For the Wellness Briefing, Glossy interviews BelliWelli CEO and co-founder Katie Wilson about the brand’s Walmart playbook, which includes celeb cameos, giveaways, endcap marketing and fashion partnerships. Additionally, Oura delays its IPO, Function hires its first CMO, and Europe-based biohacking chain The Longevity Suite hits the high seas.
BelliWelli is using a media company playbook to supercharge fiber sales at Walmart
In a lot of ways, 6-year-old supplement maker BelliWelli operates more like a media company than a fiber brand.
On October 2, the company launched an endcap program into 3,200 Walmart doors that encapsulates this holistic marketing strategy. It includes a giveaway, snackable celebrity content, a fashion partnership, an evocative OOH marketing strategy and boots-on-the-ground consumer outreach.
“We try to bring people in and make them feel a part of [the brand] versus serving you another static [post] explaining why fiber matters,” BelliWelli CEO and co-founder Katie Wilson told Glossy. “Of course, it’s great to drive a bunch of brand awareness, but we want customers to feel like they’re part of this journey.”
The campaign includes the brand’s best-selling fiber gummies and powders loaded into a hot pink endcap adorned with a QR code and CTA to enter the giveaway. Eight consumers will each win $8,000 and a limited-edition charm bracelet made by fashion accessory brand 8 Other Reasons. To raise awareness, Wilson executed a social video with performer JoJo Siwa where the pair pretended to run into each other at Walmart while Wilson was visiting the new endcap.
BelliWelli launched a similar endcap giveaway last year at Walmart and saw 200 million social impressions. That campaign gave away $50,000 to one customer. Wilson is currently surmising that giving smaller amounts to more people, plus exclusive merch, will make the current endcap perform even better.
If BelliWelli is the media company in this experiment, and virality is the end goal, then Wilson herself is the influencer. She stars in the brand’s content and oftentimes spends four- to six-hour shifts standing in Walmart aisles across the country chatting up prospective consumers. She told Glossy she once spent 380 consecutive days filming at Walmart, missing only 21 days, as she built brand awareness.
“Last night I stayed up till 3:30 in the morning and concepted 11 different ideas, then made my sweet husband go execute those with me this morning, some of which included putting malt balls into a glass funnel to simulate constipation,” she said. “None of it’s pretty, but I just really believe that’s what it takes.”
Before launching Belliwelli, Wilson worked as a celebrity matchmaker at Three Day Rule and as an executive at Match, the parent company of Tinder, Hinge and OK Cupid.
Prior social wins for BelliWelli include cameos from Spencer Pratt, Caitlyn Jenner, Sharon Osbourne and Bethenny Frankel, among others. Each celeb has participated in Wilson’s top franchise, called “BelliBombs,” where Wilson pretends to run into the celebrity on the street and drops a scoop of fiber into their drink before asking for permission.
“We never spend over $20,000 on influencer activations,” Wilson told Glossy. “Part of the beauty in the format is it’s a cameo. We don’t pay for paid usage. We don’t pay to put content on someone else’s page. … In general, we like to own that content.”
The premise of “BelliBombs” is similar to Caleb Simpson’s apartment tours, where the viewer sees an “impromptu” house tour that, while definitely pre-planned, is entertaining enough to suspend disbelief. BelliBombs also taps into novel interview styles like Hot Ones, where guests are interviewed while eating spicy chicken wings, or SubwayTakes, where guests share their hot takes on a public NYC subway.
“We have seen our social impressions skyrocket,” Wilson told Glossy. “Just on Instagram in the last 30 days, we’ve done 77 million organic views, and that’s not paid.”
It’s the latest in a slew of campaigns from BelliWelli that include messaging like, “hot girls have IBS,” or irritable bowel syndrome, a gut condition that impacts around 10-15% of the population, according to the American College of Gastroenterology. Wilson told Glossy that 95% of Americans don’t get the recommended amount of fiber in their diets, which can cause bloating and constipation. The internet’s “fibermaxxing” trend, which Wilson has helped disseminate, is also experiencing a halo effect from GLP-1 use and the “protein maxxing” trend since both consumer groups are, quite literally, hungry for fiber.
BelliWelli launched in 2020 and currently sells in Walmart, Target, Sprouts, Amazon, Sam’s Club, GNC and Thrive Market. The company has raised around $25 million with its Series A and B led by NYC-based private equity group The Invus Group, an investor in brands like beauty retailer Bluemercury, Weight Watchers and Blue Buffalo dog food.
