The Alchemy of Biologica

0:03Welcome to the Brand Alchemist podcast, where we uncover the magic and mystery of how some of the world's most sought after and newest brands were started and continue to evolve. I'm your host, Taja Dockendorf, founder and creative director of Pulp & Wire, a CPG branding, marketing, and launch agency. I'm also an investor in emerging brands and own a few of my own as well. Over the last 18 years, I have worked with, created for, and grown hundreds of companies in the CPG space, like Ryan's Snacks, Allagash Brewing, Ocean Spray, Petco, and many more. Now, here's today's episode.

0:44Welcome to the Brand Alchemist podcast. Today, we have Liz Zwillinge, who spent years working as a divorce lawyer while raising three children and serving as a trusted sounding board for her husband, Joey Zwillinge, as he built Allbirds. Somewhere in the middle of all that balancing act, she began paying closer attention to the hormonal shifts that shape a woman's life and the way the wellness industry has turned them into a maze of single ingredients, conflicting advice, and overstuffed supplement cabinets. Curious to understand what women actually need, Zwillinge began researching alongside her husband, speaking with women across generations, and digging into clinical studies on nutrition, hormones, and aging.

1:26The result is Biologica, a drinkable multivitamin grounded in the idea that women's health is not a one-size-fits-all, but shaped by the hormonal stages that define each chapter of life. Liz, welcome to the Brand Alchemist podcast. I am thrilled to have you on and really excited to talk about Biologica, your background, how it came to be and some really fascinating career shifts and things that you've done in the past that have led to biological, which is this beautiful effervescent women's stages, vitamin supplement that kind of like solves all your needs. Instead of having a cluttered bathroom shelf filled with pills, you have one delicious drink you take in the morning.

2:12And I will say I have had the pleasure of trying it and having it. And I love it. That little touch of saffron makes all the difference for me. So welcome. I'm really excited to have you on. Well, thank you. And you summarized our product so perfectly. You're hired. Perfect. Well, let's start. Let's move it all back to where it started personally, kind of like way back in the beginning. And what got you excited about women's stages supplements? So it just started as a personal journey for me as my experience living, you know, as a, I mean, my forties, three kids, I was working as a full-time divorce lawyer.

2:50My husband was growing Allbirds and working like a maniac is as an entrepreneur. And, um, I started to notice my health changing as I entered into my forties, my bones started to get a little creakier. My joints were a little more sticky. Um, but most significantly my mood was changing. And I was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome when I was a teenager, but a mild version of it so that I did have some pretty strong moodiness around my period when I was growing up. And it all kind of magically vanished when I was pregnant. Because, you know, I've since learned like, you're, you're so estrogen dominant when you're pregnant, that it sort of, it changes your mood and your balance.

3:35So I was always used to being, you know, filling off for two to three days a month. And what started to happen when I entered into my 40s was that started to get longer and longer. And so instead of two to three days a month, it started to be four to five days a month, six to seven days. And I just had this like extreme irritability and moodiness. And my fuse was so short. And I found myself not liking how I was showing up for my family and for myself. And so I went around and looked at different options, talked to my OBGYN who offered to switch birth control options for me and came across saffron as this, you know, thousands of years old ingredient that women have used.

4:19It's really prevalent in cooking in Iran and India, Spain. And it was making a big difference in my mood. But the problem was I was taking it and trying to find other, you know, ways to find it and taking it, but realizing I couldn't also then worry about the rest of my health. So like, what about my, you know, magnesium levels and vitamin C and calcium? And like, there was so much else that I knew I needed to take. And I found myself one day in my pantry mixing seven different pills, four powders, trying to rush my kids out the door to get to the bus stop on time. And I was like, this is insane.

4:57I don't, I'm making a mess. Is this shouldn't health shouldn't be this hard. And why hasn't somebody put this all together for me into one simple solution that I could actually stick with and do every day? And that's how Biologica was born. Well, and I think we see supplements out there that are kind of like a one size fits all. You've seen the, you know, the rise of like IM8, which has all these different vitamins and minerals in it, but it is made for, it's kind of like for everyone. It's not specifically fine-tuned to, you know, a woman's biology, especially at the stages they're at. Let's, I mean, let's talk about a little bit of that and the ingredients and the different stages of what you've created to really help women.

