Last month, Pharmavite, the nutrition company and maker of Nature Made vitamins, garnered headlines by acquiring menopause brand Bonafide. The $425 million deal came two years after Pharmavite, a subsidiary of Otsuka Pharmaceutical, acquired urinary health startup Uqora and three years after it launched in-house women’s hormonal health brand Equelle. The string of deals demonstrates the West Hills, Calif.-based company’s commitment to becoming a leader in the women’s health space. Sales in its women’s health unit have grown over 30% since it purchased Uqora in 2021 and growth is expected to continue with the acquisition of Bonafide.
Beauty Independent spoke with Tobe Cohen, Pharmavite’s EVP and president of specialty brands who runs day-to-day operations for its women’s health portfolio, about the company’s acquisition strategy, approach to retail distribution and the ways it’s addressing stigmatized conditions affecting women’s health.
How did Pharmavite begin to build its women’s health portfolio?
Five years ago, one of the things that we saw was the large unmet need for what I would call chronic stigmatized conditions around women’s health and the need for better solutions to help women live their full lives.
There were two areas of focus that were really of interest to us as we understood the market. The first was menopause. There’s so many things related to estrogen decline and menopause, and at the same time, women aren’t satisfied with the solutions available. You’ve got hormone replacement therapy and all the others. Our belief was, if we could find things that are efficacious and grounded in science and help women lead fuller lives symptom free, that would be a fabulous opportunity. That was the start of the Equelle business, which is our menopause product.
Equelle is leveraging an ingredient that’s from our parent company, Otsuka, that basically binds to the the beta estrogen receptor. It’s helping with general wellness, all of the things that are impacted by estrogen decline, from memory to bone loss to hot flashes. We’ve been building that business.
As we were looking at women’s health, urinary health is another area that was of huge interest to us. Urinary tract infections are the No. 2 infection in the U.S. behind the common cold. So, there’s this huge market. Particularly recurrent UTIs are troublesome as you think about antibiotic resistance, what’s really causing them, what’s the underlying physiology, etc.
With that, we saw the Uqora business and really liked their approach to urinary health, which is, we’ll help you with the UTI, but, more importantly, we’ll help promote urinary health and address some of the underlying conditions like biofilms where the bacteria can hide and can lead to recurrent UTIs. We bought the Uqora business about two years ago and that really created our women’s health business unit. That business just surpassed helping their 500,000th woman dealing with urinary health concerns.
Where does Bonafide fit in?
We’ve been looking for how to expand our footprint in the women’s health space. There were two opportunities that Bonafide fills really well. The first is a broad portfolio of products that address the specific symptoms that are related to the compounding effects of estrogen decline. Whether it’s vaginal dryness, sleep, hot flashes, sexual desire, they’ve got a portfolio of very well-researched, clinically backed, scientifically supported products. That is really critical. That was one of the things that was attractive.
The other thing is their go-to-market model, which is really a field force that’s out there educating healthcare professionals on the product portfolio and the science behind the products. So, as doctors are seeking better solutions for their patients, what they know is menopause is not a disease, it’s a life stage.
They’re looking for products that can help. Women really don’t want pharmaceuticals because they’re not sick. So, what can we provide that provides relief, but is also grounded in science? Then, how do we make both women and healthcare professionals understand the efficacy and science behind these products? Now, our portfolio is really focused on menopausal wellness and urogynecological wellness.
“We need to not only destigmatize the communication, but we need to raise our expectations of scientific efficacy for products that are helping solve these problems as well.”
Do you see any overlap or redundancy between Bonafide and Equelle?
A good analogy I might use is to think about it in terms of a multivitamin versus a melatonin. A multivitamin is really good for foundational health, but, if I’m having a specific point in time where I’m having trouble sleeping, I’ll use melatonin. Equelle, because it’s mimicking estrogen in the body, has a lot of benefits across your lifespan, whether or not you’re symptomatic.
There was recently a study on the decline of estrogen and associated memory loss. There’s data on estrogen decline and hair loss and weight gain. Equelle can be helpful across the board on anything that’s impacted from estrogen decline. But there are times when you want something that’s very specific, so the Bonafide products are really designed to address the symptomatic relief as opposed to the underlying issue.
