“Our mission and vision is to build a brand that makes women's health a lot less lonely and a lot less confusing.”
Jordan Gaspar is the Managing Partner of AF Ventures, a venture capital firm investing in high-growth consumer product companies. Jordana Kier is the co-founder of LOLA, the first lifelong brand for her body. Created for women, by women who have been there too, LOLA aims to address every reproductive life stage with a commitment to product transparency and a community built on candid dialogue about all of the things we don’t openly talk about.
The female monthly reproductive cycle has been very reactive and left women vulnerable. There simply was not a space for women to talk and engage with one another around this major part of their lives. This led to a holistic company that provided not only a supportive and open community, but a full suite of products to service those needs. This has sparked greater engagement among women who are becoming more conscious about their consumer choices when it comes to their body. “You're talking about products that a woman may use for up to 40 years of her life, why aren't there long-term studies about the different ingredients that might go into these products?”
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SPEAKER
Jordana Kier
Co-Founder
LOLA
MODERATOR
Jordan Gaspar
President & Managing Partner
AF Ventures
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
John Darsie: (00:07)
Hello everyone and welcome back to SALT Talks. My name is John Darsie, I'm the managing director of SALT, which is a global thought leadership forum and networking platform at the intersection of finance, technology, and public policy. SALT Talks are a digital interview series that we started during this work from home period with leading investors, creators, and thinkers. What we're trying to do on SALT Talks is replicate the experience that we provide at our global conferences, the SALT Conference, which we host twice annually, one in the United States and one internationally, most recently in Abu Dhabi in 2019.
John Darsie: (00:43)
What we're trying to do at those conferences and on these talks is provide a window into the mind of subject matter experts as well as provide a platform for what we think are big ideas that are shaping the future. We're very excited today to welcome Jordan Gaspar and Jordana Kier to SALT Talks.
John Darsie: (01:01)
Jordan Gaspar is the managing partner of AF Ventures, which is a venture capital firm investing in high growth consumer product companies. Launched in 2014, AF Ventures manages 35 plus portfolio brands across a wide array of consumer brands in food and beverage, beauty and personal care, health and wellness, and pets. Hopefully we don't have any pets interrupting our broadcast here today, but if they do we'll embrace it and keep rolling. Prior to founding AF Ventures, Jordan was an attorney at Morrison Cohen LLP, where she advised venture and private equity firms and their portfolio companies on acquisitions, sales, mergers, and financings. Jordan graduated from Columbia College and received her JD from Fordham Law School in New York.
John Darsie: (01:49)
Jordana Kier is the co-founder of LOLA, which is the first lifelong brand for her body. Before co-founding LOLA, Jordana received her MBA from Columbia Business School, during which she worked at Rent The Runway and Quidsi, not to be confused with Quibi, which is the media company that failed miserably. She graduated from Dartmouth College in 2008 and was named to Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2016 and Crain's 40 Under 40 in 2019. Jordana also serves on the Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network advisory board.
John Darsie: (02:24)
Just a reminder, if you have any questions during today's talk for Jordan or Jordana you can enter them in the Q&A box at the bottom of your video screen on Zoom, and now I'm going to turn it over to Jordan to host the interview.
Jordan Gaspar: (02:37)
Thank you, John. Really appreciate you and SALT having us today. I'm looking forward to speaking with everyone.
John Darsie: (02:43)
Great to have you. Absolutely.
Jordan Gaspar: (02:44)
So hi everybody. Excuse me in advance if I have any kids kind of bump into the picture. We'll do our best in this sort of new medium. I'm Jordan Gaspar, a managing partner of AF Ventures. As John explained, we're a venture fund that invests in high growth consumer brands. We see ourselves as having a unique model in that we offer a proprietary set of resources and a real hands-on approach to working with our teams across domain experience, in financial construction, marketing techniques, distribution and supply chain. Within that we, unlike your typical venture fund where it's a wide model, we do have a wide portfolio but it does involve taking an active approach to offer change and help support our founders and advocate for them in particular in ways such as this.
Jordan Gaspar: (03:36)
With over 100 million under management we've got over 35 brands in the portfolio that really do span primarily food and beverage, which was our bread and butter, no pun intended. Of the 39 active portfolio companies, 36 of them are food and beverage, but we recently expanded right before COVID in February into the new verticals of personal care, pet, beauty and wellness, and we are super excited because Jordana and LOLA are our pilot investment in personal care.
Jordan Gaspar: (04:06)
So with that, I'll have Jordana introduce herself and tell you a little bit about LOLA, which we're really excited to support.
Jordana Kier: (04:13)
Thank you Jordan, and thank you John and SALT for having us here. It's wonderful to share our stories. As Jordan mentioned and John too, LOLA is the first lifelong brand for a woman's body for reproductive health. Our aim is to provide the transparent products, the transparent content and a supportive community that we think women deserve for their entire reproductive life cycle. Initially when we launched the business it was really about changing the way women thought about, purchased, and received, and also talked about their feminine care products.
Jordana Kier: (04:54)
So the first three years of the business it was really about reinventing that experience, finding a lot of opportunity to improve this very reactive, very vulnerable journey that many women go through on a monthly basis. That let us to eventually developing our own IP, building our own manufacturing machine, developing our own content conversation as well as a platform for women to really engage and feel very informed as they go through their reproductive journeys.
