Luxury, Science & Sisterhood: Inside SISTERLY with Co-Founder Jennifer O’Connell

0:00Isn't it crazy? All these supplements are designed for an 18-year-old boy and a 48-year-old woman. You know, this one-size-fits-all supplement that sits on the shelf that's meant to do everything for everybody. We were like, that can't be right.

0:16If you are like me, you have got a graveyard of supplements in a cupboard or underneath the sink in a box like me, collecting dust. And when you put those, when you remember to put those supplements out on the table and have them with your breakfast in the morning, you're swallowing so many pills, right, of different sizes and different stickinesses. It's gross. Well, my guest today is actually a friend of mine from university, Jennifer O 'Connell. And with her two other female founder friends, they have launched an incredibly successful new supplement company called Sisterly. And they have a product called The Elevator, which is incredibly fabulous.

0:55Uh, it's available in Harrods and the Times, the Sunday Times magazines talking about it. And they've got people like Liz Earl and Sonia Sullivan all over it. Um, it's got 23 essential nutrients for energy, immunity, hormonal balance, beauty, and sleep. And it replaces that disgusting graveyard of supplements that you have in your house. It also looks like a beauty box and it, you feel so good having it. So today, Jennifer comes on the show to tell us how she left being a fantastic barrister with a New York career and got together with two of her best friends to become a female founder of this incredibly successful new business and why it solves a pain point that no other supplement is solving out there right now.

1:41Jennifer O 'Connell from Sisterly, how are you doing? I'm great, Fiona. How are you? I'm really well. I cannot believe we have not seen each other since fourth year, our last year in university in Dublin. And then another Jen, friend of mine, said to me recently, you have got to catch up with this brand in Ireland called Sisterly that is doing amazing things for women's health. And she said, actually, one of the founders was in Trinity about your age. And I was like, oh my God, I know her. I love when things come together like that. I know. Everyone always says, oh, you Irish, you all know each other.

2:16It's kind of true. We do kind of all know each other. Well, you're certainly going to be, it's going to be one degree of separation. You can definitely get chatting to anybody and they'll have babysat for your cousin or something like that. I know, isn't it funny? So what happened after we left Trinity? What did you end up doing? And then how did you end up setting up this incredible scaling startup in female supplement? So I was doing, as you remember, I was doing law in Trinity and then went on and did the King's Inns and then headed to New York. And I worked as an attorney over in New York for a couple of years where I met one of my co-founders, Louisa Reardon.

2:47and she was in Colombia doing marketing. And then we were just having a ball during the Sex and the City years in New York. I mean, it was just so fun. And then I left New York, came back to Dublin to work as a barrister. And there I worked for 22 years. Oh, my God. At the Four Courts in Dublin. What kind of law were you? So all civil, civil law. It's funny now that I have pivoted the amount of people who are talking to me and saying, You know, especially at that kind of 40 to 45 age, kind of like this is the time if I'm going to jump now is the time.

3:29Welcome to Brand Growth Heroes, the leading podcast for the founders of Challenger grocery brands. I'm your host, Fiona Fitz. My 25 years at global giants such as Nestle and Challenger brands such as Goo Chocolate Puds, Chobani and Strong Roots, as well as coached to over 400 scaling brands, means I have the experience to ask the questions that truly matter and get you the insight that will inspire you to think differently and drive serious growth for your brand.

4:00so I got to the level of senior counsel and which would be the equivalent of a KC in the UK and then when talking to my older sister I was she was saying look will you please talk to this other friend Aoife Matthews because she's constantly going on about this as well and she was an investment banker so Aoife and I got talking and we were kind of saying okay what problem would we solve for ourselves and we're both really into sport and health and nutrition and Aoife had just done a nutrition qualification and we were discussing supplements and it was during COVID and they were like supplements are very complicated.

4:33And I was like, come on Aoife, what kind of vitamin D should I be taking? And what's the dose and what's the correct form and what do you need to pair it with? And, you know, perimenopause was lurking around the corner. And I said to her, look, you know, what do, where do we, like, how do we solve this? I said, we should talk to this friend of mine in LA. She'd be amazing because LA is the forefront of wellness. And I said, it's this girl called Louisa Wearden, who I knew from my time living in New York. And Eva was like, I used to live with her in London. No, no. Oh, that's just typical Irish women coming up with what we do here.

