The Future of Women’s Health DTCs
The last couple of months have seen a number of new women’s health & wellness DTC brands emerge particularly in the period care, menopause and sexual wellness segments. They are filling the gap and addressing the needs of women that have not been addressed by larger incumbent brands and are succeeding in the niche. We won’t go into too much detail on the concepts between DTC businesses, but want to leave you with a couple of thoughts that have come up for us.
- While we like to see these new, emerging DTC brands as disruptors, many of them actually are actually spun out of corporate-sponsored venture studios or raise early rounds from large incumbent brands.
- The key to fundraising for DTC brands? It seems like a distribution agreement might just do the trick. While DTC companies generally startup out selling on their own website or online marketplaces, having a large retailer
- DTC companies are product led, but often also better tech enabled than larger companies, so it is only a matter of time for them to also offer services (digital health, telehealth) capitalizing on their brand.
Women’s health & consumer goods? Definitely an area we’re watching closely these days.
Platform Wars?
Do you go deep or do you go broad? Invest in the micro provider or the platform company? Or will every micro provider in the femtech space eventually have to evolve into a platform company anyways? A recent article by Rock Health and the fact that more and more femtech founders are pivoting their communication from condition specific to a more general women’s health message has us think so. But what does that mean for their brands, their communities and the most important currency in healthcare innovation: trust?
I think the question we’re really asking here is: If every company eventually turns into a platform company that offers services across conditions and different ways of going to market, does it really matter where they start? What we know is that this trend towards platform companies in the digital health and increasingly femtech space will lead to acquisitions and consolidation, so why not start with the big vision from the start?
Further reading: Team Micro Provider vs. Team Platform Company
Culturally Competent Care
One big trend we’re seeing both in terms of launches and funding is culturally competent care. Companies in this space work on reducing barriers and improving both access and quality of care for specific patient populations such as people of color or the LGBTQ+ community.
Examples:
- HUE
- Health In Her Hue
- Mae
- Spora Health
- Kiira Health
- Folx Health
- Plume
All of them are building in the U.S. and working on reducing health inequities and it is surprising that this model has not yet made it to other geographies. Definitely a big untapped market and opportunity.