Jordana Kier: (05:27)
We then set our sites on category expansion into sexual wellness to continue to deliver this very holistic approach to the resources that we believe women deserve for their reproductive journey. So obviously products but also expert advice, and eventually also expanded into brick-and-mortar retail with our launch into Walmart, full chain, in March of this year. So sort of tapping into that, the offerings that we provide, also making sure that this omnichannel access is something that she knows she can rely on LOLA for.
Jordana Kier: (06:06)
Our mission and vision is really just to build a brand that makes women's health a lot less lonely and a lot less confusing. We just continued a plan to expand our product portfolio, both physical and digital, with women's needs in mind, made by women, and ensuring that again, these products are available, however she wants to shop. So whether that's online, whether that's on shelf, especially in this moment in time when a lot of our purchasing behaviors are changing by the day. Really also in addition to that, and well, I think we'll get into this a little later, but wanting to make sure that we are sparking conversation that drives also policy change and really systemic change to ensure that we are improving women's lives for the better.
Jordan Gaspar: (07:01)
Thank you for that introduction. As longstanding investors in food and beverage, we see COVID as a big marker of change in the consumer landscape across the board. I'd say that we've seen the common notion that we've been investing in, that food is health, where we were investing in functional products, functional beverages, grain free foods, natural stress relievers like adaptogens. That's really evolved into more broadly products as health, and so with a blurring of the categories between food and personal care, and beauty, and the emergence of categories like ingestible beauty for the first time. There really is almost this convergence of multiple categories that used to operate in their silos that are really focused on general wellbeing, and people taking care of their bodies from within.
Jordan Gaspar: (07:53)
So I'd love if you wouldn't mind sharing a little bit about your perspective on how the natural personal care space is evolving and the rapid category growth that's been undergoing in the past couple of years, but even particularly this past year.
Jordana Kier: (08:05)
Yeah, I mean, even when we started the business in 2015 we, myself, my co-founder, we never thought about feminine care, personal care as part of an overall wellness routine, right? You think of wellness, you think of beauty, you think of pampering, right? But there's also these categories, food, personal care, that are sort of almost the foundations upon which we build great habits, and good hygiene, and yet these are things that are typically or historically have been very reactive categories.
Jordana Kier: (08:43)
When you think about the fact that a woman uses over 11,000 tampons in her lifetime but the FDA doesn't require companies to provide a comprehensive list of ingredients on the back of the box, and then sort of layer on top of that the historical stigma around these topics in general and how they're not really spoken about. That gave us an enormous opportunity to drive a conversation and to marry these categories with proactive wellness care, because I mean, even for myself it felt kind of almost like an awakening, where I was like, "Why aren't I thinking about these things?" I know I'm going to get my period every month, I know I'm going to need these products. I've been relying on my historical knowledge or my mom, my sister, my older cousin who I trust, so I just use what is put in front of me because as a 12, 13-year-old girl you're very impressionable and it's a vulnerable moment. To step back from that and say, "Wait a minute, we actually think it's important to know what we're putting in and around our bodies, particularly in this category." That was a really important moment for us and for every one of our customers.
Jordana Kier: (10:07)
The way we see it, there's really three main issues in our space. Is one, this lack of consumer awareness. It's a lack of incentive by brands to be fully transparent. Then a lack of public support to study these categories and keep companies accountable. I mean, when you're talking about products that a woman may use for up to 40 years of her life, why aren't there long-term studies about the different ingredients that might go into these products? So luckily, and especially in this year, all of the trends are pointing to a really positive change in all of these three issues that we've identified. We're seeing that in the naturals category. It's significantly outpacing synthetics in the feminine care space and significantly outpacing the options.
Jordana Kier: (11:04)
So you have kind of both a real growth of emerging brands, which is wonderful, it drives a broader conversation and helps to validate our hypothesis back in 2015, but then you also have the actual interest from consumers really putting their money where their mouth is. So we're just super excited and thrilled that the conversation is really changing at all angles, whether it's consumer behavior or it's policy, or even just the way that big businesses are thinking about changing their models.
Jordana Kier: (11:47)
When we launched in Walmart in March we have over time done a lot of really wonderful surveys to understand the changing in behaviors, particularly in this year when all of our lives have sort of been thrown upside down. A really interesting nugget is that 29% of Walmart feminine care shoppers told us that they're more likely to use natural feminine care products than they were pre-COVID, and 51% of women wish retailers would offer a better selection of natural feminine care. So we're not just seeing this in, again, the new brands that are coming online, but also the fact that purchasers and shoppers are actively looking for a change in this category.
Jordan Gaspar: (12:35)
We couldn't agree more, and I think that COVID itself is going to be a big marker for what the consumer's expectations are going to be of the brands that they start to consume. When we look at scaling consumer brands, we've always said that part of the rise of them is about money, manufacturing, and manpower. Through COVID I'd say that it's definitely been exacerbated by what our supply chain challenges, and financial challenges. So we see a post-COVID world that really does prioritize first and foremost supply chain, right? It's been something that the consumer has become extremely aware of, is where are the products coming from, how do they get to my door, what are they made of, and sort of this widespread technology adoption is going to be something that really does improve our industry. But beyond that, I think a lot of consumers are now becoming even more open-minded to sustainable practices, because you think about how much garbage we're all consuming in our homes that we weren't as aware of before. So sustainability, transparency, these are things that people are now living with on a day-to-day basis.