5:37I mean, I think the range is what, 18 to 40 and then 40 to 55 and then 55 plus. So kind of like perimenopause, like, you know, birthing age to perimenopause to, you know, menopause, postmenopause. Well, so just to back up, when we started Biologica, we went out and did a lot of research. So we had to prove that this wasn't just a pain point of mine, but this was actually a real gap in the market. And we did both qualitative research, we did focus groups across the country and various different age groups. And then we did a thousand women study. And what we found was really interesting and quite surprising.

6:12And what we found was that the acute hormonal symptoms that women were facing were very similar within their age group, but very different across the age groups. And when you looked at the female population, you broke it down, not quite by age, but by hormonal life stage, all of the symptoms started to meld together and feel similar. So as women, we go through five hormonal life stages in our life, infancy, puberty, reproductive, perimenopausal, and postmenopausal. And what your body needs in each of those stages is very different. So for example, you need a lot of iron when you're on your reproductive stage.

6:53You're getting a monthly period, you're shedding a lot of blood, and iron is really, like a deficiency in iron is quite common for women in that stage, but not at all when you're no longer getting a period. So, you know, to take a generic supplement for, you know, women, let's say you're taking a supplement for women that's generic, that's not based on your stage. You need a lot of iron on your, in your reproductive stage, but not a lot post. To look at like examples that you were saying, like IM8 that are for men, women, children, everybody, they don't even include iron in their formulation because iron doesn't taste great.

7:29And so for IM8 to do a drinkable beverage, they're like, why, why, why do we have to include this? Let's just keep it out. Doesn't taste great. It'll make our formulation a lot better tasting. but to give that to women who are having a monthly period without iron in it is is terrible I mean iron deficiency impacts so much of like our energy levels and so many of the processes within our body so to to skip that is a huge mess and so that's why breaking down what our body needs based on our hormonal life stage is so important for our overall health well and I mean I've got a daughter who's almost 17.

8:10So it's the exact same thing. You look at those life stages and that hormonal change. And you're right. I mean, everyone is different within their journey, but, you know, medically, we all have these stages that we're going through. So stages when you start getting into, you know, perimenopause and postmenopause, and this is where there's a tie back to you being a divorce lawyer that I find fascinating. um so correct me if I'm wrong but divorce does skyrocket in perimenopausal women correct because our we have no wherewithal and we're just tired of our husbands basically I mean you're not wrong I think it's um look there are um myriad reasons why people get divorced but from my experience as a divorce lawyer sitting through so many meetings with clients Yes.

9:02You know, a big takeaway, people always corner me in a cocktail party when they figure out that I'm a divorce or they're like, what's the secret? What's happening? And the truth is that it's very rarely like somebody has a midlife crisis and just decides to blow up their life for no reason. Generally, the, you know, the issue that I that I kept seeing over and over the pattern is the qualities about somebody that exists when you marry them don't change over time. They just intensify. And people like to think, oh, if I marry this person, I and women especially will think this. I can help them improve these qualities, right?

9:42They may have some narcissistic tendencies, but once they realize what it's like to live in this wonderful family where we're all giving and, you know, whatever it is, they will change. The young ideology of I can fix them. I can fix it. I can fix it. And women and women generally have that feeling. Right. And I think we've all hopefully dated people. Right. We've had boyfriends and girlfriends in the past that like we've tried out that philosophy and it's failed. And then hopefully you learn that lesson through dating. And then when you select one person to marry, you've made that realization.

10:18But oftentimes that feeling of this person will change is so powerful because you love so many pieces about them. and what we've seen over and over is that with just the intensity of life whether it's aging parents or the demands of kids whether it's young kids or the demands of older kids and some of the serious you know behavioral issues that we have with kids or health issues you know you have financial strains just life happening those qualities about somebody that you didn't love just amplify with those stresses. And that's where we see at some point, you know, into your forties and fifties, that feeling of, oh, wow, this quality didn't get better.