5:08Oh, we'll find people that we've all known or lived with or hung out with for long periods of time. So the three of us got together in that way. It was really organic and very natural. And there's a lovely trust space between us because there's years of friendship and we then decided we were going to tackle supplementation and solve all the problems in that routine for ourselves so I think we all struggled with remembering to take our supplements we all struggled with taking you know six to eight pills a day you know if you wanted to get all your essential nutrients yeah I hate that I hate that no Louise and I in particular just cannot stand pills.

5:48So that didn't seem like a good idea. And we were just trying to say, can you focus on the female body specifically and design something better that actually works for us? We were kind of thinking like, isn't it crazy? All these supplements are designed for an 18-year-old boy and a 48-year-old woman. This one size fits all supplement that sits on the shelf that's meant to do everything for everybody. We were like, that can't be right because we've come through so many different stages in our, you know, physical development, hormonal cycle, you know, between fertility issues and, you know, and on it goes, you know.

6:27And perimenopause. Perimenopause starting, menopause starting, all these kind of things. We were like, it would be brilliant to be more female specific in an approach. Can I just ask a question on that? When you were thinking about that, though, were you looking at, say, VitaBiotics woman range and thinking, OK, well, they already do that. it wasn't the fact that they only did pills yeah so we were kind of saying to ourselves what we wanted was the best quality ingredients so we knew that there's a big difference between synthetic and natural nutrients and we didn't want so synthetic nutrients and are not as well recognized by the body when you ingest them and the body can reject them and they're just not as bioavailable as the term it's absorbable whereas natural nutrients are really easy for the body to absorb.

7:11So we knew that we wanted the best form of every nutrient. We knew that we wanted a dose that was a standalone dose of each of the nutrients that we wanted to include. So if you're, let's say, putting something in a capsule or a pill, there's only so much room. So if you're trying to do a multi-nutrient capsule or pill, you're really limited. Yeah, well, you're either looking at maybe two, four pills and they're really kind of, you know, there's only a small amount of space. But if you were to replicate what we've done, you'd be talking about eight pills. And taking eight pills a day is just not a great idea.

7:44But also you're going to compromise on the dose if you don't go into a powder. A powder is all the room you want. So by changing the frame, by changing the format, you were able to, without just blindly doing, well, we need to do a pill because that's what everyone does. You were able to actually change how you solve the problem. The delivery method. I mean, just to kind of explain what what the you know, this product that we've made. So it's this powder sachet supplement. So it's a little sachet you stick in your handbag. It's got 23 essential nutrients, your vitamin D, your vitamin C, magnesium, zinc.

8:22And they're all in there, the things that you need every single day. So we decided we wanted the non-negotiable essentials. so they were the things that you know there was just going to be no confusion over um adaptogens or chinese herbs or anything like that these are the things that every gp would recognize that this has been clinical trials to show efficacy if you take them every day so there's everything you'd on in on the label you'd recognize and that that was quite a discipline not to get pulled into areas where we knew there was kind of consumer interest let's say and n80 plus or other things And we were like, no, this is going to be the foundation of good nutrition, things that are missing from your diet.

9:02And then if anybody wants to layer on other things, off you go. But you have layered on specific things for women of our age, such as biotin. What else for our skin and our hair and our wellness? Biotin is your B vitamins. So these these nutrients are insane. When I call them the essentials and the fundamentals, that's not to say that they what they do is extraordinary. So biotin is in there and that's amazing for your hair, skin and nails. coenzyme Q10 is in there and coenzyme Q10 is in every cell in your body and CoQ10 turns your food into energy. So the best thing about like in terms of the reviews we receive is your energy is just fired up from taking this and that's because we surveyed all these hundreds of women and said what do you want most from your supplement and they were like want more energy.