Jordan Gaspar: (13:40)
Then obviously making sure that there's just basic organization on the supply chain. I think that the consumer has become aware that a supply chain does exist that brings their products to their home. From a venture perspective we did see a shift in the space through COVID in terms of the financial construction of growth stage companies. Whereas there were certainly a lot of unprofitable businesses going into COVID. COVID definitely raised the awareness of founders in our space of profitability and how important it was to be self-sustaining and not relying on capital markets, and not expect that there's going to be the next raise ahead of them.
Jordan Gaspar: (14:18)
Early on in COVID I'd say almost our entire portfolio recut their budgets in March and April and really thought through what are our union economics, how can we optimize our partnerships, our supplier relationships, but how also can we build a more scalable, profitable business. So we've been saying that for the past eight, nine months that we're going to see a lot more profitable businesses come through COVID, and I think that that's certainly come to fruition.
Jordan Gaspar: (14:44)
Then beyond that, LOLA is also a perfect example of what is now an increasing prioritization of the omnichannel distribution strategy. As historical food and beverage investors, I'd say that we've seen that D2C and sort of digitally native brands were something that was really difficult and challenging for refrigerated and frozen foods and something that would probably be much easier in the personal care space, but it's now all of a sudden the food and beverage space has realized that it's really important to be omni and to offer an ability for consumers to be able to acquire products at their doorstep. So a lot of the concepts that the digitally native brands have thinking through their super fans, and marketing online and through social media channels are something that a lot of food businesses are rethinking, and vice versa, a lot of digitally native brands like LOLA have now had the ability to launch into brick-and-mortar retail. So there's a convergence really of the construction of a lot of consumer companies.
Jordan Gaspar: (15:45)
So, I'd love to hear a little bit, if you wouldn't mind telling us, about your D2C business and then of course the amazing expansion into Walmart this year.
Jordana Kier: (15:54)
I think for us, I mean, D2C can be such an important channel for a brand to build and grow business, but we see D2C as a channel, it's not a business. It is one way that you can reach our customers. For us it's been a vital channel because we've been able to allow her to feel seen and heard, particularly in these categories because reproductive care can be such an isolating and vulnerable journey, and allowing women the opportunity to connect with a brand directly and share what they're thinking, what they're feeling, what they think is missing in these categories. That's new, that's empowering in a way that we haven't seen historically in this category. But again, it's channel, it's not a business, and that's where I think this sort of cutting out the middle man type of approach and just sort of having that be the foundation upon which your business is built, that's a harder message I think to continue to have ... It's a harder message to have staying power as you expand into new channels because what we want to do, what we want to build is a household brand. If we want to be there for her every step of the way however she needs us, we can't just be available in one place. We have to be available in any place she wants to shop.
Jordana Kier: (17:28)
It's definitely been exciting to see this wave of brands really challenging the old guard and bringing new innovative products and services to light, to market, but I think some will be grappling with the challenges of building a brand that can last for the next 50 to 100 years. We feel very confident that by starting with D2C and by enabling that one-to-one connection and building that trust and authenticity, that just gives us a real leg up on some of these big incumbents who say they may know exactly what women want, but I think when you actually are connecting and having these very intimate one-to-one conversations, whether it's through email, whether it's through phone, whether it's through direct messages on social platforms, that's really how you get to the crux of what it is that's missing in these categories, whether it's product, whether it's experience.
Jordana Kier: (18:32)
I think COVID obviously has changed a lot of the way that we thought about our business and building it. Certainly thinking a lot more about growth in the right ways, and really being prudent about that. As a basically subscription business, because your period is basically the one thing you can't cancel every month, we're in a fairly inelastic category. So we're not one that would see a real major impact as a result of a pandemic. We're high growth, we're healthy in this environment, and frankly in any environment because we're providing customers with a long-term solution in a product category where they previously just didn't have that option. I think that goes for so many of your portfolio companies as well, where people aren't necessarily making a temporal change because they're home, they're making these structural changes to their lives and what they want to consume because they're sort of more awakened to the elements around them.
Jordana Kier: (19:42)
Obviously our customers' routines have dramatically shifted, so our focus has really been on maintaining that high touch customer experience and adapting to needs in real time. So whether that's flexibility around shipping, whether that's also partnering with Walmart to drive more digital resources. If they're shopping in the aisle we have QR codes in our fixtures in the aisle where you can actually obviously be interacting with the product in the store but also then get access to content on your phone. We're pivoting a lot of our community engagement strategy to be fully digital, including posting a weekly parent support group at home and then providing also a lot of really wonderful digital resources via our online hub, The Spot.
