Among the dozens of businesses given support to grow and flourish by Business Wales AGP is Health & Her.
Health & Her is an online platform that empowers women to actively self-treat the symptoms of the menopause to alleviate them. The platform, founded by Kate Bache and Gervase Fay, sells a wide range of hand-picked products including supplements, books, skincare, devices and homeware, and provides expert information to help mitigate the physical, psychological and social effects of the menopause.
Here, Kate Bache tells the company's story, offers advice to others embarking on their business journey – and looks forward to a bright future.
Tell us about Health & Her.
First of all, a bit about Gervase and myself. We are passionate about making a difference in women's health. We are also passionate about creating successful businesses. These twin passions are the drivers behind Health & Her.
Gervase has more than ten years of experience in blue-chip organisations including Reckitt Benckiser, Tesco, Nutricentre and Superdrug.
Drawing on her experience in both supplier selling and retailer buying, Gervase has most recently been helping businesses in the health and wellness space develop and scale with large retailers. Her role as head buyer for Nutricentre provides a fantastic foundation for Health & Her.
I originally qualified as a chemist and quickly moved into commercial roles. I held senior marketing and innovation positions in international functions across Europe and Australasia for Reckitt Benckiser, Kellogg's and PepsiCo.
More recently, I founded and successfully exited a new femcare brand, KIND Organic.
We established Health & Her to allow women to tailor advice and products to their symptoms. We also wanted to create a rich source of anonymised data, to enable us to develop pioneering product innovations to improve women's health during this difficult time.
We are on a mission to become the leading global experts for menopause by revolutionising the way women can access the best advice and cutting-edge solutions to improve their wellbeing.
What are your proudest moments in business so far?
While raising funds in the last investment round, we overfunded by 175%. We're incredibly proud of that. It means we must be doing something right!
Our work was also recognised at the eCommerce Awards in London, where we won Best Health and Beauty website. It was so rewarding to be recognised for our work in this way.
If you were starting again, what would you do differently?
We're at too early a stage in the business' life to evaluate the things we would do differently. At the moment, we're excited about what's ahead for the company, so we're not looking backwards!
How has support from Business Wales AGP helped your business?
We're a small but growing company. We've already expanded our workforce thanks to the advice and support Business Wales AGP has given us.
Business Wales AGP provided us with much-needed expertise, which has allowed the business to adapt and identify new opportunities.
This support gave us a springboard to pursue opportunities such as DBW equity investment and Angel Cofund investment, both of which supported our growth and development.
As a result, we have created four new full-time positions and increased exports by 5% already.
What advice and guidance would you give other businesses starting today?
● Visualise success and create a mood board – when the chips are down you can always draw inspiration from this
● Try to stay focused on one customer and product
● Ensure that you collect data and have it at the heart of your business and decisions
● Be very picky when hiring staff – attitude is always more important than experience
● Know your weaknesses and hire staff to compliment your strengths
Learn more about Health and Her.
You can find further information on Business Wales Accelerated Growth Programme (AGP)