NewMa: A previ­ously ignored market #DHDL

The 2nd episode of the 13th season of “Die Höhle der Löwen” presented us with a taboo topic right away on Easter Monday. The two founders of NewMa want to make things much easier and more pleasant for new moms with their post­partum care prod­ucts.

But isn’t there anything there yet? you might imme­di­ately ask. After all, almost half of the popu­la­tion can poten­tially be affected by these prob­lems; in concrete terms, there are 750,000 births every year in Germany alone, and of the corre­sponding mothers, almost 80% suffer from wounds, tears or swelling as a result of the birth. And what are they offered against this? A frozen condom filled with water, old-​fashioned cooling pads that are often far too cold, and incon­ti­nence diapers against the heavy bleeding. What reads like a bad joke is certainly anything but funny for the women affected – hundreds of thou­sands every year.

Sure, you could blame it all on our still patri­ar­chal society, but are you seri­ously suggesting that all new dads don’t care about the suffering of their part­ners after the birth of their child? Or aren’t they the target group who, in the vast majority of cases, would be happy to spend money on some­thing that would do their chil­dren’s mothers good and – not entirely altru­is­ti­cally, perhaps – regen­erate them more quickly? After all, the first time with a newborn is not exactly easy on the nerves and strength.

No matter how you look at it, patri­archy as the sole reason that a market has not been sensibly addressed by the year 2023 is prob­ably a bit thin here.
However, the taboo char­acter of the whole topic – even today – cannot be completely dismissed. In the lion’s den, too, this was brought up shortly after the founders’ pitch, and new lioness Janna Ensthaler in partic­ular praised the fact that this was a way of publicly addressing the fact that not every­thing is so great after giving birth. And Dagmar Wöhrl confirms the taboo of the topic, espe­cially in earlier times, when a mother had to be perfectly happy with her newborn.

However, the fact that we have already made great strides in society in the mean­time can prob­ably be seen above all in the reac­tion of the male lions, because no one rejects the topic, they are all consis­tently inter­ested in the prod­ucts – and of course in the busi­ness.

But one by one, they drop out. Till­mann Schulz initially asks Dagmar Wöhrl whether it would be some­thing for her – it almost seems like a double deal is in the offing – but ulti­mately they both drop out because they feel the compe­ti­tion in the hygiene sector is too strong. It’s a shame that they don’t elab­o­rate on this (or that this elab­o­ra­tion didn’t fit into the broad­casting time), because after all, the founders keep empha­sizing that none of the well-​known hygiene brands has pene­trated this area yet. Do the two lions believe that this can happen quickly? Because the founders appar­ently don’t get any contra­dic­tion to their state­ments about their pioneering work in this area.

Carsten Maschmeyer then wants to know above all what the founders want from an investor, and drops out because he can’t help so well with the focused retail sales channel. Ralf Dümmel, who certainly could, has a completely different reason for refusing: he sees a burgeoning port­folio conflict with the social chain invest­ment Mabyen.

Last, then, remains the lioness who has been one of the most ardent advo­cates of the issue: Janna Ensthaler. She refers to her expe­ri­ence with Glossybox – a subscrip­tion box from the cosmetics sector that prob­ably also had a baby box on offer – and is skep­tical about a market that loses its customers almost imme­di­ately after they have been acquired. She also mentions the cost of customer acqui­si­tion – which is exciting, since one might expect her to be very familiar with customer acqui­si­tion costs due to her expe­ri­ence in this area. Perhaps one can inter­pret her subse­quent refusal in such a way that she reckons here with not too favor­able marketing costs, which are again opposed by the short life span of the customers. Since the young startup, after only 4 months on the market and about 500 prod­ucts sold, is not yet able to compete very well, this exit is quite under­stand­able, despite all the enthu­siasm for the topic.

In the end, all the lions gave factual, investor-​worthy reasons for rejec­tion, which unfor­tu­nately are often still some­what thin on the ground in the general German startup scene according to the reports of many “Female Health” founders. Even if we have been able to leave many taboos behind us in the mean­time, unfor­tu­nately not all investors are in a posi­tion to eval­uate topics with which they have fears of contact in a purely economic and not overly emotional way.

Let’s hope that NewMa is one of those pioneers who not only open up a market, but with their economic success also give a good lesson to all those who, out of old-​fashioned thinking, have not dared to solve a problem.