Femtech Startups Are Finally Innovating for Menopause
New companies are leaning into women’s midlife moments
Inside a Walgreens in Pacific Heights, an upscale district of San Francisco, Sydney Larson strolled through the aisles. Her heels clicked on the floor as she circled the cosmetics aisle, looping past colorful tubes of lipstick and fridges filled with two-for-one Vitaminwater. She frowned. She took another loop and continued her hunt for incontinence pads — less kindly known as adult diapers. “This is odd,” she said. “Normally, they’re signposted.”
Larson eschewed the tampons and condoms, and stopped next to a sign for ointments and itch cream — finally she’d found them. She bent down to examine the bottom shelves, and shook her head. “That’s god-awful geriatric marketing,” she said, turning over the bulky boxes in her hands. “Women don’t want to buy that at the register or put it in their bathroom.”
One of the reasons adult incontinence products are so hard to find in the store is because they make the people who need them feel embarrassed and old, says Larson, the co-founder of the Bay Area startup Lily Bird, a subscription service for incontinence pads and underwear. That’s despite the fact that incontinence affects half of all women over 40 — which can be the result of childbirth, stress, and other health…
