When Lorne Lucree first met with investors to pitch his allergy-care brand Wizard Wellness, he included a flow chart in his presentation. Lucree, a 20-year product development veteran for brands like Tatcha, Clinique, and One/Size, had to find a way to get people to care about a deeply “unsexy category.” Through the flow chart, Lucree sought to explain the profound link between allergies, beauty, and wellness—a connection so important, it became the basis of his first solo venture. So, he gave the chart a title: Hot Girls Nasal Rinse.
“When you have allergies, it causes inflammation, inflammation causes dehydration, dehydration causes a puffy face and undereye circles,” Lucree explains over Zoom. “Allergy disrupts your sleep, and disrupted sleep affects your mood. So it’s this whole vicious cycle that happens that you don’t think about until you connect the dots.”
It turns out there’s a lot we don’t think about when it comes to seasonal allergies. For 25.7% of adults affected in the US it’s a nuisance we treat with whatever over-the-counter (OTC) medication we can get our hands on, sometimes with limited knowledge on what those medications actually do. For others, allergies can be crippling, with research suggesting they can even lead to mood disorders like anxiety and depression.
Lucree, who has struggled with allergies his whole life, was always disappointed in offerings available. “If you look at the allergy aisle currently, it’s very much pharmaceutical options, OTC as we call them,” he says. “Then it’s a fragmented array of brands that are natural or homeopathic. There’s not much in the middle that’s clinically backed, science-backed, and has testing to support it.”
He wasn’t alone. In a 600-person study commissioned by Lucree, data found that only 7% of consumers were “extremely loyal” to their current allergy solutions. Further data revealed an overwhelming percentage of people were unsatisfied with OTC offerings in key areas.
“84% of people would change for better performance, but 78% would change for better experience,” says Lucree. “So that’s packaging, it’s texture, it’s flavor. Pharma punches you in the face with efficacy, but the experience piece of it is where it lacks. Allergy is siloed into this reactive piece, versus this holistic, proactive piece because probably you don’t want to use the products at the end of the day.”
Source: Read Full Article
