WooWoo is a female-powered feminine care company founded in the UK. Developed by women for women, WooWoo is on a mission to revolutionise the feminine care category with trustworthy, vegan, fun, display-worthy products.
Designed to display on bedside tables or left in the shower cubicle, not hidden in the cupboard, WooWoo’s packaging features unashamedly bold and original artwork that celebrates the natural beauty of the female form, alongside light-hearted humorous pack copy. WooWoo’s packaging has been designed to shift perceptions from shame and embarrassment around intimate care, sexual health and pleasure to one of celebration with the aim of helping close the pleasure equality gap.
WooWoo products are manufactured in the UK and formulated to a 3.8-4.5 pH to match the body’s natural chemistry so it’s safe to use all over including caring for our most intimate areas. WooWoo has you covered from beach, to bath to bedroom with everything that you need to pamper and protect yourselves.
From our inception WooWoo has taken an omni channel approach on commerce with a mixed focus on working both with traditional bricks and mortar retail partners like Priceline in Australia and Superdrug in the UK whilst building a strong e-commerce offering at the same time too.
From a customer perspective the traditional retailers have enabled us to rapidly scale as a business through a strong high street presence, and build trust and credibility amongst our core consumer audience. But it does have its limitations. In-store shelf space is very limited so it’s rare for a brand to get their full range of products on shelf. E-commerce gives our customers more products, more flexibility and choice.
The e-commerce model works really well for independent brands. The barriers to entry are much less for e-commerce and give enterprising individuals the chance to scale slowly and at the pace they want. You can start out producing a kitchen table product and flex and grow the business to meet consumer demand slowly without having to find investment or take on financial risks early on to ensure you have enough stock in production to hit retailers minimum order quotas.
It also offers you a direct route to engage and speak to your audience directly and get closer to their wants and needs. We find it is an incredibly useful way to get feedback from our customers and have even developed some of our most recent products based on what we’ve learnt through our online sales and the feedback we get from our customers on what they want to see in our product range.
Getting your e-commerce platform right from the start also helps you future proof your business too. Over the past few years consumers have increasingly moved to purchasing products online. The lockdowns as a result of the pandemic have forced more people online than ever before and we have seen a huge move towards repeat custom on our channels as a result.
But e-commerce has its limitations too. You just can’t replicate the experiential moments you get in store online so whether it’s a pop-up shop presence or looking for like-minded retailers that resonate with your audience traditional commerce channels still have a critical role to play in brand growth.
The pandemic has actually been really good for us. Although we faced many of the same challenges other businesses did during the earlier stages such as supply chain and manufacturing hold ups these were quickly resolved. At the peak of the UK lockdowns we saw a big up-tick in our online sales with e-commerce shifting from 60% of our total revenue to 85% as people unable to get into store to purchase items shopped online instead. With salons closed, sales of our multi-award winning Tame it! Hair Removal cream particularly soared during these periods too as people looked for at home DIY alternatives instead, as well as driving a big spike in sales of our sexual wellness and pleasure products.
Our online sales continue to be buoyant with lots of our fanbase and new customers still continuing to repeat purchase from us online, though in recent months we have also seen an encouraging hike in sales through our traditional retail partners too as the world opens back up and people shift back to shopping in store.
WooWoo has always had a digital first strategy. Our core target audience sweet spot is women aged between 18 – 35 so we wanted to focus a lot of energy into building a strong online and social presence as we knew that was an important channel to engage with that audience.
When we launched to the public back in 2018 female sexuality and intimate wellness was still a taboo topic and we knew from our research of the thousands of women we spoke to that they didn’t feel they were getting the products, the advice and the support they needed. Our aim has always been to create useful and engaging content that resonates with our audience and speaks to them in a voice (think best friend/big sister vibes) that feels fun, friendly and non-judgemental. We must have got something right as we’ve organically built a social media following in the past few years of over 50k followers.
Our website mirrors our social channels with more of an editorial magazine led style over product – we want our website to be a useful and entertaining resource for our customers – not just a shop front.
Influencers also play a big part of our social strategy; whether that’s working with celebrity brand ambassadors such as Megan Barton Hanson and Georgia Harrison to lead campaigns and drive awareness or nano beauty, health and sex positivity influencers to reach very specific and engaged audiences.
At present we don’t have any incentives schemes but we are exploring loyalty discount and subscription options with the plan to make this part of our long term strategy to reward loyal customers moving forwards.
Sustainability has increasingly become a priority for consumers. For us this has presented a huge opportunity as our products have always been as natural and environmentally friendly as we can get them. All our products from our pH-Balanced Feminine Care Wipes and Washes to our Bliss Oils and Hair removal creams, are paraben free and contain naturally sourced fruit and plant extracts and essential oils. Our packaging is made from sugar cane, not plastic and our 100% biodegradable wipes made from plant cellulose are plastic free.
When we launched, our range excluding our Tame it! Hair Removal Cream was also vegan. We worked hard over 18 months to adapt the formula before launching a vegan version of the product in late 2020 to meet increasing calls from consumers for it.
When we launched our product range it was very much targeted at women aged between 20-35 but we have always wanted to support women on their entire life journey. With women’s intimate wellness, the perimenopause and menopause finally being talked about more openly than ever before, we’re also launching a range of menopause products in early 2022 and a range of supplements and products that support women’s intimate wellness.
Lucy Anderson is founder of WooWoo.