CEO Kat Schneider unpacks the strategy behind Ritual’s first new category launch in 6 years

“When I started the company and I was fundraising. … I was told pregnancy was ‘niche’, postpartum was ‘niche’, perimenopause was ‘niche,’” Schneider told Glossy. “This was a decade plus ago. Now, women’s health has never been hotter.”

Ritual launched direct-to-consumer in 2016 with a transparent supply chain and science-backed formulations. Now, it has the best-selling prenatal supplement on the U.S. market, according to the brand, and is sold across Target, Walmart, Costco, Amazon, Whole Food and more retailers. 

Still, when the company entered the perimenopause space last month, it still felt like the Wild West. “There’s almost no market sizing [into subcategories of women’s health],” Schneider said. “You have to have a lot of conviction when you’re going into something earlier, ahead of the time that people see it.” Perimenopause, the hormonal precursor to menopause that can last a decade, has received new attention in the past few years as women’s health takes a front seat in popular culture.

In today’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, host Lexy Lebsack sits down with Schneider to walk through exactly what it took to launch into the burgeoning space, which is also the brand’s first new category launch in six years. Its big swing includes a dedicated foundation supplement called Perimenopause Health, plus a foray into creatine, an essential nutrient for perimenopausal women, with the launch of its new Creatine Greens powder drink mix. Then there is the multi-million-dollar marketing budget that includes hiring “Nobody Wants This” actress Jackie Thon for a campaign and TV spot created with full-service media agency Giant Spoon.

Press play now for all the details of Ritual’s entrance into one of the fastest-growing women’s health categories today. 

On hiring actress Jackie Thon as a spokesperson 

Schneider: “It’s so incredible that she said yes. We were thinking, ‘What talent do we want to represent us in this category?’ and I’d been following her for a while. I love the show [Netflix’s “Nobody Wants This”] and it’s about to air [again on October 22], which is really exciting, and the timing is great. … We had been working with a friend’s creative agency, John Haber at Giant Spoon. They’re incredible, by the way. We rarely work with outside creative agencies — we have one in-house — but this felt like a really big moment for us. Our teams work really well together, and our teams came up with this idea of ‘Take the men out of perimenopause,’ and just how men always have an opinion on women’s health; they’re always the first ones to raise their hand and say, ‘You know, have you tried this? Have you read this?’ … So we had this [creative] brief, and I sent an email to Jackie, and she said, “I’m literally screaming right now!’ She was in, I think, from that first email.” 

On the value of being a proxy for the customer

Schneider: “You know what’s interesting with perimenopause? I think a lot of people that are not in perimenopause only associate perimenopause with hot flashes, and so we kind of learned that early on, when we had a bunch of creatives on this [including] a bunch of men and a bunch of younger women, and the script was entirely focused on hot flashes. A few of us who had actually been in perimenopause were like, ‘Whoa, wait! This is only a really small part of my experience’ … It’s so obvious when perimenopausal products are created for women by women going through the life stage. [Hot flashes] had such a strong impact on the script [that] we were like, “No, we’re going to start all over again because this is not funny to us; it doesn’t reflect what we’re going through. Let’s bring in even more perimenopausal women before we send this to [actress and spokesperson] Jackie [Tohn]. Let’s bring in as many voices as we can so women feel seen and heard. And you know, I was like, well, my hair is itchy. I always feel like I have lice, but I don’t. Or, you know, one of us really hates the sound of our husband’s chewing — it’s like nails on a chalkboard— or throat clearing. It’s these nuanced symptoms that only you would know if you were going through it.”

On routinely entering underserved categories

Schneider: “We’ve launched products when I’ve been told it’s ‘too niche’. When I started the company and I was fundraising. … I was told pregnancy was ‘niche,’ postpartum was ‘niche,’ perimenopause was ‘niche.’ This was a decade plus ago. Now, women’s health has never been hotter, but it’s these individual life stages that were just perceived as, ‘Why would you create a brand around this? That’s not a big market,’ or ‘That’s thinking too small.” And I was like, ‘No way!’ … If you just [hired an] MBA and you did some market sizing, a lot of these things don’t exist. There’s no market. There’s almost no market sizing [into subcategories of women’s health], and so you have to have a lot of conviction when you’re going into something earlier, ahead of the time that people see it.”