11:10It's actually gotten worse, really comes out. Well, and also, I mean, there's, there's just hormonal changes that happen in women too. I mean, libido changes. And as you said, you know, you get a little bit snappier. It's harder to like have that correction. And, you know, like I said, you kind of your wherewithal gets drawn down as your hormones are also changing and feeling depleted. What are some of the ingredients that you're using? I know we mentioned saffron, but I think that's another big piece is how do you fix that? You know, your hair, your libido is going away. You know, kids are feeling more annoying, but it's all just biological changes again.

11:50And what ingredients are you kind of leaning into that are helping women with solve these problems? Yeah, that's a good question. So look, we at Biologica, we know that women are really smart about their bodies and we know what's happening in terms of like the way that we're feeling and that it's a, Biologica is one piece of a larger puzzle. So I'm not going to sit here and say that like, okay, this is this magical elixir you take in and everything is going to go away, right? Like we, women are too smart for that. We know we still need to like, eat well and exercise and do strength training and have some kind of, you know, I don't want to say like a mindfulness practice, because that feels so onerous and big and like hard, but just a way to calm ourselves, whether that's a walk with a dog or, you know, doing yoga or stretching for five minutes before bed, all of those pieces are part of this.

12:41But then within Biologica, the ingredients that we have that support all of those other lifestyle changes are saffron is a big one. And we include saffron at the clinically supported dosage, which is 28 milligrams. And so the research shows that for women who take saffron at 28 milligrams, and most brands will include a little bit of saffron, but not that much because it's very expensive. I don't know if you've ever tried to buy saffron for cooking. It's very expensive. So to include it at the a clinical dosage of 20 milligrams, it really helps stabilize your mood so that your fuse gets longer, truly.

13:16And look, you still might snap, but you give yourself a longer time between when the, you know, you feel something happening and you react. It just gives you a chance to like take a deep breath and then say, okay, am I getting in my head? Am I going to freak out? Or am I going to take a deep breath and like, let this roll past me? And I would describe it as like, it's like the shock absorber in your car as you're going over the potholes of life, right? Like our life is going to have potholes no matter what you do. And it's just how you kind of can roll over them that, you know, is, is really about how your mood is and how you show up for those potholes.

13:53The other big one that we have in our midlife product is the combination of L-theanine and Pharmagaba. And the two of those together create a sense of calm focus. And so a lot of what women complain about is this brain fog, this feeling that I can't finish a sentence, I'm losing a word, I can't remember this person's name, this like I walk into a room and I forget why I'm here. And Elfinine really helps focus and GABA really helps calm. And so those two things together make this like helter skelter feeling of everything is kind of going off in my brain at the same time. I'm trying to keep track of 50 different things all together, which is just part of being a woman, right?

14:33We're trying to do so many different things at the same time. It helps calm some of that mental chaos that's happening. And then in our post-menopausal product, we have this incredible ingredient called hobamine, which is really a antioxidant that helps with cellular regeneration and inflammation in the body. And so that's something that's not going to be felt over time, you know, within like a day or two. That's something that happens over time. So Elcenin, GABA, you will feel that day. Saffron, two to three weeks you feel it. I always tell people, give me a month on Biologica. Give me like one menstrual cycle.

15:11And I promise you that you will feel different at the end of that menstrual cycle than you did the prior one without Biologica. Hobamine is something that just happens on a long-term basis, but that really helps when your cells go through an oxidative process as it's aging, it creates this inflammation in your body And it helps remove some of the negative byproduct that happens with aging as your cells age. And women can feel just this like over a longer period of time, so much more energy as a result of using hobamine. But these ingredients are again, like those are the botanicals that we include as part of our formulation.

15:52but we don't negate, it doesn't negate the impacts of like the immediate vitamins and minerals that will, like, you know, that we include in our formulation that are meant to like, just help support the nutritional gaps that women uniquely have. So for example, in order to be included in a formulation at Biologica, the ingredient had to be shown to be deficient in most American women and that that deficiency impacted the health outcomes of otherwise healthy individuals. So for example, we don't include biotin in our formulation because that's not shown to be deficient. And even if it is, it's just not impacting overall health outcomes.

