Customer Spotlight: WooWoo

We’re proudly presenting WooWoo, a female led business changing the face of intimate feminine care.

REVIEWS.io’s Kerry Mythen had the privilege of chatting with WooWoo’s Founder and CEO, Lucy Anderson.?

It’s a conversation that covers the stigma around women’s sexual health, and how WooWoo is challenging that stigma to achieve success in international markets.?

Introducing WooWoo

Lucy, can you tell us about WooWoo? What do you do?

Absolutely. WooWoo is a range of personal care products for women. It was a brand that was sort of two years in the making. We did lots of consumer research groups with women in the UK and we launched six products into Superdrug in 2018. We now have around 20 products in our range.

And what inspired you to start WooWoo??

My mum was an entrepreneur, so I followed in her footsteps. I’ve run all sorts of businesses over the years - everything from a pottery painting cafe to a nanny agency. It was actually having my own children that made me question the conversations around women's sexuality.

Honestly, I was looking at my children wondering, where do you think these little people came from? Why is there so much shame attached to women's sexuality??

I had a background in product development so I went out and found a chemist, a female chemist, who developed a range of products to help start conversations and give women more body confidence.

So your products are for feminine care, intimate feminine care and also pleasure. Is that correct??

Yes, absolutely. We started with the feminine care products. There were a lot of stories in the news at the time about women being too embarrassed to go for a smear test, so we wanted to address that.?

When we were developing the products, we were doing consumer research groups with women, and it became quite apparent quite quickly that they weren't taking responsibility for their sexual health.?

They felt that they were protected because they were on the pill, but as we know, we lived through the sexual health campaigns of the nineties when there was so much noise about it, but the next generation haven’t seen that.?

So there was a very low awareness of sexually transmitted diseases and a lack of understanding. So we launched the condoms and the lube product subsequent to the initial range.?

Changing the Perception of Women’s Health

How would you describe your market category? Is it feminine health?

So when we started out the market was feminine hygiene. I mean, everything is so wrong with that term. Now we fall under wellness, which is a huge category. Still with our retailers, it's feminine care and sexual health.

You had to change not only the conversation around women's sexual wellness products, but also the perception of them. How did you do that??

We wanted to be accessible - so in terms of the packaging, the advertising, the influencers that we worked with.?

We found that a really good way to get people to open up and actually start a conversation was by using humor and euphemisms, so people could talk about a very intimate problem but in a very safe environment.?

Because women weren't having these conversations at all. Not even with their friends, not with siblings. They were embarrassed to go see a doctor, and there was just so much stigma around all women's intimate care.?

I understand there's been quite a few issues with social media in terms of censorship on women's sexual health. Is that something you’ve found challenging?

Yes, it still goes on. I'd like to see things improve, but they haven't at all. Even on our website, we use the term ‘Niagara Falls’ - I won't go into why we use it, but Google picked us up because they thought it was Viagra.

There's just a huge disparity between what can be shown on women's bodies versus men's bodies. In our paid ads for example, we can't show any part of a woman's body.?

It's more words and intimation, which is challenging in an image led environment.

Given those challenges, what has been the most successful marketing tool for you? What has worked best??

Working with brand ambassadors. Working with women that have been very brave in speaking up about aspects of their sexual health, about their life.?

We worked with Megan Barton Hanson when she first came out of the Love Island Villa, and we worked with Georgia Harrison when she was in dispute with Bear for sharing images of her.

We found these exceptionally brave women, and they haven't talked about using our products, but they've talked openly about their sexuality. And that's been amazing for us as a brand.

How have you seen the women's health market changing over the past 10 years??

There's been so much in the news recently about women's healthcare. How women have been viewed as neurotic, and how their problems haven't been acknowledged as real problems.

These problems affect us all our lives, so I think it’s great these conversations are happening. How it's finally been acknowledged that period pain is actually worse than a heart attack, the levels of pain that women feel through to all the problems associated with peri and menopause.?

It's wonderful that Davina (McCall) has been speaking out loudly and doing these programs and she's doing her program on the pill next.

It's just wonderful that women have been coming forward and speaking. Do you know that women were excluded from clinical research and trials up until 1993? It's absolutely shocking.

Your product range is expanding to support women through the menopause. Is that something that has come from demand from your audience? What is driving that direction?

So we originally launched the range of feminine care products for younger women - we launched them on social media and they've hit home.?

We've established a real foothold and an expertise in intimate care, so it felt right that we should be joining in the conversations and the awareness around menopause - the changes that happen to your body and the intimate care products that can help.

I think there's the same problems in this category as we found in the original product lineup. The products that are available are very medicinal. They aren't natural, and they're not the sort of products that I personally would want to buy.

