With New Branding and Strategy, Premama Targets Millennial Moms

Consumers are looking to niche, distinctly branded wellness products for everything from their heart and gut health, to their skin and hair care. With a new look, reformulated products and new offerings, female-focused nutrition company Premama is hoping women shoppers will consider how their diets can impact the many stages of motherhood, too.

The Rhode Island-based company was founded in 2010 as a powdered mix solution for soon-to-be mothers who wanted an alternative to prenatal multivitamin pills. In the years that followed, the company grew its portfolio to include products in the postnatal space, simultaneously expanding its retail footprint to include retailers like Whole Foods Market, Target and Walgreens. It also raised $5.5 million in funding.

However, Premama founder and president Dan Aziz told NOSH that he found traditional retail channels and the company’s branding were limiting the length of time he could retain his customers. As a result, in May, the brand rolled out new products, an evolved packaging design, a refined retail strategy and a new pricing structure in an attempt to solve that problem.

Premama is now positioned as a premium system for everything from helping moms get pregnant to staying healthy while pregnant. Its packaging — which now has a cleaner, streamlined look — is labeled by “stages” to help consumers better understand when to use each product. Stage One is the brand’s newly launched birth control “cleanse” mix, Stage Two is fertility support mixes, Stage Three is prenatal gummy and pill supplements, and Stage Four is a line of postnatal lactation mixes. The company also sells supplemental energy and digestive mixes to ease pregnancy symptoms.

The brand’s new products include the birth control cleanse, which is a 28-day drink mix to regulate hormones for women that have been on birth control for extended period of time. In May, the brand also launched its first product for men: a male fertility-boosting mix. A women’s prenatal pill that tastes and smells like mint will be available in October, according to Aziz. The goal is to better target the growing — and powerful — consumer group of millennial moms.

“We have revolutionized a way to connect with this customer and keep them for longer than we could before with just pre and postnatal vitamins,” Aziz said. “That is probably our biggest difference from our competitors: We are there for this whole journey.”

The new branding will be complemented with an evolved retail strategy. Aziz told NOSH that at its peak the brand was sold in 8,000 stores. However, the company struggled getting consumers to understand the scope of products the brand offered because because they weren’t stocked together.

The company has since completed a retailer evaluation, removing 2,000 stores from retailers that don’t align with the age or demographics of its target consumer. Over half of those location losses were a result of cutting ties with Walgreens.

While retail will continue to play an important role in Premama’s strategy, Aziz said the company is focusing this year on growing its own ecommerce platform — which currently accounts for only two percent of the brand’s sales.

Aziz said he thinks boosting the direct-to-consumer business will be vital to the brand’s success because it gives the company fast and direct data about target consumers. He also currently offers consumers “bundles,” with the ability in the future to sell them via a subscription style model. It also allows the company to control the entire brand experience and package its products in subscription-style boxes, similar to other wellness brands such as Ritual, Seed, Vital Proteins and Ancient Nutrition.

“It is difficult to get brick and mortar retail to brand block the products and creative a cohesive story,” Premama investor Charlie Baynes-Reid, cofounder of River Hollows Partners, told NOSH. “ It [direct to consumer] gives us the chance to connect with them in a more comprehensive way and provide a more coherent understanding of our brand values, health benefits and story.”

Having the time to explain the brand’s value proposition is vital in balancing the “sticker shock” that customers may experience, Aziz added. As part of the reformulation, all of Premama’s pricing jumped from a flat price of $19.99 to a range of $19.99 to $34.99.

Aziz said he felt comfortable making the price changes because the brand’s target consumers — millennial, health m-conscious women — don’t mind paying a higher price in return for high quality ingredients and a unique brand experience. Other wellness brands have also taken this higher price-point approach — Ritual and Seed for starters — and have built a niche community.

When it comes to the future of Premama, Aziz hopes to create a platform of brands in the wellness space. Eventually, the goal is to offer kids’ multivitamins as well as other products for women. However, first the company is looking to raise a $3 million round of funding before the end of the year.

“If we can build a positive relationship and good brand experience with them at the stage when they are most hyper sensitive to what is going in their bodies, what they’re consuming and how their body is behaving,” said Aziz, “then we think they will trust us for other things like other multivitamins and nutrition down the road.”