Jordana Kier: (20:30)
We've also introduced the LOLA Collective, which is a new hub for women's health and really bringing together a forward-thinking group of trusted reproductive health experts, advocates, educators, really making sure that people can find answers even easier than ever. I think we all I think are in this moment in time where the casual conversations that you may have in passing, whether with a friend, whether at the office, that's lacking now. So those moments where it might be an opportune time to ask or share a personal story, it's harder now, it's more difficult. So we are living more isolating, more vulnerable lives. Again, reproductive health is already an isolating or can already be an isolating journey. So our mission is to continue to build on what we had been building pre-COVID to ensure that she just continues to feel really supported.
Jordana Kier: (21:37)
As I mentioned, this March we launched full chain with Walmart, which was just really thrilling. I mean, we had been working on the launch for over a year at that point, and just have felt so supported and thrilled to find a retail partner who really shares in our mission, and making periods better through tested products, through reliable resources, with a really convenient and innovative shopping experience. I mean, when you think about kind of the footprint of Walmart maybe feminine care is not the first thing that comes to mind, but the fact is that the majority of US women shop at Walmart and half of whom are shopping exclusively for their feminine care products at the retailer. So that was really such an important data point for us because if we want to be driving transparent products, candid content, and also omnichannel access, what better initial retailer partner to launch with to really ensure that, especially in this moment in time, we're there for her when she needs us.
Jordana Kier: (22:46)
I also think it's important to look back at our D2C heritage and say there really is value in that channel and there's insight that we could bring to the retailer. That is something that Walmart has been so wonderful in terms of just being receptive to hearing us out and hearing the types of insights that we have on her behavior in this category. So a really exciting data point that we brought to them was 72% of our customers on our D2C channel don't just buy a single absorbency of product, and there's really no common, there's not a most common pack. In fact, most women are kind of going off of the default on our site. So we really worked with them to come up with an innovative solution to ensure that what we brought to the shelf still had some of that customization, that convenience magic. We were the first brand to cross merchandise tampons, pads, and liners, which with a partner like Walmart is really no small feat when it comes to execution.
Jordana Kier: (23:56)
As we look ahead too we're obviously prioritizing multiple shopping channels, being very ... What's the word? Sorry. Really making sure that we're looking into the data and understanding how her shopping behaviors are changing, what she's looking for on the shelf. So whether that's through our collaboration with Walmart, whether that's through maintaining and innovating on our D2C channel among others, we just want to continue to drive better solutions across the entire reproductive health category.
Jordana Kier: (24:30)
We did actually also launch family planning, which is what Walmart calls our sexual and intimate wellness business in September, so it's been kind of an incredible year for us as far as really trying to solidify our presence on the shelf in not just one but now two categories. Really through our omnichannel approach the goal is again just to provide customers with that accessibility so they're never caught unprepared, or we're there for her wherever she is, again, regardless of the channel. We're really laser focused on making sure that especially in this moment in time too where, again, shopping behaviors are changing, we're showing up where she needs us and where she's most comfortable.
Jordan Gaspar: (25:16)
It's been an unbelievable year watching not one, but two line extension launches for you guys. So a congratulations on that. I think that it's important for people to also understand how unprecedented this past year was in terms of for founders to even navigate this climate.
Jordan Gaspar: (25:32)
We ourselves are, we joke we're a startup fund for startups, and so we launched our business in January 2014 and really grew from what was a $4 million fund into where we are now. I look at this past eight or nine months, and we felt a lot of conviction around getting back to our own roots with our COVID response. So in this period of time, launching into retail is in itself always challenging on the scale that you did, but to do it during the surge is something that people have to really give you guys credit for. To give everyone context for that, back in March the retailers, as you guys all remember from a consumer perspective, got wiped out. All the products got pulled off the shelves. So all of these businesses that are coming to the market had to very quickly adapt.
Jordan Gaspar: (26:20)
So, if you look at we always want to invest in founders who are resilient and resourceful and relentless. We also now want them to be adaptive, and nimble, and be able to make very strong executional changes every quickly. That's something that was a big part of a hallmark of sort of launching in Walmart, is how did LOLA have to quickly pivot and respond to what was basically a complete overhaul of how consumers were shopping and all the expectations they had going in. So you guys did an amazing job with that.
Jordan Gaspar: (26:50)
For us, we had the privilege of seeing 39 companies navigate that, and that's been an amazing thing to see all the founders across categories, different verticals, different areas in the consumer space, some that are digitally native, some that are in brick-and-mortar, almost all nationwide, for the exception the ones that are just sort of D2C. What we did during COVID was starting in early March. We started having programming, where every day we would have town halls across the different areas that we could support our brands. If you think about things like, obviously I've spoken about the supply chain, but also what's happening real time at Walmart. Can we get the distributors in our spaces to host a seminar? Having prominent redistributors kind of post a seminar of logistics challenges and how to navigate working with organizations like Tag Logistics or with Dot Foods. Beyond that, the founders in our portfolio all had such an amazing community in that they got to work together. So on these daily town halls we'd have over 30 of our founders sharing notes and swapping ideas and discussing very real time distribution challenges and opportunities.
Jordan Gaspar: (28:04)
So one thing that we did encourage our brands to do is to work with the retail buyers in the way that LOLA does, and say, "Hey, you have product that just got wiped off your shelf, well, we have plenty of inventory for you. Please come to us as a first opportunity when you're thinking about how to fill your shelf space." There really was an amazing amount of distribution that came out of kind of generating that conviction and confidence from the buyers that a brand was able to deliver. To deliver on 4,600 Walmart stores during a pandemic as a launch was pretty impressive. So a big credit to the team and all the work they did.
