TENA

TENA is an incontinence-care brand of Swedish origin, owned by the hygiene and health company Essity. Its range covers absorbent pads, liners, pants and underwear, together with a skin-care line and digital tools for professional caregivers. The brand traces its roots to the early 1960s, when the Swedish company Mölnlycke began making disposable products for incontinent patients; the TENA name itself was registered in 1983 [12].

The brand sells to consumers and to healthcare institutions in more than 90 countries, according to the company. Beyond its products, TENA has become known for advertising that addresses bladder weakness openly, including campaigns built around older women's self-image and a long-running humorous series for men.

No individual founder is named in TENA's history. The company credits its origins to Mölnlycke, which in the early 1960s developed disposable diapers and underpants for incontinent patients. TENA describes these as the first products of their kind, and it also says it was the first to advertise incontinence products frankly, with the aim of raising awareness and acceptance of a common condition.

The TENA name came later. By the brand's own account, it was registered in 1983, and the product line has evolved gradually since then [12]. Sources differ on how to date the brand. Wikipedia's infobox gives 1960 as the founding year, while the same article's body text says Mölnlycke first used the TENA name in the 1980s [14]. The difference is largely one of definition: the 1960s date refers to the product heritage, and 1983 to the brand name. This article follows the brand's registration year of 1983 as the founding date.

The company's own figures on its heritage also vary. Its sites describe "over 60 years of experience", counting from the early 1960s, while the text of its About page refers to more than 50 years [2].

TENA's published timeline moves from product safety to care services and then to environmental targets. The company says product safety has been central to the brand since its inception and that its products use common materials found in absorbent hygiene products worldwide.

In 2011 the brand launched TENA Solutions, a structured programme run in partnership with care homes. According to TENA, homes that introduce it spend on average 44% less time on incontinence-related tasks and produce 31% less waste [12]. The same year, the company set a target that at least a third of its new innovations should bring social or environmental improvements.

TENA Identifi followed in 2013. It is a technology for professional caregivers that records a resident's urinary leakage, so that staff can see leakage patterns and choose a suitable product from the start. In 2017 the brand adopted Environmental Product Declarations, an independently verified format that reports a product's environmental information across its full life cycle.

Much of the brand's later public profile has come from advertising. In 2019 it ran the "I Will Be Me" campaign in London, and in 2020 it extended that platform with "#Ageless". Both are described under Recognition below.

TENA's ownership history runs through several corporate changes. Essity, the brand's current owner, states that its predecessor SCA acquired Mölnlycke, the company where TENA's products originated, in 1975 [13]. Wikipedia gives a different account, saying the TENA brand was acquired by SCA in the early 1990s; that part of the Wikipedia article carries no supporting citation [14].

In 2017 SCA was split, and Essity was established as an independent hygiene and health company [13]. Some reference sources still list SCA as TENA's parent, but the brand's own sites describe TENA as a brand of Essity [2]. Essity is headquartered in Stockholm and listed on Nasdaq Stockholm.

According to Essity, the group employs about 36,000 people and sells its products in around 150 countries. It describes TENA and the professional hygiene brand Tork as world market leaders. Other brands in the Essity portfolio include Libero, Libresse, Leukoplast, Tempo, Zewa, JOBST, Knix, Modibodi, TOM Organic and Demak'Up.

TENA frames its purpose around dignity and quality of life. The brand says it develops products and services that help people with incontinence, their families and care professionals, and it states that it aims for "sustainable continence care" with better care and better products. On its US site, the company summarises its values as empowerment, innovation and sustainability.

A recurring theme in the brand's own writing is stigma. TENA describes bladder weakness as surprisingly common and not tied to age or general health. It argues that the condition itself is not especially serious, but that the social taboo around it can damage self-esteem and lead to anxiety and isolation. The company also notes the pressures on family carers, who want to protect a relative's dignity, and on care institutions, which must balance quality of care against budgets.

TENA calls itself the world's leading brand for adult incontinence products, citing Euromonitor International retail data [1]. It says its work draws on clinical and consumer research intended to set standards for skin health, protection, comfort and fit.

