Updated on May 15, 2025
Choosing Aunt Flow creates positive impact in Canada
Recently, Citron Hygiene lost a significant opportunity due to a growing trend: Canadian organisations choosing to buy exclusively from Canadian companies. Now, we are a very patriotic group over at Citron Hygiene’s Markham, Ontario, headquarters, and we love Canadian brands. From The Keg to Scotiabank, we proudly support our Canadian customers and suppliers.
After losing this deal, though, we found ourselves asking: is it even possible to only “buy Canadian” in today’s global economy?
To be clear, when you work with Citron Hygiene, you are supporting a Canadian company headquartered in Markham, with more than 60,500 square feet of commercial space across the country. We also subcontract with 25 small Canadian businesses nationwide.
We employ Canadians. We pay Canadian taxes. We help Canadians experience period dignity and good hygiene at work, in schools, and in public spaces.
So when we partnered with Aunt Flow, a small, woman-owned business based in Ohio, it wasn’t a contradiction to our Canadian values. It was a reflection of them.
Aunt Flow was the right choice, and it remains the best one.
Founded by Claire Coder, Aunt Flow was built on a bold belief: that period products should be freely available in public spaces, just like toilet paper. Their mission aligned perfectly with what our customers were asking for, and what Canadian menstruators deserved.
Claire has been leading the charge for free period products in away-from-home washrooms since she was 18. She has dedicated her life to menstrual equity, advocacy, education, and action. She started the business with savings from her job as a restaurant server when she was a teenager. She wanted to do what no one had done yet; create a dispenser for public bathrooms that would replace coin-operated models and offer period products that are actually safe and comfortable to use.
Taking it further, she recognised that the business could drive greater change through built-in social impact. Today, Aunt Flow funds advocacy initiatives, education projects, and product donations to communities facing high rates of period poverty in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K.
People across North America have access to free period products largely because of Claire Coder’s dedication to the menstrual movement.
Together, Citron Hygiene and Aunt Flow have placed more than 18,000 dispensers in Canadian washrooms. That’s over 18 million free, organic cotton period products offered in workplaces, campuses, and public buildings from coast to coast.
Thanks to Aunt Flow’s built-in social impact model, these purchases also generate product donations in Canada, including support for Indigenous communities via the Native Women’s Association of Canada.
Yes, Aunt Flow is U.S.-based. But most period products, regardless of brand, are manufactured offshore and imported. What matters is how they are delivered, who services them, and who benefits.
At Citron Hygiene, the answer is: Canadians.
From local technicians and small business partners to the students, workers, and visitors who rely on access to free emergency care, the impact of this partnership is entirely Canadian.
Let’s not confuse origin with outcome.
Buying from Citron Hygiene is buying Canadian — with dignity, impact, and equity built in.
