Menopause-Care Brand Hazel Used This Pitch Deck to Bag $2.5 Million – Business Insider

One of the first problems that the menopause-care brand Hazel tackled was turning adult diapers into something that women with incontinence actually wanted to wear.

There was no shortage of products on the market, cofounder Aubrey Hubbell told Insider. But in a recent interview, Hubbell highlighted the products' pitfalls by holding up two pairs of baggy, loose-fitting disposable underwear.

"They're both designed around the manufacturing process for baby diapers, which is why they look the way they do," Hubbell said.

Hazel's product, by contrast, is a sleeker brief-style pair of black underwear. It's designed to be more discreet and stylish for women who have less bladder control because of menopause or childbirth.

Hubbell and Steven Cruz, her cofounder, are betting that menopause-care products such as their briefs will fill a void and attract investor money. The company raised $2.5 million in a seed-funding round in December with backing from BAM Ventures, Springdale Ventures, Mindset Ventures, and the Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator.

The brand sells its briefs, along with wipes and an anti-chafing stick, through its website.

Hubbell previously told Insider about the challenges of pitching the brand to male investors. But both founders have honed their pitch to men.

On one slide in their pitch deck, for example, Hubbell and Cruz estimated that the global sales of incontinence products totaled about $13.7 billion Statista data indicated just behind the global market for shaving razors and more than twice the sales of hair-loss remedies.

"Early on, investors would tell us, 'It sounds niche,'" Cruz said. "When we would show them the facts and figures, most of them couldn't believe it."

The comparison to the shaving market is a nod to companies such as Harry's and Dollar Shave Club, Cruz said. Both companies have taken sales away from more established brands, such as Procter & Gamble's Gillette and Edgewell Personal Care's Schick, over the past several years by introducing innovative products to what was otherwise a staid product category.

Hazel's founders said they were attempting a similar takeover with menopause and incontinence products. In that case, the market is also dominated by big companies, most notably Kimberly-Clark.

"Two startups have built billion-dollar brands in the razor space. Yet we have yet to see that within the incontinence space, and it's nearly the same size," Cruz said.

Getting women to see the need for Hazel's products, by contrast, has been easier, the founders said.

"You can tell stories more than facts and figures: 'When I'm giggling with my friends, I have to cross my legs extra tight,'" Hubbell said, citing one use case for Hazel's briefs.

Check out the pitch deck that Hazel used for its latest funding round below.

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Menopause-Care Brand Hazel Used This Pitch Deck to Bag $2.5 Million - Business Insider