to creating and selecting a dependable pad attachment adhesive.”

Bostik experts began the process of trying to gain a better understanding in 2015. The disposable hygiene market was still struggling to offer a pad attachment adhesive that satisfied the consumer. What followed were interviews with experts in both the underwear and fabric industries on several continents. We compared and correlated information from diverse resources. 

Even industry insiders like you might not realise how much there really is to know about the subject. “We talked to underwear manufacturers, and they taught us about underwear fabrics ... what variables we should be thinking about [for pad adhesion],” Toonen adds. 
 

Underwear fabrics create many variables in adhesive bonding

The number of ways fabrics could affect adhesive bonding was a bit of a surprise. Everything from how the panties were made to the colours of the underwear could impact the strength of an adhesive’s bond.

“As an adhesive supplier, our first approach was to purchase some standard fabrics and do our tests. If we saw something different with black fabrics, we wouldn’t know why it was happening,” Toonen explains. “Once we understood the variables, our teams could begin to test the extent of their influence, such as measuring bond strength with the same fabric in black and white.” 

Paul Andrews, Global Marketing Manager of Bostik Nonwovens, was in complete agreement—and willing to step outside his comfort zone—as he took his research into the field. 

“One day I called up my daughter and said, ‘Honey, I need to buy ladies’ panties.’ She paused, Andrews recalls, and then asked, ‘Why?’” After shopping many stores in different locales, he and his daughter had amassed a huge assortment of styles, fabrics, and colours, at various price levels. Then off the panties went to the research team. After extensive review and testing, they were able to demonstrate just how much of a difference the panties could make in adhesive bonding. 

“It turned out to be a real value to our femcare customers,” Andrews notes. “We would start a presentation, and the next thing we would do was to unload a couple of carrier bags of underwear onto the table. The customers sort of went into shock a little bit. But it really got the conversation going.” 

Both sides were able to ask good questions, and the hands-on experience with underwear samples helped them make new connections, Toonen confirms. “When you talk about the stretch and then show them data curves, they would respond, ‘Wow, I can feel this, and I can see what it does with the data and how that impacts the adhesive [bond].’ I think that like anything that’s hands on, it makes it more real and clear.” 

Want to learn more about the science that goes into making a disposable feminine hygiene pad stick throughout the twists and turns of her day? Request our market study Fabrics, Undergarments, and the Pad Attachment Adhesive. Inside, you’ll get a great introduction to the many factors impacting pad adhesion—plus a look at our StayX^TM Adhesive Technology and Staybility^TM testing innovations it helped to bring about.

Request Whitepaper