16:32The data on biotin and healthy hair and nails is not as great as we would have wanted it to be. So that's why we didn't include it. But things like calcium and vitamin D3 and K2 to make sure that calcium gets into your bones and not into your arteries, you need to take calcium with D3 and K2. Women are deficient in that across the board. And especially vitamin D, no matter where you live, we're deficient in it. And so that's an ingredient that we just need to be supplementing with on a regular basis. And your flavors are delicious. So thank you. That was very important to me. Right. So I mean, I love to cook.

17:10Flavors are important to me. I felt like what was out there, I don't know if you've tried IM8 or AG1, they're terrible, in my opinion. It's this fake sap, like saccharine sweet, fake sugar, not sophisticated flavor. And the truth is that when you go to these formulators, right? So we have our co-manufacturers based in Utah, they say, oh, we have flavors in-house. We have mixed berry, we have orange, we have citrus. And there are like these in-house powder that they've already created. And it's really easy to say, great, throw it in there. Let's make a mixed berry or let's make a, you know, citrus.

17:49But it ends up tasting like children's Tylenol, I think, because they're not specificated flavors. So we actually went to an outside flavor house. We went to Europe. They really know how to figure out their flavors there. And they source their flavors directly from farms. So they literally will extract the flavor of the cranberry grown on farms in Europe and then use that in their labs to create that cranberry flavor from the fruits. So you don't have to add extra sugar to it because the sweetness you're tasting in our cranberry lemonade, for example, is coming from the fruit itself. And it's not added as like an extra chemical, you know, on the back end in the factory.

18:27So that was really important because the truth is that supplementation doesn't work if you don't take it. Exactly. And you got to do it every day. And if you're dreading taking it because it's like the sludgy green juice that tastes gross, you're not going to do it every day. And so to create a delicious, juicy, effervescent beverage that you actually look forward to taking every day, that's what's going to keep you on a habit. And women have so many other things going on in our lives. And we're so busy and we're trying to keep track of so many different things. that I really felt like if I could alleviate a little bit of that health anxiety and just make this one step so much easier for people that felt like worthwhile, a worthwhile way to spend my time.

19:09Well, and you have two beautiful flavors depending upon what stage you're in too. So you can just, you can mix and match. One day you're in the mood for a cranberry lemonade, fine. The next day it might be as you've got an elderflower, I think for the post-menopause and then there's the, is it passionflower? Is that the? Yeah, we have passion fruit, passion fruit, blackcurrant. Yeah. And they're delicious, but at least you can kind of mix and match. You can have a little bit of variation if you need it.

19:34So the company is not that old. I mean, you're basically a baby. Yeah, I know. I feel it every day, man. I feel it every day that we're a baby. Yes. Biologic a baby. So, I mean, honestly, you took a lot of time testing and finding the right ingredients and doing all the due diligence that is so necessary for a supplement. But what have some of the early learnings been for you as a new startup specifically? with women's supplements? That's a great question. I mean, we spent a lot of time in R &D. We spent almost two years before we launched the product because I really wanted to listen to women and see what they were wanting and needing and what was missing.

20:10And it felt like from our early research, women felt like they either were so overwhelmed with the information out there and all the different pills and powders and mixing and matching and creating a supplement stack that they did nothing or they bought it all and then they only used it twice a week or once a week. And then they would, people were texting me photos of their like supplement cabinet. Of all of these pills and powders, they spent hundreds of dollars on that they never used and they threw out at the end of the year. So the early learnings with our development stage was around simplification and that we had to try and create a product that was a complex formulation that really did both address the longevity issues that women need, but also the acute hormonal symptoms.

20:57So we had to do the here and now, and then we had to do the future in one simple formulation and trying to add on boosters and this kind of pack and trying to, you know, I think there's people want to think that they want a personalized health. And I think the world is moving towards that. And they want to think that my body is really unique and I need something unique for just me. But the truth is, is that we're much more similar than we are different within our hormonal life stage. And sometimes that personalization can really backfire because it becomes too onerous. And so it was really threading the needle between making sure that it was personal enough for what you needed in that stage, but not so much so that then you end up with a supplement stack that's 12 things and then not realistic.

21:42And so that was a really interesting early learning was like, where do you, where is that line between what's doable and like not letting perfect be the enemy of good and what is formulated for what we need in this time as women? And it's simple. You simplified it in a beautiful way where you're getting to your point. We are very similar. All of, you know, so you're getting what you need. And then if you're, there is something else that you want to add onto it, go ahead and add onto it. There's no reason why this needs, this isn't like a one-stop shop. It's really going to help fix a lot of those other issues that are going on.