You come from a background of product development, having spent quite some time at the Body Shop. Did that influence your decision to include natural herbal products as key ingredients?

Absolutely. It shaped all the values of the business. We’ve been influenced by everything that was key at The Body Shop - the sustainability, the packaging, the natural ingredients, and local manufacturing.

Everything’s manufactured in the UK, and we try to be as sustainable as possible. Our wipes have always been plastic free - they're a hundred percent cellulose - and we're now 70% post-consumer recycled plastic in our packaging.?

We want to use ocean recovered plastic as a percentage - we’re too small a business at the moment, but we are striving every day.

You try your best, it's difficult as a small business, especially now with inflation. Our ingredient costs are going up, but we don't want to be passing these costs onto our customers because we want the brand to be accessible to everyone. It's a challenging time.?

International Expansion

You started out in - and have done very well in the UK, are you expanding into other markets?

So we started through Superdrug but through the pandemic we moved to being predominantly a DTC business. I'm very glad now that we have that omnichannel as DTC is going through all sorts of changes.

We launched pre-Brexit, and did very well in Europe through Amazon, but post Brexit we rolled everything back.?

We have strong markets in both Australia and Scandinavia, and in January we launched in the US. In the US we’re currently DTC plus Amazon.com - and we're touting ourselves to retailers at the moment.

How has the response been in the US so far??

It's a steep learning curve. I think we were under prepared for the US market, in all honesty. Everything is a lot bigger - the opportunity is a lot bigger, but the costs involved are also a lot bigger.?

What are those key costs? Distribution?

Distribution - and advertising. I don't know why, but I just thought that with Meta being a global advertising agency it would have reasonably similar costs but that’s not the case.?

The opportunity is huge though, and we've corrected a lot of things in terms of our pricing and our shipping, so fingers crossed that we're now on the right track.

It's been a popular product in Australia, is that because of the beach culture? Is that where the opportunity lies with the US?

Yes. We're a very seasonal business because our biggest product is hair removal cream, so the majority of demand falls in the warmer times of the year.?

With our revenues being good in Australia - but seasonal, the US has helped even out our year-round sales. We’re definitely looking at Miami, California and Texas as primary areas.

WooWoo and REVIEWS.io

You joined REVIEWS.io around 2018 -? right at the beginning of your journey, and part of that initial conversation with you was very much around wanting to garner feedback from reviews to facilitate product development.

Yes absolutely. And it wasn’t just our initial products. It's still ongoing.??

We launched this product recently, which is a supplement to counteract UTI’s. We did so because we get a lot of reviews from customers saying that they love our crumbly cleansed products, which is an intimate wash, because they suffer from repeat UTI’s and they find it really helps.?

We were able to use this feedback to understand the needs of our customers and create a solution for them. The reviews are an important part of our product development and market research as well as ongoing learning about intimate care. ?

Lucy’s Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

WooWoo is described as a business created for women by women. Is that important to you? I understand you have an all female board as well?

Yes. It’s fantastic. We had a new Chairwoman join us in January 2022. She came from Cult Beauty and we were really pleased. We have a female finance director, myself, and we've just taken on a new director from the US to help us find our way of trading there.

Could you give any advice to anybody starting out now, particularly female entrepreneurs?

There's so much more out there to help you now. Networking is key and people are always happy to help you. That'd be one of my primary learnings. There's the Entrepreneurs Network, the Female Founders Fund, and there's just being on LinkedIn and trying to connect with people.

I think it's just getting yourself out there. You’ve gotta be brave and go out and talk about your business and do it in a confident way. I've talked before in interviews about having imposter syndrome, and you've just got to front it. Get out there and do it!

Where do you seek your daily inspiration? Do you read any particular books, listen to any podcasts??

I'm constantly absorbing information. I'm a bit of a science geek at heart, so I listen to a lot of podcasts. I'm very interested in behavioral science and so I listen to a lot of marketing, behavioral science podcasts and business podcasts.?

Do you have anyone that you could share with us??

There's the Nudge Podcast by Phil Agnew, that's just super informative for life, psychology, everything. I love it. As with Steven Bartlet’s Diary of a CEO, and Secret Leaders. I quite like that one because they talk a lot about failure as well as success.

It's not an easy path, the entrepreneur path - but it helps to listen to other people.

Thank you so much Lucy!

WooWoo’s primary focus is now success Stateside and a return to the European market, as well as continuing to leverage review content to meet consumer demand. And with our international offices we’ll be there to support the journey.?

If you’d like to know more about the brand check the WooWoo store, or hear what its customers have to say on WooWoo’s REVIEWS.io profile.