9:49So what makes that difference from say a Sonatogen fizzy tablet or one of those things that you'd putting some water in the morning for some energy? A dose. So the dose that's in here is really potent and high. So you will actually feel a difference. So let's say there's 150 mg of coenzyme Q10. Coenzyme Q10 is a really expensive nutrient. You don't see that in anything like, I don't want to call out any particular brands. No, but that is really unusual. And it's because it's, we were kind of, we knew it was going to push us into another price point if we were going to include that nutrient in there.

10:23But we really were like, if women are going to take this and they're going to invest in it, they need to feel different. They need to feel a tangible difference from taking this supplement. And that's why we put in a really optimum dose. So if you bought coenzyme Q10 in Whole Foods, for example, we picked up a jar of coenzyme Q10 in a lower dose to this, so 120 MGs, and that was£49 per 30 capsules. So it's a really, you know, if you're putting that into your supplement, you're really thinking about it. And it's funny, like there are certain supplements that list coenzyme Q10 in a patented blend where they won't tell you the dose.

10:59If you have 150 MGs of coenzyme Q10 in your supplement, you are going to be shouting about it loud and proud. And the problem with a patented blend, which certain brands have, is that they don't tell you how much they put in. They just put the name and they claim privacy over the dose. But we're so proud of the doses that we made a very strategic decision that we were going to list all the doses on our box. We're not like, because I want to know what I'm putting in my body. Every consumer should be told how much of a dose they are receiving of nutrients that they're putting in your body. Patented blends are actually not the right way to go at all.

11:37And there's a lot of pushback from consumers about them because yes, they protect the company, but they're not good for the consumer. The consumer deserves to know. I'm thrilled to introduce Brand Growth Hero's newest partner, Jolson. Jolson is a leading B Corp certified commercial law firm that specializes in guiding the founders of scaling CPG brands. With long-term relationships with clients like Little Moons, Trip, Eat Natural, Bear, Graze and Pulsin, Jolson is also famous for advising the innocent founders in their landmark sale to Coca-Cola. And believe it or not, they still work with the Innocent founders at Jamjar Investments today.

12:17I'm especially impressed by how Jolson sets founders up for long-term success and by their commitment to championing female founders. Recently, I asked one of Jolson's managing partners, Paul Chappie, a tough but crucial question. Should co-founders discuss, right from the start, what happens if one of them wants to leave the business?

12:37Jennifer O’Connell:Absolutely. I mean, with any joint venture, that's what a sort of co-founder relationship is. You've got to be very clear from the outset as to what each party is bringing to that business. Look at the skill sets. Look at the time commitment. I often see founders coming where, you know, one founder might have a full-time job. They're still getting the same amount of equity. and you can see immediately that there's an imbalance in that relationship that they either haven't looked at or are ignoring and eventually that will come home to roost. So I think the key thing is to look at you know what are we bringing what is that future going to bring what are the things that you know if I have to go and look after kids or have to emigrate somewhere what's going to happen to this business what happens to my equity all those questions need to be thought through, discussed.

13:33Jennifer O’Connell:And contractually, you can then just draft those provisions into that contract and set that relationship in a firm footing. Huge thanks to Brand Growth Heroes podcast sponsors, Jolson. Now let's get back to the show. Talk to me a little bit about the delivery in terms of packaging and format. The box, when you sent me some samples, and thank you so much, by the way, I had one this morning. I cheat a little bit. I put it in some orange juice. I love the tangerine flavour. I put it in some orange juice. And this morning I actually put it in a Lemsip Holden Flu sachet and yours and the orange juice and some hot water.

14:10Not too hot though, because I didn't want to denature any of the vitamins. And that just felt like, oh God, I'm putting all of this goodness and all of this help for my throat at the moment. When I received it, it felt like I was getting a beauty box. Sisterly is the name of the brand. Let's talk about that in a minute. And it says the elevator, the smarter way to supplement. Talk to us about that proposition, the brand proposition, the name and how you developed, you know, because it really feels like a beauty product, a ritual, the sachet and they all line up perfectly. There's something about the way they all line up in that box and it sits on my kitchen counter and I feel that whole ritual piece.