Jordan Gaspar: (28:41)
I think that beyond that, there were a couple of other things that during COVID people have spoken a lot about but that behind the scenes we were all working very closely, how to navigate PPP, and that's obviously something that there's been a lot of emphasis on with everybody but in the sort of venture community in particular.
Jordan Gaspar: (29:02)
Then we've started to really see on the other side of kind of what is now eight or nine sustained months of people working from home. What is the EQ side of this? How can we support our teams differently than what we used to? So if the boardrooms were historically primarily going through the numbers, going through the manufacturing, going through marketing opportunities. We're actually starting to spend a lot of time with the boards that we work with our companies, talking to our founders about how can we support our entrepreneurs and how can they support their teams. It's not just about products as wellness, but it's also about taking care of the people who are building the companies.
Jordan Gaspar: (29:39)
So I think it's become a very comfortable place that a lot of natural products companies are starting to feel very comfortable saying what are the practices we're going to do to support our team during this time? What are the conversations we're going to have? How is it that we can be mindful of being a good employer? Because I think that coming out of this beyond just the products that we're ingesting and putting in our bodies is going to be a focus on people as a whole, and thinking through how can we be more human, how can we have more intention, how can we be thinking not just about sort of business fundamentals, but that if we have teams that are operating and working well together, how we can support them to grow and ultimately become better quality businesses to invest in.
Jordan Gaspar: (30:22)
So I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about kind of being ... We're a women-owned fund, so we share that, and I think that obviously as a women-owned company, a women run company, there's sort of specific challenges. I think that LOLA has such a unique culture in terms of how you encourage your team and how you work with your team, but even how you think about family planning and things like that. So I'd love to hear a little bit more about kind of how you guys view building your internal community.
Jordana Kier: (30:49)
Yeah. It's such a good question. I mean, when we started the business and through today, I mean, it continues to be an incredibly mission-driven organization. So when you have a year like we've had, that commitment to that mission doesn't waiver, but I think it's just so much more important to reinforce, and particularly too when you're not in the office, when you're not sort of having those casual conversations again and sort of consistently reinforcing kind of why we're all here and what we're all doing, and why it's important to continue to work incredibly hard. You lose some of that when you're home and all separated.
Jordana Kier: (31:40)
I think my co-founder Alex and I have both now got through our own reproductive journeys, had kids, et cetera. So, I think sort of to set that example as two founders and really sort of having women at the forefront of companies, and having them be the decision makers that address our reproductive and sexual health, leading the product innovation for such incredibly personal and intimate products. That is something that I think we're very proud of in terms of infusing our own stories, our own happy stories, painful stories. Just ensuring that our customers and our team see us as openly and authentically as we see ourselves and sort of just two women who found a problem that they wanted to solve. We both shared our own first period stories with the world it seems to spark a very candid dialogue. I think it starts from the top and then it sort of goes through the entire organization. It's infused in our values in terms of speaking up, and showing up, and being the voice for ourselves, for our company, for our peers, for our customers, and really never kind of settling on an answer that doesn't get to the root of a problem. I think that goes for both the subject matters that we work with, and work on, and work to improve, as well as just how we operate our business on a daily basis.
Jordana Kier: (33:23)
I think raising money has obviously been a really interesting journey for us. I think it's mostly been pitching to male investors, and I think that really opened our eyes to this information gap that truly does exist around women's reproductive health. We found ourselves kind of walking male investors through I think it was called a vagina's 101, like [inaudible 00:33:49] of just you get your period and then you're thinking about becoming sexually active, and maybe you run into the drugstore and you don't really know what you need, or you're embarrassed and you text your partner because they're going to be on their way home and you need something that they can pick up, and what is that conversation like. Just sort of [crosstalk 00:34:10].
Jordan Gaspar: (34:09)
They don't know where to buy tampons.
Jordana Kier: (34:11)
Exactly, right.
Jordan Gaspar: (34:14)
I mean, I like that-
Jordana Kier: (34:14)
[inaudible 00:34:14] is really where it, it's where it's at.
Jordan Gaspar: (34:17)
Where are consumers even buying these products?
Jordana Kier: (34:20)
Exactly. But I think it really started with telling kind of that whole story and doing it in a way that also invited conversation again. Our brand has never been about being scare tactiquy or sort of pointing fingers and saying, "You're putting poison in your body." Because that doesn't drive a productive and positive relationship, and that's something that we want to have with each of our customers, each of our teammates, et cetera. So really shaping that story and also finding opportunities too to where are there analogies where men could understand sort of what using a tampon might translate for them. So food is actually a really great analogy that we consistently used to tell the story and really present ourselves as domain experts. We were so encouraged to find that a real diverse group of investors were extremely receptive to the business, to the opportunity at hand. They understood the market potential, they understood the need for greater transparency because whether they were close with their sister growing up, whether they had a daughter, or whether the food analogy and story stuck with them. It really just took kind of every single approach to ensure that the story could really resonate.