Executive moves:
- Taj Alavi is the new chief marketing officer at vertically-integrated health and wellness company Function Health. She is the 5-year-old company’s first CMO. Alavi’s CV includes IT and tech companies like HP, Spotify and Uber. Most recently, she served as a consultant for Neko Health, the maker of the Neko body scan and a direct competitor to Ezra, the body-scanning company Function acquired in 2025.
News to know:
- The Longevity Suite, a Milan-headquartered chain of anti-aging and biohacking clinics across Europe, is bringing its modalities to the cruise market through a partnership with luxury Italian cruise brand Benetti. The program will roll out on one ship to start — the brand’s 230-foot yacht named Clear Waves — with personal health assessments and recovery modalities like light therapy, cryotherapy and more. As previously reported by Glossy, the partnership follows a short list of brands bringing wellness into the cruise hospitality space, like Harper’s Bazaar’s Wellness at Sea, a partnership with Cunard’s Queen Anne ship.
- Viome, the 9-year-old precision nutrition company, has acquired U.S. supplement company Sōlaria Biō, maker of Bōndia, a clinically studied bone health synbiotic supplement. Viome sells supplements and mail-in saliva, blood and stool tests used to determine how one’s body reacts to everyday foods. According to the company, Sōlaria’s proprietary discovery platform and biobank, combined with Viome’s microbiome dataset, will support the development of targeted, condition-specific products.
- Speaking of microbiome testing, Tiny Health has taken on $33 million in Series B funding to scale its mail-in gut and vaginal microbiome health tests. Tiny Health was founded by Cheryl Sew Hoy in 2020. Her CV includes founding City Pockets, the digital wallet company acquired by Walmart as Reclip.It in 2013.
- Altro Health, a Boston-based software company that serves the compounding pharmacy market, has taken on $7 million in seed funding to scale its platform. Similar to Shopify, Altro Health was designed to offer a “plug-and-play” DTC platform to health and wellness providers looking to sell GLPs, research peptides, and other products often made by compounding pharmacies and prescribed “off-label.” It’s the latest investment riding on the FDA’s probable approval of seven research peptides.
Stat of the week:
Smart ring maker Oura has delayed its $2.2 billion IPO on the Nasdaq, initially planned for September 29. CEO Tom Hale called off the IPO just hours before, stating “uncertainty in the IPO market.” Analysts have attributed the sputter, which could mean the company will remain privately held, to a pre-IPO investor sell-off, competition from Apple and valuation concerns.
In the headlines:
Can the wellness world rebrand nicotine? [WSJ]. Running was a bright spot for Nike in an otherwise gloomy quarter [Modern Retail]. Happy Health’s smart ring adds blood pressure tracking [Fitt Insider]. Pure Barre makes play for younger fitness consumers [ATN]. TikTok’s ad network bet: More reach, more budget [Digiday]. Kerry Washington opens up about healing, self-forgiveness, and the workout that changed everything [Women’s Health]. What ketosis can and can’t do for your health and longevity [Super Age]. Did the Target boycott work? Black voices in beauty say it’s complicated [Beauty Independent]. Trying to recover from sleep debt? This type of exercise may help [Self]. Fashion, beauty goods dominate €17.4M European counterfeit crackdown [The Fashion Law]. Cortisol Face: Science or social media fiction? [McGill]
Listen in:
Veteran beauty and wellness exec Jaimee Holmes knows a thing or two about innovation. She got her start at Sephora, brought best-selling Too Faced Better than Sex mascara to market in 2013, and has held roles at Kendo, Goop and L’Oréal-backed Timeline. Now, she has parlayed her experience into Fel Beauty, a 10-month-old makeup brand that has already sold out four times and sold more than 35,000 units. Holmes sat down with Glossy Beauty host Lexy Lebsack to unpack “eye patch gate,” including what’s driving the industry’s sameness epidemic and why a lack of innovation inspired Fel Beauty. Listen to the interview now.
Need a Glossy recap?
Beauty Briefing: Are you olive, cool or warm-toned? Why beauty consumers are obsessing over undertones. Swedish Stockings targets US growth as tights return to the runway. How consumer healthcare brands are adapting FMCG media strategies. Playbook: What it takes for brands to launch and scale with big beauty retailers. Beauty creators want brands to go off-script. Maesa backs K-beauty hand care, tween manicures and SPF patches as the future of beauty. Why food partnerships are only getting bigger: ‘Everyone is in each other’s business,’ plus news. How Retrofête is banking on category expansion and see-now buy-now to hit ‘ambitious target’. Why Nest New York is turning its bestselling Holiday candle into fine fragrance.