14:46It feels really nice. You're doing it right. So that's exactly what the purpose behind it was. We were thinking consistency is so hard with capsules and tablets. And the reason is you put all those jars out in your counter for a while and then they're ugly and they're cluttery. You pop them in the press. They're out of your eyesight. You forget to take them. Cupboard for everyone who's not Irish. It's a press. We call it a press, but it's a cupboard. Anyway, you pop them in the cupboard. You pop them in the cupboard and they disappear, never to be seen again. Or do you know what I just did about six months ago?

15:19I said, screw this, all the bloody jars on the counter. so I got like one of those bento boxes for kids and I dosed them all out myself and I thought well this isn't like a granny thing because it's not a pill box it's a bento box and then I fucking forgot about them and then now they have all because they are fairly natural ones they've absorbed the moisture and then they've all bled this orange shit into the bento box and I've had to throw the whole lot of them out There you go we are here to solve that problem for you because it's such a shared issue we called it like the graveyard of supplements that cupboard where all those supplements go to die.

15:54And, you know, they go out of date. We all do a clear out about once a year because it gets so cluttered because let's face it, we're all going into our health food store, our pharmacy, picking things off the shelves, not really knowing what they're going to do, but like in the hope that they are going to help us. You know, you might spend 20 quid on something and think, oh, this is I'm going to do it. I'm going to spend 20 quid, even though the rest of my baskets only, you know, everything's like four quid in it. I'm going to spend 20 and it's going to change my nails or change my hair. And then you take it for about three days and then you forget.

16:25Well, that's me anyway. A hundred percent. That's the shared experience. And the other thing that happens is, so let's say somebody would tell me to get a B-Complex and buy the jar of B-Complex. I'm like, I'm going to keep with this. I need more energy. But you take it for, you know, seven to 10 days, then you'd forget. Then you wouldn't feel any different. And you'd blame the B-Complex and say, I'm not really sure about supplements because you didn't feel any different. So the consistency piece is so important with supplementation. Like it really is the beginning, middle and end. What we talk a lot about on the Brand Growth Heroes Mini MBA is about consumer behaviour and about understanding how your consumer behaves in the category before you launch.

17:06And really, this is what you've done. You've gone in, you've understood what the pain points were, you've understood exactly where it's stored in the kitchen, when it ends up being thrown out, and you're solving for those needs. It's not just about flavour, it's not just about functionality, it's also about usage. Because there's so much value, category value, to be had for brands out there listening by understanding usage and pain points and usage, not just pain points in the actual product itself. And I think that that really helped us because we are the consumer. So So Aoife Louise and I don't have a white coat between us.

17:38And we would all be very conscious of the fact that we are not the people who formulated this supplement. We had a team of people that we brought together to and we'll talk about that in due course. But what we do have is real consumer experience of what it's like to take a supplement and what stops us from taking a supplement every day. we also have the lived experience as busy women of you know having a to-do list that never ends and it was really a case of saying we know supplementation is a really good idea we find it really hard to do every day so how can we simplify and sort that problem out for women so what we did was we made the box in a very neutral bland colour so that it could fit into every kitchen every other supplement you look at on the shelves is shouting at you and especially because this was a supplement for women.

18:31I mean, we spoke to an investor at one point and she was saying to us, I don't understand. It's like not bright pink and there's no flowers. Like how are women going to know it's for them? And we were like, they'll know because we really felt, you know, actually let's solve the problem for women and have this on their countertop, like your gorgeous cosmetics. So you sit there, you're proud of it. You look at it every day. It's not an eyesore. Great. It'll sit on the kitchen counter. Like Mel Robbins always tells us, if you want to introduce a new habit, have it in your eyesight. You know, if you want to lose a habit, get rid of it.

19:03I have one other box on my counter and it's Ancient and Brave collagen sachets. And we love Ancient and Brave. When did you start the business? When did you start selling once you'd decided what it was going to look like and what was inside the sachet and how you were going to deliver that sachet in a box and a beautiful box and the brand and all the rest of it. And I love the name Sisterly. When did you launch? That was Aoife, was it? When did you launch? What's your number one channel, you know, where are you being, who's buying you around the world and what's your revenue or turnover like and all of those things.

