Would you be excited about your business if you found out that 6,000 women in America are interested in your product or service every day and no one else offers it?
Menopause is an opportunity. Every day, 6,000 American women celebrate their 51st birthday. This is the center of a woman’s menopausal curve.of mayo clinic It is estimated that almost 1 billion women worldwide have reached menopause.
In 1923, life expectancy for women in the United States was 58 years. However, in 2023, a woman in the United States who turns 51 years old can expect to live until she is 82 years old and spend nearly 40% of her life postmenopausal.
Almost all consumer companies refer to their customers by life stage, using terms such as Baby Boomers, Millennials, Gen X, and Gen Z. But post-menopausal and post-menopausal women have no such references or cute names. Few people focus on this group of women, but they still have needs that could be a huge commercial opportunity.
where are the opportunities
An opportunity is a problem for which a creative entrepreneur can find a solution. Here are some of them:
According to a study by carrot fertility, the majority of menopausal women lose time from work, take vacations, or take time off from work due to menopausal symptoms. The majority “hidden the real reason” for their leave.
Almost half of all women say they are unprepared or not at all ready for menopause. They get information about menopause from their doctors, internet searches, friends, and relatives. For every obstetrician-gynecologist trained to treat menopause, there are 33,000 women. These numbers show that most women do not have access to guidance or information.
The symptoms that bother menopausal women the most are hot flashes, sleep disturbances, fatigue, night sweats, and weight gain. Each symptom is experienced by over 70% of menopausal women.
Not only do we have problems to solve, but we also have the potential to extend our lives. “There is a compelling argument that menopause leads to an increase in certain diseases that shorten a woman’s lifespan,” said Alicia Jackson, CEO and founder of Evanow, a provider of personalized menopause care and treatment. Told. The later a woman reaches menopause, the longer she lives, Jackson explains. She suggests that delaying menopause could be a life-sustaining treatment.
Daisy Robinton is the CEO and founder of Oriva Therapeutics, a biomedical research company focused on extending the healthy lifespan of women. She explains that menopause accelerates the aging of a woman’s entire body, increasing her risk of cardiovascular disease, sleep disorders, sexual dysfunction, osteoporosis, and skin and hair changes. Oriva focuses on controlling the rate of loss of ovarian reserve to delay the onset of menopause. If Oliva is successful, the onset of menopause will be delayed, aging will be postponed, and women will be able to live longer.
Evanow’s Jackson said menopause treatment and care “has been under-invested in research and training.” She says obstetricians and gynecologists “say they received six hours of training on menopause during their four years of medical school.” That will change, Jackson said, because menopause is “an entire category of health care.”
It’s also an opportunity for employers. According to the Carrot Infertility Survey, 8% of respondents said they received a lot of support from their employer, and 59% said they received no support at all. Only 7.6% of respondents had access to menopausal guidance, psychological support and therapy, medical care, and time off. 82% of respondents said menopause benefits were worthwhile, and 92% said they improved job satisfaction.
Who will make money from this?
Yanghee Paik, co-founder and CEO of women’s products company Rael, said that while discussing menopause is taboo, women who are “interested in understanding more about their bodies and health” He said it was becoming a trend and would bring menopause into the spotlight.
Ali Kohl runs a multibillion-dollar luxury beauty business on Amazon. She says that just as clean beauty was once its own section in beauty stores, but is now integrated into everyday products and has become a cornerstone of the industry, as discussions around the subject become more open. He says the same thing will happen with menopausal products.
But the conversation is just beginning. Rochelle Weitzner, founder of Pose, a skin care brand focused on menopausal and postmenopausal women, said, “How long does it take to create a new category and break down barriers?” and the associated costs. He says he underestimated his capital requirements. When the brand launched in 2019, Nordstrom quickly introduced it to all of its stores. However, Facebook and GoogleGOOG do not allow advertising of menopause-related products, QVCQVCA does not feature them in the United States, and many publications do not cover the subject.
Sam Shames, COO and co-founder of Embr, said there are a number of products specifically needed by menopausal women, some of which include moisture-wicking clothing, cooling mattresses, and skin care to treat wrinkles. , said it is already on the market for other uses. His company makes a device (pictured above) that users wear like a wristwatch, but it doesn’t tell the time, it helps keep you cool when it’s hot and warm when it’s cold. Helpful. Although Embr was not founded with a focus on menopausal women, the company realized that its wristband product was ideal for menopausal women and changed its marketing to focus on menopausal women.
A lot has changed in a short period of time. The MeToo movement has adjusted the way people think about women’s right to have their needs met. This has happily spread to the point that many previously under-discussed topics, such as menopause, have become more publicly known.
According to Carrot research, 8% of women believe they are well-informed and prepared for menopause. For the remaining 92%, changing attitudes about women’s rights will have a major impact on the products that help them cope with menopause and the information available to them before and after the onset of menopause.
We are only just beginning to recognize the opportunity. Products, devices, services, and information are still in the imagination stage, and it is impossible to describe what will be created.
Several things are known:
This is a huge market and a huge opportunity.
It’s not going away. In fact, it’s growing.
More women will feel comfortable spending meaningful amounts of money to deal with menopause. More employers will offer various forms of support to help them. More experts will be trained to bring more knowledge to women experiencing menopause. More companies will be founded to make the experience better and easier.
And all of this is a huge opportunity for traditional companies selling adjacent products and services. However, the past 20 years have shown that innovation is more likely to come from startups.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Menopausal women have always existed on the market. They were always buying products and services from legacy brands. They just want to see companies that openly address their problems and offer products that help them.