22:18But if you want to add and customize on top of it, go for it. Yeah, exactly. The other learning we've discovered in the first few months of launching is taste is quite subjective, right? That's pretty obvious. But what's been interesting about the feedback we've gotten from women on our product is that we are not very sweet. I mean, we have enough sweetness that it's balanced, but it's not overly sweet. And the feedback we're getting is that people are so relieved to finally have a product that isn't overly sweet because you're taking it every day. And I feel like women's palates are sophisticated.

22:54And, you know, some of them like gummies, right? If you like a gummy, you're not, you know, and you like that as a treat, like maybe Biologica is not for you. But I think the majority of women were sick of that. And they don't want that saccharin candy flavor constantly. and there's something about, especially if you take it, you know, we formulated biological, you can take it anytime during the day, but especially if you take it in the morning, sometimes like right after your coffee, you don't want a really sweet thing. And so the feedback on that has been quite positive. But then again, you're always gonna have consumers who write it and say, I don't like the flavor.

23:27It's too sour for me, or it's not sweet enough. Or, you know, so you're not gonna be able to please everybody. And maybe for those people, you know, a gummy bear for breakfast is really what's gonna fit them. And you're just, we're not gonna be able to meet of everybody's taste palette. But for the most part, people are very excited about a less sweet beverage to drink every day. Well, and I love that. Maybe we can talk about what is sweetening the product because I really, when I looked at the ingredient stack in it and like, okay, great. No fake sweeteners, no extra. There's no stevia and monk fruit.

24:00I mean, all of that's just not in it. And I really enjoyed the fact that it wasn't that sweet and it did have a savory saffron kind of finish to it. But I mean, I'm assuming that any of that. It's so funny. You taste the saffron. Not everyone tastes it, but it sounds like that was like a note for you that really was apparent. I, I, yes, I kind of like taste a lot of different notes and things and I love saffron. So it was right at that end. I was like, oh, there it is. It was much more kind of juicier. And then it was a little bit more of that saffron finish, but that's interesting. That's a concentrated palette you have.

24:35You know, and the thing is, is that I don't know if you can see it when you looked in the glass, but you can actually see the saffron. It has this like really beautiful orange, orange hue to it. So in our passion fruit, black currant, so we, we color the formulations with natural color. So like, you know, beetroot and carrot and those sorts of things that we use. There's no artificial colors, but in the passion fruit, black currant flavor that we have that comes from the purple tin and midlife there are zero added colors at all in it because that rich beautiful yellowy orange comes from the saffron and it just is able to color the drink without anything extra and that there's like a sensory experience when you see this like beautiful rich color that you know is natural um but it fizzes and then you can see the the minerals and vitamins kind of floating the colors floating in the glass it feels like I don't know to me it's like you know what you're actually you're you're drinking what's really it's real right it's not just like mix into this like sludgy I say sludgy a lot about eg1 but um that like viscus you know like it in a glass where you don't really even know what's in there so we really like all of the ingredients have been hand selected and you can kind of see it visually in the glass as it mixes.

25:54That's part of the meditation process. Just enjoy the little glittery bits that are floating around in there. I like that. I like that. So what does future innovation look like for the brand? You've got these, you've got two flavors per life stage across the three different major stages that you're focusing. But what, what's next? I mean, that's so hard to say because I mean, you're only like just a baby and launching, but I know everyone's got that three, five-year plan. And yep. Well, so, you know, as I talked about the five hormonal life stages that women go through, there's one hormonal life stage that's separate from that, which is pregnancy.

26:31And so that is a specific life stage that some women go through that has specific nutritional needs, both for the mom and for the baby. and most people's experience choking down prenatal horse pills is terrible. And so we really feel like we can provide a much different experience for pregnant women in a drinkable prenatal that tastes delicious and has, you know, all of the benefits that we need plus iron, you know, a healthy dose of iron and not all prenatals include iron. And most women are deficient in iron when they're pregnant and a healthy dose of choline, which the research has shown in the last five years that choline can really help with the baby's brain development and also with our development.