Jordana Kier: (35:53)
We're just very proud to have a group of people around us who actively want to play a role in destigmatizing these aspects of reproductive health and educating women, educating men, having those open conversations and all of the things we don't openly talk about because these are not topics that should be only talked about with one subset of a population. That's not where we will get to the root of driving change.
Jordana Kier: (36:24)
I think there has been a real sort of exposing of kind of taking a step back and saying, "How are women's topics and how are women sort of playing a role in the purchasing decisions for their household, and are those brands actually speaking to that consumer?" I think globally to see that women were making up 80% of purchasing decisions in the household.
Jordan Gaspar: (37:01)
Trillions of dollars.
Jordana Kier: (37:03)
Trillions of dollars, right? Last I saw it was like somewhere almost in $32 trillion in consumer spending per year, right? The idea that it may not be women either behind those brands or helping to shape the strategy of those brands, or helping to fund those brands, that's a real opportunity to ensure that when I go into a store or when somebody else goes into a store I'm looking at a shelf and I'm feeling like I'm being heard. I think there's really, this again goes back to our D2C roots, I think because we were able to foster this really candid conversation with a grassroots community and really sourcing that honest feedback from customers, sourcing honest feedback from our team about the pain points that they experience in the category, infusing our own personal stories. It really helps to deliver on that competitive advantage and delivering that product improvement, that innovation that we want, that customers want, and really also offering that peace of mind too with sort of ensuring that we'll always be transparent with ingredients, we're always going to make sure we're kind of going above and beyond in terms of quality testing.
Jordana Kier: (38:22)
Not just saying like, "Our in-house people did it." But actually putting it to the test with third parties. It's not cheap, but it's really important that we do that and we go the extra mile and we put the ingredients on our box because we know that as our own consumers we would expect the same thing. So that has really been I think a really proud moment for us to just continue to know that they way that we developed our brand and our ethos five years ago still remains really strong and really resonant with our growing community.
Jordana Kier: (39:00)
I think specifically too with COVID, making sure that we can continue to provide access to resources and support across our digital platforms, support in store remains more crucial than ever. Over half of women surveyed by us said they turn to Google first to find answers to their questions, but only 4% felt supported and only 8% felt informed when reflecting on their menstrual cycle. So to me it's where can we play a role and continue to play a role and really step in as that expert, as that ally as she is going through her whole journey at whatever point she might be in, right? Whether it's a young girl figuring out kind of what's happening to her body, which we developed a first period kit, which we're very proud of, or a sexual wellness kit.
Jordan Gaspar: (39:55)
You guys have us the opportunity in our house to talk about periods for the first time, right?
Jordana Kier: (40:00)
Exactly, I mean.
Jordan Gaspar: (40:00)
So I say all the time, and I've said this to you, that being a venture investors one of the things that I really do love is as a working mother, and you're one as well, we unfortunately travel a lot, or we did before the pandemic, and you don't always get to have this sort of direct experience that you want to in terms of ... Just it's harder. It's a balancing act that we all are doing. So for me, investing in young brands gives me the opportunity to talk about things in my home that I normally wouldn't. So I joke that we invested in a sustainable water business, and so it gave my household many, many months to talk about sustainability and packaging. So with you, I don't know if you remember, but it was the first time that I actually had conversations with my daughter about her period, and I really thought and relived the experience of when we were young your whole education came through your mother of through books, and then you became a consumer of a brand of Tampax, or tampons I should say, or sanitary napkins because somebody handed you the box and you became a lifelong consumer. So you were really the first person who encouraged and taught me about how you can build community and really evolve the conversation.
Jordan Gaspar: (41:16)
So I've been so impressed with how you guys have done that more broadly, and I'm sure during COVID in a time when access to information has been really challenged, your community has definitely benefited from all of those I'd say educational resources that you guys really had instilled in the brand from day one.
Jordana Kier: (41:33)
Thank you. I think when we first started the brand we did a lot of focus groups. The first five minutes, I've told you this story probably millions of times, but the first five minutes people showed up and they're like, "Why am I here? What am I doing at this weird thing where I'm going to talk about something that I've never talked about openly with a bunch of strangers?" And cut to like three, four hours later when we're trying to kick everybody out, but if somebody wants to tell that one other story about this really embarrassing moment that they couldn't imagine anybody else having gone through, but three other people in the room, they're like, "Of course I've gone through that same thing." And to be able to be that conduit to connection and being able to say like, "These are topics that we should be talking about." We shouldn't feel embarrassed. We shouldn't feel like we have to shove a tampon up our sleeve when we walk to the bathroom in an office, and when 50% of the people there are probably either on their period in that moment or get their period more generally.
Jordana Kier: (42:41)
How can we start to break some of these barriers? I think it does start at home, it starts with an open conversation. It starts with not just a mother having a conversation with her daughter, but including her son, or having the father figure there, right? So really making sure that it does continue to grow and remain kind of more as inclusive as we possibly can be, because that's the only way we'll actually kind of chip away at some of the stigma that does exist in these categories.
