Perelel Health, a Los Angeles-based leader in the clinically proven prenatal and postnatal vitamin space, announced on Thursday that it had raised $6 million in series A funding from Unilever Ventures, Willow Growth and Selva Ventures.
As the supplement category continues to balloon in size, this strategic investment highlights fundamental changes happening in the vitamin category. As Glossy reported last week, more consumers are choosing to shop from young brands that can prove safety and efficacy in lieu of rigorous regulation.
Perelel Health was launched in 2020 by Alex Taylor and Victoria Thain Gioia, who now serve as co-CEOs, as well as Dr. Banafsheh Bayati MD, OB/GYN, who now serves as medical co-founder. Taylor’s CV includes executive and editorial roles at publishers like Clique Media and EQAL, while Gioia worked in finance and strategy at The Honest Company and Olive & June.
Perelel has doubled its year-over-year growth since it launched and is approaching profitability, according to Taylor and Gioia.
The co-founders told Glossy that, based on their sales and donations, 3,500 Perelel capsules are consumed every hour. The brand has sold 31 million capsules in the last 12 months with one-third of all customers returning for prenatal support in their next pregnancy. The Perelel team has not shared annual revenue.
The brand has now raised a total of $12.1 million in funding. Unilever Ventures and Willow Growth both participated in the company’s $4.7 million seed round in May 2022, which also included a laundry list of beauty and fashion insiders like Aimee Song, Whitney Port, Revolve chief brand officer Raissa Gerona and Ali Weiss, former CMO at Glossier.
Unilever Ventures is the venture capital and private equity arm of Unilever. In May of last year, Unilever acquired the majority stake in hair health-focused supplement brand Nutrafol through Unilever Ventures. Willow Growth’s portfolio includes beauty brands like Kosas, Skylar, Youthforia and True Botanicals. Selva Ventures has backed cosmetics companies like Crown Affair and Kinship, as well as ingestible brands including Clevr Blends, which sells instant coffee with nutritional ingredients, and non-alcoholic wine brand Surely.
Taylor and Gioia told Glossy they will use the investment to expand their team and fund clinical studies on their products and category. They also hope to release new products and scale to new customers by doubling down on the DTC subscription side of their business model. Perelel’s brick-and-mortar presence includes 250 doctors offices plus Revolve, Erewhon and Free People, and Taylor and Gioia told Glossy they’re not seeking out additional retail at this time.
“We’re not taking on this capital to do something outside of what we’ve been doing for the last three years,” Gioia told Glossy. “We’ve seen so much momentum and growth, [so we’ll use the funding] to give us a sound financial foundation to push growth and use this year as a springboard into scale.”
First up is an investment in supportive staff for department leads who joined Perelel early on and need to get out of the weeds to focus on strategy, Taylor said. Perelel currently has 14 employees and the hope is to reach 20 staffers this year. The company currently operates in a shared workspace based in Los Angeles and employees come into the office about three days per week. Over the past few days, the brand has posted job listings for three new roles: an inventory planning manager, a performance graphic designer, and a director of scientific affairs and research.
As previously reported by Glossy, Perelel launched with five prenatal vitamin packs tailored to various stages of their customer’s reproductive journey, including pre- and postnatal formulations, plus blends designed for specific trimesters. The brand has since launched 14 more SKUs, including products to support hormone balance and the egg-freezing process. Bestsellers include its Conception Support Pack and First Trimester Pack, both of which offer 30 days of pill packs for $58.24 for a one-time purchase or $49.50 with a monthly subscription.
The brand is also targeting women looking for everyday nutrition with green and sleep-supporting drink mixes, a daily probiotic, and libido support and bloat relief pills.
Menopause is a growing category the founders are considering, as well. “It’s definitely top of mind,” Taylor told Glossy. “[The category] is feeling extremely saturated, particularly by celebrity brands, which I do think can impact the credibility of the category. So right now, we’re observing and we’re keeping a very close eye.”
“Women’s health remains a chronically under-funded, under-researched and, consequently, underserved area,” Rachel Harris, partner at Unilever Ventures, said in a statement. “We saw in Perelel an opportunity to back a brand offering women high quality, carefully targeted solutions in a space that has traditionally lacked transparency and investment. Since then, the brand has consistently demonstrated its ability to resonate and support women throughout different stages of their reproductive journey.”
Taylor told Glossy the brand’s latest campaign, called “baby making season,” was its edgiest marketing endeavor yet and the brand’s first foray into out-of-home advertising. The campaign ran on three billboards placed around L.A. hotspots like The Grove shopping center and Abbott Kinney shopping street.
“I believe we’ve tapped into something culturally with this campaign,” which calls out that the highest rate of conception occurs between November and January, Taylor said. It also encourages prospective consumers to invest in prenatal nutritional support.
The cultural shift in celebrities and influencers celebrating their pregnancies on social media, and the impact this could have on conception rates in the U.S., is not lost on Taylor and Gioia.
“Back in the ‘90s, a celebrity would get pregnant, and then there’d be a baby and then there’d be the ‘bounce-back story.’ But we wouldn’t get to see or understand [their journey],” Taylor said. “It’s such an exciting time to see so many people in the public eye open to sharing their journey.”