19:33Let's get into that. So we were three years in development. It took us ages to get this kind of medical panel together. I think as a barrister, I had seen so many experts in court on either side of a case with a great CV saying completely opposite things and both being able to justify their positions. So we were like, OK, we need a consensus view from a team of people. So we have four world-class experts who worked on this formulation for three years. Then we finally launched in 2003. We're very conscious that we did not choose the easy road by choosing a powder supplement. If you go with a pill or a capsule, you just stick it on the tongue, swallow it down, flavour is not an issue.

20:11If you're going to go the powder route, and you might wonder like, why are there not more powders on the market? they are so difficult to develop. So what most manufacturers want you to do is just stick in a bit of sucralose to hide the flavour and to flavour it really heavily. To try and because, you know, these things don't taste amazing, but we worked with a particular formulator who had a specialisation in powder. And he actually, in fact, had done an unflavoured multi-nutrient. And then we were able to work with him to create a really bland base. We thought we were going to market, I'd say, a year in.

20:45And it took a further two years to figure out how to make this clean, you know, not with anything that was going to cause a blood sugar spike, no sucralose. And the manufacturers were, we went through four different manufacturers before we arrived with one that believed in our vision of a really clean, potent supplement that was uncompromising in terms of quality. But we got there eventually. But it took forever. It was so painful. I mean, we had our experts trying all these different potions. And I mean, they were just going, this is disgusting. And sometimes Aoife and I would think we'd cracked it and then we'd get Aoife back from LA or Louise back from LA and she'd try and she was like, nobody's going to take this.

21:25So we're like, oh no, back to the drawing board. So working on the flavour piece was really tricky and it does create a barrier for entry. I mean, to be honest, it's such a wide open space in female health. We don't, we feel the world is a very big space. And if other people will create products at the same quality as we have. That's a really good positive thing. It's not it's not a cheap or easy thing to do. And it takes a huge amount of time. We invest massively in our expert panel and the amount of time it took to get us to a product that's winning awards all over the place. I mean, we don't enter the product into half the awards that we win.

22:00You know, they just kind of arrive in and we're just like, this is unbelievable, you know. But the other piece that is phenomenal are these really well-respected experts who are independent. They skin in the game, like they're not going to reach out and approach us and offer support. But for the fact that they really do want to recommend these things to their, recommend a good product to their clients, we get contacted day in, day out by doctors, female health experts, nutritional therapists, saying this is a really good product. If you understand a label and you can look at the bottom of the box to the forms of the nutrients, people get very excited because the combination is excellent.

22:42The synergy of nutrients is brilliant. It's really covering a lot of bases. It's doing it in a really smart way. And when you read the ingredient list, there's not things in there that will make you go, oh, I prefer that wasn't there. Like there's no hidden sucralose or anything like that. So all the really smart people are really liking this supplement. The people who know, the people with decades of experience and who've seen so many things come to market. They really like what we've done and the packaging is beautiful and that's great, but it's actually what's in the sachet. That's the only thing that's going to create longevity for us.

23:18If this episode is inspiring you to think about new ways that you can drive growth for your business, don't forget to click follow or subscribe on your favourite podcast app and even leave a review. Your small gesture has a big impact on me and my business and will be truly appreciated. How is that translating or how is that translated into sales and traction and growth? So we launched in Brand Thomas in Ireland, which would be the equivalent of, let's say, Selfridges in the UK. And Brand Thomas has been amazingly supportive of us. And that has just continued to grow. Mars Pharmacy, again, a big pharmacy chain here in Ireland.

23:53And then, but mostly we're a DTC brand. So 80 % of our sales are direct to consumer. So then we went, rolled out in the UK with a launch in Harrods, Whole Foods. And we're just about to launch in John Bell and Croydon, which is. Oh, I love John Bell and Croydon. Yeah, John Bell's so class. So we're launching there in October. It's a great discovery place and I love their team. They're really supportive as well. They're fab. So again, then we're doing a kind of a lot of building our community, building our ambassadors. And again, like I suppose people probably, we've these great actually athletes who all love Sisterly.