Jordan Gaspar: (43:13)
100%. Yeah, I'm looking at the Q&A, and so I want to encourage anybody that if you guys have questions, definitely feel free to jump in them. I see one though that's asking about how men can be more supportive in general periods, and I can't speak for you, but I would say that first and foremost it's about not weaponizing your period. It's about understanding that there is a culture where there was to be an open discussion, as Jordana just spoke about in terms of educating not just our daughters but our sons, and reprogramming in some cases generations of men that there is no shame in taking care of your body as a woman. This is a reality that's every month part of our lives. So I think that where historical brands have definitely been made available to the female consumer, what LOLA's done, which has been to normalize the experience for young women. It's now going to carry through beyond period care but into sexual wellness.
Jordan Gaspar: (44:11)
We've seen a huge I say surge in companies that are launching and in platforms in the sexual wellness space, and we spoke to Jordana and said, "You guys have an amazing platform already, we're excited to see you continue to get behind that as an extension of period care." Just because there is so much opportunity in also having conversations about sexual education for young women, right? And that this isn't something that women should be ashamed about protecting themselves. So I'd love to hear a little bit also your perception of how your brand is extending beyond period care and kind of how you see advocacy across the board in terms of all the various sort of experiences that a woman can have.
Jordana Kier: (44:53)
Yeah. I think again, the real insight that we tapped into was that we were all going through individually these journeys when there's so much power and so much positivity and potential for change if you're talking about these things openly and inviting new folks in for their perspective, and that's how you get to innovation. That's how you get to improvement, that's how you get to policy change, institutional change.
Jordana Kier: (45:31)
I think sex is ... I mean, periods I think is definitely we want to invite kind of everybody into the conversation. Sex is generally already kind of where there are more folks in the conversation, and when we decided we wanted to continue to expand and extend the brand into building for this reproductive journey from what we say from her first period to her last hot flash and beyond. Sex is really that category where you're not just talking to one person, you're talking to more than one person. From a packaging perspective, from a information and content perspective, from even a kind of overall umbrella branding perspective it was really that moment when we said, "We have to change, we have to grow up."
Jordana Kier: (46:25)
We have to change a little bit of the way that we've been talking about these topics, even the palette should become a little more mature in terms of how we want to present ourselves to the world because we're no longer talking to just the subset of people who get their periods, but actually we're talking of the whole population and we want to be a brand that is not just a sexual wellness brand for women, but also for men. So that was really an exciting moment for us, and I think particularly too with content. There's so much, there's misinformation out there, there's not a lot of kind of empowerment toward women. There's just a lot of assumptions I think that these particularly young people have around sexual wellness, kind of intimate wellness. So we see it as an amazing opportunity to start to change that tone of the conversation again but through very similar tactics that we've always employed, which is inviting that conversation, inviting questions that you may have about sex and making it a totally non-judgemental supportive atmosphere. Only then when you are kind of really opening up and listening to sort of anybody who's coming into the room can you actually start to change the way that people may think about these categories and approach conversations with their partners as well.
Jordan Gaspar: (48:06)
This was a pretty interesting week that you and I were texting about a big policy change overseas in terms of period care and women's health. Do you want to maybe ... We talk about policy as part of this whole community, it would be an interesting thing to kind of maybe raise awareness about it here if people hadn't seen the news.
Jordana Kier: (48:27)
Yeah. I mean, Scotland just became, for those not up to date on their period news, Scotland became the first country to make period products free for all, particularly for people who can't afford them, which is such a promising step forward for menstrual equity and a practice we really do hope to see adopted more widely. Fighting for menstrual equity, increasing access to period products are issues that are at the center of our mission and are so critical to lifting that very detrimental stigma against women's health that still exists in this country.
Jordana Kier: (49:02)
I mean, we've been very fortunate to work with a number of amazing nonprofits. One of our kind of longest standing partnerships has been with an organization called I Support the Girls, which has seen a enormous surge in requests for period products starting in March of this year. I mean, with many homeless shelters, with many domestic violence shelters, tampons, pads, bras are often the most request items but the least often donated.
Jordana Kier: (49:38)
So back in 2016 when we launched our LOLA Gives Back program we were very lucky and fortunate to partner with I Support the Girls and have expanded our charitable partnerships over time and have been able to donate upwards of five, six million tampons, period products to women in need across the country.
Jordana Kier: (50:00)
The Scotland news has been incredible. I think, again, for us it really starts with let's change the conversation, let's open it up. Even myself, right? I hadn't even thought about the fact that these products may be in desperate need right here at home. So really again, raising awareness to the ingredients that you're putting in your body. The fact that for many of us it's a sad privilege that we have that we can afford this products every single month. What can we do about it? So again, just continuing to engage and raise these issues, raise these opportunities because at least for myself, and I know for so many of our customers, when they're made aware of things like that you can't buy tampons with food stamps, they want to help.
Jordan Gaspar: (50:58)
We only have a couple more minutes, so I think we should kind of think through some parting thoughts. I'd say that on our side it's going to be kind of, for our founders when we talked to them a lot about kind of navigating COVID, there was a couple different areas of the frame, right? There was the first sort of immediate response of reforecasting your plan, resetting your marketing strategies, resetting your team, thinking through financially how you're going to come out at the other side stable and sound. Entering into 2021 that's evolved, because what we've all learned through this period is that it's going to take a lot longer than we thought. So we've all been thinking as an industry creatively about how is marketing going to change, right? And how are we going to market to people now from their couches is what we've been saying for the past couple of months, and how will you continue to foster this community when people leave their couches again, and then they get out. So as we go into sort of a new climate for 2021 and we have more profitable companies that have learned to navigate marketing very different, we've seen adoption of our conventional and our mass retailers to really sort of think through wellness more broadly and to embrace it through the pandemic. On the other side of this, where would we be?