The brand's audience is broad. Its sites address women, men, family caregivers and healthcare professionals separately. Wikipedia notes that its products are sold in grocery, drug and discount stores, in the aisles where other bladder-control products are found.

The core range consists of absorbent products. Product lines named across the brand's sites and press coverage include TENA Discreet liners and pads, TENA Silhouette underwear, TENA ProSkin Pants, TENA Flex ProSkin and the separate TENA Men range. Alongside these, the brand sells skin-care products and digital health tools aimed at care settings.

TENA Silhouette Noir, launched in 2019, was designed to look and feel more like ordinary underwear than standard incontinence pants. The Drum reported that its low waist offers discretion, and TENA said the design let women wear what they like without being restricted by the colour or shape of their underwear.

On materials, the company lists renewable wood-fibre pulp from responsibly managed forests and superabsorbent polymer, a material used to lock in and hold liquid. It says unscented versions of some products are available for people with sensitive skin or allergies, while other products contain perfume.

For professional care, TENA Identifi and TENA Solutions extend the brand from products into services. Both focus on helping care homes understand individual residents' needs and reduce both workload and waste.

Environmental targets feature prominently in TENA's own history. In 2008 the brand set a goal to halve the carbon footprint of its products in Europe. The company reports that it has since cut the footprint of its pads, liners and pants by between 11% and 33%, and that it is on track to reach the 50% goal in Europe by 2030.

It gives separate figures for individual product lines. According to the brand, the carbon footprint of TENA Men has fallen by 26%, TENA ProSkin Pants and underwear by 38%, and TENA Flex ProSkin by 20% [6]. Since 2020, all TENA factories in Europe have run on 100% purchased electricity from renewable sources, the company says [5].

Several of the brand's targets are set at group level. In 2016 Essity committed to converting all waste from its production facilities into useful materials or energy by 2030, and aligned its work with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. In 2018 the Science Based Targets initiative approved the company's goals of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 25% for energy and electricity in production and by 18% for key raw materials, transport and waste. That year the company also set out three sustainability platforms: well-being, "more from less" and circularity. In 2019 it committed to making its packaging fully recyclable, using 85% renewable and recycled materials.

TENA's advertising has drawn attention in trade and business press, mostly for how it handles a subject many brands avoid.

In 2019 the "I Will Be Me" campaign, developed by the agency AMV BBDO, recreated the catwalk image used in Victoria's Secret "Angels" advertising, with women over 40 in place of the models [15]. It ran on a large billboard on Tottenham Court Road and on digital screens in Oxford Street in central London, promoting Silhouette Noir. Anna McCrory, senior brand manager for TENA UK, said that one in three women over 35 experience bladder weakness, yet it remains a taboo subject.

The follow-up campaign, "#Ageless", launched in March 2020. Its 60-second film was directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, director of The Favourite, and features women over 55 talking about sex and their own bodies in their own words [16]. It premiered on Channel 4 on 9 March, with a partnership with the Guardian, and launched at the same time in the UK, France and Germany. Watercolour artwork by the artist Stina Persson appeared in the wider campaign. It was supported by research commissioned by TENA, which found that 44% of women under 35 expected bladder leakage to harm their sex lives, while only 10% of women over 50 said it had.

The men's range has its own advertising history. The Hustle reported in 2026 that TENA Men had never run a TV campaign before AMV BBDO was hired in 2015 [17]. The agency chose humour and created Stirling Gravitas, an alpha male in effortless control of every part of his life, who juggles chainsaws and tells a lion to stay. The campaign ran for several years on TV, radio and online. According to the creative team, the joke was never at the expense of the condition itself. A 2025 TV spot took a more direct approach, opening with a middle-aged man saying he wanted to talk about his urine leakage.

No brand-level awards are documented.

TENA is an active brand. Its website carried a 2026 copyright notice, its US site cites Euromonitor data from a 2026 edition, and a new TENA Men television spot aired in 2025. The brand continues to operate within Essity, selling to both consumers and healthcare institutions.