From Saks to start-up: How this brand founder aims to change women’s health

"My previous retail leadership roles really helped me gain a deep understanding of optimizing the customer journey."

The post From Saks to start-up: How this brand founder aims to change women’s health appeared first on Inside Retail Australia.

Many founders can relate to the phrase “necessity is the mother of invention”. But these words rang especially true for former Saks Fifth Avenue executive Lulu Ge, who turned to traditional Chinese medicinal treatments to deal with hormonal imbalance issues.

Those experiences ultimately her to launch Elix Healing,  the first menstrual wellness brand to combine Chinese medicine and clinical research for personalised herbal treatments for women’s hormonal health. We spoke with her about coming up with the concept and how to stand out in the increasingly competitive wellness space.

Inside Retail: How did you come up with the concept for Elix Healing?

Lulu Ge: I stopped taking birth control in 2016 and experienced a roller coaster of hormonal imbalances – from chronic fatigue to migraines, acne, hair loss, irregular cycles, weight fluctuations, and debilitating period pain. All of this happened during the most pivotal time in my career at what I thought then was my dream job. Over-the-counter meds failed to help, and my OBGYN advised me to go back on synthetic hormones.

I was deeply frustrated by the lack of options to naturally heal our hormonal health. That’s when I consulted my grandfather, who ran the hospital in Hunan, China, where I was born. He helped me find my way back to traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) which lowered my inflammation, rebalanced my cycle, and finally started healing my body at the root cause.

So many of my friends and coworkers were all in a similar place – looking to clean up their medicine cabinets with more natural products to support their health and well-being.

By turning to TCM, I not only found a natural option for my hormone health and menstrual symptoms, but I learned that our periods are a “report card” for our health. All of these symptoms are our bodies’ way of crying out for help and support. As such, in launching Elix Healing, I wanted to create a convenient way for anyone experiencing chronic pain to access this proven, ancient wisdom, reframe the conversation around traditionally stigmatised areas of menstrual and hormone health, and empower women to tune into our bodies and become our own best healers and health advocates.

IR: Where are the current white spaces in the wellness industry, especially concerning period care, and how is Elix Healing helping fill them in?

LG: Consumers across wellness verticals are looking for products with proven efficacy combined with a focus on quality, time-tested ingredients, education, and community.

Elix is bringing a science meets holistic approach to underserved and stigmatized areas of chronic care, beginning with menstrual and hormone health. 

In 2022, Elix completed one of the first Institutional Review Board-approved clinical studies on the efficacy of an herbal supplement for menstrual and hormone health. Clinical Study participants reported a 90 per cent improvement across 15 symptoms with Elix’s hero product, Cycle Balance.

Beyond herbal care, Elix is committed to breaking health taboos and bringing an East meets West approach to bridging the gap in healthcare knowledge with community, content, and care. 

IR: In such a competitive retail market, can you describe Elix Healing’s unique points of differentiation?

LG: Elix is the first digital platform to deliver personalised TCM by combining over 5,000 years of knowledge, medicinal herbs, and clinical research to empower holistic healing. The Elix experience begins with an online health assessment of menstrual and general health based on the TCM practice of pattern diagnosis. The assessment asks 50-60 questions about menstrual frequency, quality, and symptoms, as well as sleep and fitness patterns, and stress levels. Community members then snap a picture of their tongue, the body’s only external indication of internal health, and their results drive a proprietary algorithm that tailors each bottle of Cycle Balance. The company’s flagship product, Cycle Balance is a personalized blend of medicinal herbs specifically formulated to holistically treat ailments at the root cause – not just assuage symptoms and to rebalance the body.

Elix only sources the highest quality organic and wild-harvested herbal ingredients – always starting with dried whole herbs – and boiling them down in a clean liquid decoction process. Each herb is individually boiled in Colorado spring water for anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks depending on the time it takes to extract the maximum amount of phytonutrients without overheating and processing (this method reminds me of how my grandma would boil herbal decoctions in our kitchen growing up). The result is a clean and bioavailable formula that enables our community members to build loving self-care rituals around enjoying their Elix formulas with their favourite teas or beverages, rather than having to swallow and stomach uncomfortable pills.

IR: Prior to launching Elix Healing, you had an extensive background in the world of retail, where you were director of change and transformation at Saks Fifth Avenue and head of change management for Hudson’s Bay Company. How do you feel that your experience may have been to your benefit in building your brand?

LG: My previous retail leadership roles really helped me gain a deep understanding of optimising the customer journey so that brands can foster trust and loyalty. We worked with huge datasets to improve and personalise each part of a customer’s interaction with our retail and omnichannel touchpoints. This experience was pivotal to thinking about how we personalise the experience of bringing TCM online and creating content and community that inspires our community members to take action while building trust.

IR: What have been the biggest highlights and setbacks you’ve experienced in building the business thus far?

LG: There are too many highlights to count, but the overwhelmingly heartfelt testimonials about how Elix is changing lives are so rewarding!

 Countless women have told us that Elix was their last hope to help their hormone imbalances that were disrupting their lives: painful endometriosis belly and cramps are gone in three months after using Elix; hysterectomies are planned but ditched; decades of seeing doctor after doctor but then healing naturally within a few short months of using the organic formulas This incredible feedback makes it all worth the long hours, the uncertainty, and personal sacrifices.

The biggest challenge we’ve faced as a business is figuring out how to change the deeply ingrained narrative around period and hormone health. So often, we hear that members in our community have been told to “suck it up” in regards to their period pain. Chronic cycle-related and hormonal imbalances affect 90 per cent of people with periods, that’s around 700 million people globally. Women’s pain is normalised so we just “deal with it” but we want to create a space where people can have open conversations about their bodies. We continually challenge the status quo by letting people with periods know that this isn’t “normal” and there are tools to help them.

IR: What are your top priorities/areas of focus for the brand over the next 12 months?

LG: Eighty per cent of women are impacted by conditions like endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), and fibroids which can lead to life-disrupting symptoms. Over the next 12 months, we are committed to expanding our reach in these communities by partnering with organisations that support these chronic conditions.

We are also embarking on our next clinical study, this time targeting PCOS which we’ll announce shortly; we will use that data to contribute to future product research and development. In addition, we are prioritising partnerships and brand activations so that Elix can continue to be a place of support for menstrual and hormone health for our community.

IR: What is a piece of advice that you wish you would have been able to give to yourself when you were at the beginning of your business journey?

LG: Don’t be afraid to fail! 

If something doesn’t work initially, look for what it can teach you about a better path forward. At Elix, we celebrate both our wins and weekly learnings to engrain into our culture that failed experiments are a stepping stone to growth. With this mindset, it gives the team more confidence and flexibility to always experiment and discover ways we can better serve the community.

The post From Saks to start-up: How this brand founder aims to change women’s health appeared first on Inside Retail Australia.