Jordan Gaspar: (52:20)
So for 2021, not predicting kind of when things end and the impact of that, if you could answer for me where do you want to see LOLA at the end of next year? What would be an amazing marker of not just kind of getting through this, but kind of how LOLA has ascended as an omni brand and gone into retail successfully, and built out their community, what would be sort of the goalpost there?
Jordana Kier: (52:47)
It's a great question. Would say that a few things. I think first from a business and brand perspective just continuing to invest and build in the areas in which we know have the most staying power. So whether that's brand building, whether that's community building, whether that's retail expansion, whether that's continuing to hone and refine our D2C channel and building up more digital products, whether that's things that are more virtual, or different ways that we can support customers to feel very supported by our products as they go through their reproductive journeys.
Jordana Kier: (53:40)
I would say ensuring that our team feels supported. I think yes, my hope, right? All of our hope is that next year at some point there is going to be a moment when we can go back to the office, or go back to be working in person. And sort of what does that look like, how do we ensure that we're building an environment where we're taking into account the last let's call it 12 to 16 months where things have really changed? People have moved, things have changed at home, right? So how do we ensure that we're sort of listening to our team and building the right infrastructure operationally where it's going to work for people who want to come back to the office versus people who sort of have made life changes but still care very much and want to work with the company and feel very passionate about the mission still?
Jordana Kier: (54:41)
Again, our biggest asset, best asset is our people. We feel really so proud of the team that we've built over the last five years and this year has been incredibly challenging and certainly nothing that any of us could've seen coming. How do you ensure that you're building an environment where you still can maintain through all of this different change and transitional moments an environment where people are still kind of feeling really inspired and motivated on a day-to-day basis?
Jordana Kier: (55:21)
So, a lot of growth from a business perspective, bottom line health as well as really making sure that the team is feeling like every day they're waking up and they're really excited to show up for the company.
Jordan Gaspar: (55:39)
Well, we're very excited to be part of the journey, so. I'm trying to think of if there's anything we didn't cover on. It's funny, we said during this that there were sort of topics that I feel like we had an opportunity to cover most of them. I'd say from our perspective, obviously it's going to see you guys continue to succeed, building your community, building brand awareness, building your distribution, but also launching innovative products that really meet a need in the market.
Jordan Gaspar: (56:08)
So we've seen a lot of commitment from Walmart through this, which has been amazing, and it's exciting to see them commit again to now the sexual wellness platform. But I think what our hope for you is to continue to see sort of the work and the building blocks you've put in place during this period, right? Because I feel like if you were able to navigate a launch like this and during this time, I suspect next year will feel like a breeze.
Jordana Kier: (56:35)
I mean, that's the hope, right? My [inaudible 00:56:38] too that, I mean, Jordan, it's been such a pleasure partnering with you. I mean, I think it's obviously been a very challenging year on so many fronts for so many businesses, and to have the network sort of being opened up to us, the connecting with the other portfolio brands, having just kind of those very spur-of-the-moment calls on how can I help. I mean, that's really where it's not in the good times obviously when you really want to base a relationship on, it's really about kind of the challenging times. I would say we've just been so lucky to obviously have an existing investor base that's very supportive but also now working even more closely with you and the AF team.
Jordan Gaspar: (57:32)
Thank you.
Jordana Kier: (57:34)
This is this moment too, where companies who are looking for active investors who say they want to support, right? And say they have value add platforms, it really did come to life working with the AF team this year, and I know it'll continue to be a really fruitful relationship. So just really grateful for the partnership. Thank you.
Jordan Gaspar: (57:58)
Thank you. You made our pilot investment into personal care easy. So as you know, we were excited about the transition, but I think our conviction around you guys made it feel like an easy adjustment, so thank you for that. We've loved working with you guys.
Jordan Gaspar: (58:15)
So with that, no kids interrupted us, no dogs. We made it.
Jordana Kier: (58:22)
I know.
John Darsie: (58:22)
Well, that was fantastic. Thank you both for joining us. I come from a place of ignorance. I'm one of four brothers, and probably when I started dating and all that stuff I probably thought you got tampons at Lululemon, but I've become a little bit more educated now.
Jordan Gaspar: (58:35)
That's actually a good idea.
John Darsie: (58:36)
And I have a four-year-old daughter and I'm thankful-
Jordan Gaspar: (58:39)
[crosstalk 00:58:39].
Jordana Kier: (58:39)
Really great idea.
John Darsie: (58:39)
... that we have women like Jordan and Jordana in the world that will help her along with her mother through the journey of health throughout her entire life. So thank you guys for doing this, and we're very proud to host conversations like this on the SALT platform.
Jordan Gaspar: (58:54)
Thank you for having us.
Jordana Kier: (58:56)
Thanks, John.