Perelel Health, the 6-year-old supplement maker backed by Prelude Growth Partners and Unilever Ventures, notched an important benchmark this summer on its growth path.
According to CEO and co-founder Victoria Thain Gioia, the company surpassed a $100 million run rate in August of this year led by growth across Amazon and DTC subscriptions.
Fueled by “the stickiness of our customer,” the company has “doubled [revenue] consistently every year and pretty much grown every single month,” Gioia said. She attributes 15% of Perelel’s sales today to Amazon, which the team has built out over the past 18 months, and 85% to DTC sales, 90% of which are subscriptions.
The brand also sells into a small selection of Erewhon doors, which Gioia sees as an important “billboard and stamp of approval and credibility, especially when we launched,” but isn’t a significant revenue driver.
“Amazon has [grown by] 4x, and the DTC business has almost doubled,” Gioia said. “Amazon is a discovery channel. We do see that people are searching for prenatal vitamins, and then either purchasing [on Amazon] or on our website, but we definitely see two very distinct paths of getting the customer into the Perelel umbrella.”
Perelel launched in 2020 by Gioia and co-founder Alex Taylor, a former executive editor at publications like WhoWhatWear, and OB/GYN Dr. Banafsheh Bayati, MD. The company specializes in clinically backed and tested prenatal supplements, and has since expanded into formulations for various life stages and needs, including sleep support, protein powder with creatine and a vitamin pack made for women in perimenopause.
In many ways, Perelel represents a successful strategy in wellness, where the assortment is designed for its aging cohort of first adopters.
The company has raised $40 million to date, including a $27 million growth round led by Prelude Growth Partners in November of last year and a $6 million Series A in 2024 led by Unilever Ventures. The former’s portfolio includes beauty standouts like Tower28, OneSkin and beauty incubator The Center, while Unilever Ventures has backed brands like Hung Vanngo Beauty, Instacart and gummy supplement maker Lemme.
Gioia told Glossy that Perelel became profitable at the end of 2024.
“There aren’t that many brands out there that have cracked being at the intersection of [care created by an] OB/GYN and clinically-backed formulas,” Neda Daneshzadeh, co-founder and managing partner at Prelude Growth Partners, told Glossy. “So, [the differentiators are] efficacy and science first, coupled with a brand that is emotionally resonant to women — that’s beautiful and women are connected to. Women feel like they’re part of a community, they’re part of a brand, [it’s] part of their everyday life, and so the intersection is a very rarefied space, and women want that.”
Perelel has around 40 employees, all of whom are women. Earlier this month, the company announced a round of buzzy hires including Ashley Murphy, the former chief marketing officer of Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty, to serve as its CMO. The company also tapped Anjelika Templex, the founder of media outlet Brit + Co and chief content officer of content app Rebel Girls, as chief creative officer.
“It sounds basic, but the most important thing a founder can do is surround themselves with world-class talent in every single seat that surrounds them,” Daneshzadeh told Glossy. “We always have a saying which is, ‘Great talent more than pays for itself very quickly’, so let’s reach for talent. Some of the very best founders are the ones that are one step ahead of the business and are hiring talent six months ahead of when they actually need that role.”
In the beginning, Gioia told Glossy that she and her cofounders often hired the best candidate into a more generalist role, prioritizing talent over filling certain needs, which allowed many employees to stretch their skills and advance as the company grew. “I would tell everyone to hire the best person, not necessarily the best background,” Gioia said.
As of today, Gioia and Daneshzadeh have a single perspective on the future of the company: Run it like they’ll own it forever.
Gioia told Glossy that multi-channel distribution could be coming next for the company, including in retailer leaders like Costco, Target, Walmart and even beauty retail.
“She’s shopping at all those places,” she said. “It’s important to kind of be where the customer is and have multi-channel distribution; to be able to touch her in different ways. … It’s definitely something we have in mind, but not something we’ve rushed into.”
