After WWII, this bus toured rural Norway selling disposable SABA-pads. It was a pretty brilliant guerrilla-marketing tactic for the time.

The SABA factory was founded after the war, and was the first and only to produce menstrual products in Norway. As such, they effectively had a monopoly. The bus helped the company reach consumers directly, convincing them to switch from homemade to disposable pads. It worked!

The name 'SABA' referenced the Queen of Sheba (Saba in Norwegian), while the logo (confusingly?) featured a sphinx head. The idea was to create a luxurious pad 'fit for a queen'.

Early SABA advertising had to balance discretion with information and intrigue. This elegant line-drawing from 1957 did the trick.

SABA was important in Norwegian industrial history. It single-handedly created a market where none had previously existed, broke the taboo of menstrual advertising in Norway, and became both a public joke and an iconic brand. Yet, few business historians have covered it.

In the 1980s, SABA sponsored the Norwegian women's professional football series. In contrast, TAMPAX was turned down from sponsoring women's tennis. https://morgenbladet.no/aktuelt/2019/06/med-saba-ut-i-verden

SABA factory workers were mostly women. So while Norwegian women no longer made home-knitted pads like this one, someone had to make their menstrual products. These jobs were hard.

Archival notes reveal many work accidents, and also a growing awareness of women's labour rights. By the 1980s, female SABA workers organised and wanted better working conditions. Soon after, SABA was sold to Swedish multi-national corporation SCA (today, Essity).

The owners and managers at SABA were male. They did not seem to be affected by any menstrual taboos, and were happy to talk about and advertise pads (and, later, tampons). Here are the founders.

Today, SABA's products are sold by Essity in Sweden, better known in the UK under brand name Bodyform, and in Scandinavia as Libresse. SABA exists only in the archives @Vestfoldarkivet in Sandefjord Norway. The material forms one of the focal points for one of my book chapters.