American Red Cross nurses began using Cellucotton as a feminine hygiene product. It was a material patented years earlier by Ernst Mahler and James Kimberly of the small American company Kimberly Clark. The material was supplied in large quantities to the US Army for use in military hospitals. But it was the Red Cross nurses who began using it as a sanitary product on their own initiative. After the war, Kimberly Clark purchased the US Army’s remaining supplies, and after years of research and development, began mass production of feminine hygiene products, known as Kotex. Initially, it was difficult to introduce the product to the market: many women were embarrassed to ask for Kotex at the store, so Kimberly Clark asked stores to leave a box where customers could leave their money without going through the checkout. Kimberly Clark is now one of the largest companies in the world.
