Tell us about Woo Woo and what it stands for?
WooWoo is a female-powered feminine care company founded in the UK by Lucy Anderson. Developed by women for women, WooWoo is on a mission to revolutionize 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.
WooWoo’s packaging is made from sugar cane, not plastic and our 100% biodegradable wipes made from plant cellulose are plastic free.
What inspired you to start Woo Woo?
I came up with the concept for WooWoo in 2016 when I found myself in the feminine care aisle and wholly disappointed by the lacklustre, chemical heavy and unattractive choice of products on offer.
Prior to launching the brand to the public in 2018 we surveyed thousands of women to ask them what they really wanted and two years developing our range of natural, herbal products with a female chemist in London.
When I launched WooWoo I was keen to move away from the sterile, medical packaging of the existing brands on the shelf to bright pop colours, fun designs and engaging copy that spoke to modern 21st women. I believe women need safe, affordable, accessible options for their feminine care and pleasure and this just wasn’t on offer at the time of our launch. My vision was to create a brand and range of products with purpose and to lead and start open, bold and fun conversations on ‘care down there’ that would help tackle societal norms and taboos around feminine care and play a part in closing the pleasure equality gap.
Tell us about your career and background.
My background is in product development and marketing, including major UK companies such as McVitie’s and The Body Shop which has been priceless experience in helping me found and run WooWoo. I’m a serial entrepreneur – WooWoo is my second start-up venture, having previously built and divested a successful nanny placement business in Switzerland.
Describe a typical workday for you.
I’m definitely a morning person so I rise early around 5.30am. My first task of the day is to check the previous day’s sales performance and respond to urgent emails fuelled by the first coffee of the day.
It’s then a mad dash prepping the kids and running them to school before heading back home to kick off the work day officially.
WooWoo is a business run entirely without a traditional bricks and mortar business set up, just a kick-ass motivated team of individuals based all over the globe who all work from home. Each morning is set aside for calls with retailers, manufacturers and suppliers, and my finance and marketing teams.
I’ll then make myself a quick lunch before heading out for a dog walk for a dose of vitamin sea (I live by the Sussex South Coast) which helps to recharge my batteries, mull over business challenges away from tech, and clear my mind for the afternoon of work.
Afternoons I tend to focus on bigger tasks such as mapping out business or retailer strategies, working on new product development, finance, or operational tasks.
Then I’m back into the mad school run and after school club juggle.
I truly love working from home and feel eternally grateful to my team and customers who have made WooWoo the success it is, as it has facilitated me being able to manage a really healthy work life balance I just wouldn’t get in a regular work environment. But the one thing I have found tough in the past couple of years is the limited networking and face to face meeting opportunities driven by the Covid lockdowns. Working from home can be quite a lonely experience and like most people I thrive on interaction. It’s nice that in the UK that things have started to open up much more significantly in the past couple of months with more and more of the digital events and zoom team meetings now returning to real life settings.
What advice do you have for those wanting to start a business?
Making sure you have a tight grip on everything from cash flow to contracts is absolutely critical if you are going to survive as a business. When you start out and money is tight, finding funds to pay professionals like accountants or lawyers to keep on top of your accounts or checking over the fine print of contracts can be tough.
Like many people setting up a new business, I think I was a bit too trusting of individuals and some of the contractors I worked with, but in the early days when you just need things done it’s easy to launch full steam ahead into agreements that can be risky to you and your fledgling business. I had my fingers burnt on a couple of occasions, but it taught me some important lessons early on.
Start-up business owners try to be all things at all times, but the reality is that unless you’ve studied or had commercial experience of everything from finance to legal, marketing and HR the intricacies of each are so huge you won’t and can’t expect to have all the answers. That’s why companies employ separate teams of experts to manage them.
If you don’t feel 100% confident in your gut on anything that could potentially have far reaching consequences, don’t be afraid to call in as many free favours as you can from friends who do have expertise in those areas to provide counsel or support, or ensure you work the costs into your P&L to pay for expert advice.
Setting up your business is one of the most rewarding things you can ever do but it can also be one hell of a rollercoaster ride. The highs are really high – there is nothing more rewarding than seeing a concept of your own blossom, survive and thrive. However, the lows are equally as low. I will say as anxiety inducing and stressful these hard times can be, they always prove to be incredibly useful learning experiences. Each time we’ve hit a roadblock and managed to overcome it we’ve taken that experience forward to avoid a repeat of the same issue in the future.
What’s next for you, and Woo Woo?
We’ve had an incredible first five years. Almost every day I pinch myself when I think how in the three short years since we started trading we’ve managed to win a loyal army of dedicated fans and a multi-award winning brand stocked across multiple territories including the UK, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Australia.
The next 12 to 18 months look to be just as exciting. When we launched our product range it was very much targeted at women aged between 20-35 but we want to support women on their entire life journey so next year we’re launching a range of menopause products and supplements that are designed specifically to help promote better intimate wellness. We also have big growth plans including breaking into North America. Watch this space!
