Acupuncture company Wthn is poised for growth.
The company closed a $5 million Series A led by L. Catterton with participation from Jesse Draper’s Halogen Ventures and angel investors. The company also opened a new studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on Monday.
The company, co-founded by Michelle Larrivee in 2019, was affected by stay-at-home orders due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but is now back in full expansion mode.
“[The] “The vision literally from day one was always to have a national footprint from a retail standpoint,” said Larrivee, who is also the company’s chief executive officer.
Larivee said the pandemic has forced the team to work on building a growing product line, including the best-selling acupressure mat set ($78) and herbal supplements ($39), but the team is currently working on expanding the studio. The company is focusing on both retail and retail growth.
acupressure mat set
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New York will be the focus next year, with plans to open two to three studios where the company’s practitioners will offer traditional Chinese medicine, starting in Williamsburg in 2024.
“We have a clear real estate strategy in New York in terms of what we are looking for in any given location, so we are looking at customer demographics and other adjacent businesses in the wellness space. ,” Larivee said.
Larivee said the most requested location was Williamsburg, where the demographics match Wthn’s current customer base.
“Our customers are really health-first people, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t tried acupuncture. In fact, 60 to 70 percent of our customers have never tried acupuncture,” she says. said, adding that the customer base tends to skew female.
After expanding to New York this year, the team is considering Boston, California, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., as future locations.
While Larivee’s goals are focused on physical expansion, specifically raising $5 million, she said she hopes to double her product business over the next three years or so. Pain, women’s health and digestion will be key areas of interest for future products. It’s also a matter of getting customers into the studio.
“Our whole mission is to introduce more people to herbal medicine, and through our products we can do that on a bigger level and faster,” she said, adding that in the future the studio It could become a bigger part of the business, he added.
Use with herbal supplements.
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Private equity firm L Catterton, which has invested in leading wellness brands such as Nutrafol, Peloton and CorePower Yoga, joins early investors Gwenyth Paltrow and SoulCycle and Peoplehood founders Elizabeth Cutler and Julie Rice.
“Due to COVID-19, the demand for preventive care and wellness is greater than ever. With innovative products and services, Wthn is providing new solutions and addressing the challenges that Western methods alone have been unable to provide. We are creating health breakthroughs that were previously possible,” L Catterton partner and trading leader Whitney Casey said in a statement. “By empowering and reaching new customers, Wthn is creating markets and we strongly believe their omnichannel business model has the potential to disrupt this multi-trillion dollar opportunity. .”
Wthn’s recent growth has been fueled by continued trends in the $5.6 trillion global wellness business. At WWD’s 2023 Wellness Forum, Larivee discussed the factors driving the growth of services such as acupuncture.
“There’s great research that shows that over the last three years, starting with the pandemic, 70% of people have started reprioritizing their health differently than before. That’s a big contributing factor,” she said. “We are also seeing an increase in chronic diseases and condition exacerbations, including increased stress and anxiety. Chronic pain has increased by 30% since the pandemic.”
Although the studio currently makes up the bulk of the business, the product is growing rapidly, with wholesale sales up 40% year over year. The brand is expected to triple in size by 2024.