What other areas of women’s health are you interested in?
There’s a couple. The interaction between UTIs and menopause. The other one is bladder health overall. That’s an area we’ll continue to look at. There are others as you look at chronic, stigmatized under-researched conditions that impact the quality of life of women. You’ll see us continuing to push our own pipeline and look opportunistically at M&A as well.
There are interesting brands in this space that have supplements as part of their offerings, but also have a variety of products—creams, leak-proof underwear and more. Since Pharmavite’s specialty is ingestibles, when thinking of M&A, how do you view brands that have a wide variety of offerings?
We try to be agnostic to the product category and think about how to solve the problem that the woman has. I’ll use both Uqora and Bonafide as examples. Bonafide’s largest product category is actually a vaginal suppository to deal with vaginal dryness. The data shows it’s as efficacious as topical estrogen, and because it’s topical, it can deliver relief quicker than a supplement or something that you would ingest.
On the Uqora side, we do offer what we call our UTI emergency kit, which is for somebody who has an active UTI. In that, there’s a test strip to confirm that you have a UTI. There’s also a topical as well as an oral pain reliever in that product. Those are OTC drugs. Then, we have our supplement part of the product line to maintain urinary health when you’re not in an active UTI.
We tend to think how we best solve the problem that the woman’s experiencing as opposed to, we’re a dietary supplement company so everything has to be a dietary supplement.
Many women’s health issues are under-researched and women themselves don’t have adequate information on what they’re going through. How does Pharmavite support consumers?
One thing that makes us unique is we approach the category from a very high empathy level. We have a customer success team to keep women on the hope curve and help them get to a solution that works for them. Whether that’s through text interactions, chat, phone, however you want to connect with us.
The heart and soul of the business is our customer success team that’s working with these women to address their questions, to help destigmatize these issues and help them find the right solution. No two women are the same. What’s bothersome to me isn’t bothersome to you. What works for you may not work for me. That’s a real integral part of our model.
What is your retail strategy?
Bonafide is not in retail today. Similarly, when we purchased Uqora, they were not in retail either. We strategically launched Uqora into retail this year, at CVS initially. The reason we did that is two things. One, their commitment to women’s health, and if you just look at where women are going to deal with urinary tract infections, it’s the pharmacy.
With regards to Bonafide, they’re not currently in retail, but, if our intent is to improve the lives of women, we need to be where they want us to be and create as little friction as possible in helping them get the solutions that they need, and I would believe that retail will be a part of that.
Pharmavite’s products are found in many different areas of a store. As you’re getting more entrenched in women’s health, what would you like to see as to modernize aisles in this category or make them more friendly?
One of our big focuses is in-store education and solution-based [in-store] organization. It’s clear, if these are the types of solutions that you’re looking for, whether it’s period care, menopausal care, that there’s a real opportunity for shopability. I think that’s a place where Pharmavite’s retail leadership can help shape the category similar to how we’ve done in dietary supplements. I also think a lot of what we do as Pharmavite is not just helping to educate consumers in store, but helping to educate store personnel.
For example, we do a lot of education with registered pharmacists, helping to educate them on dietary supplements, on nutrient depletions that can be caused by pharmaceuticals, etc. It’s very in line with what we’re trying to do with healthcare practitioners as well, really trying to address the confusion and hopelessness you can feel when you enter that aisle. The other place that we can help make a difference is [merchandising]. If you look at Uqora on shelf today, we’re very passionate about leading within in-store signage that explains it’s a three-part system in which each of the elements are doing something and how to use the products in tandem.
I think there are two big opportunities in women’s health and neither is sufficient on its own. One is this destigmatizing and making it OK to talk about menopause, urinary tract infections, whatever. There’s a lot of brands that are trying to humanize that discussion, but the other part that is as critical is that the products have the scientific support and the efficacy to actually solve the problems. A critical part of our message is that we need to not only destigmatize the communication, but we need to raise our expectations of scientific efficacy for products that are helping solve these problems as well.
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