By Jess Sharp, Money team
More than 15.5 million women in the UK are currently in menopause and searching for ways to alleviate their symptoms.
But with retailers and brands often overlooking their specific demands, women have been left feeling invisible and unconsidered.
Heather Jackson and Sam Simister were two of those women.
“We were sat on a beach actually talking about our perimenopausal journeys and we recognised that we both had different symptoms, but we were both struggling to find an ecosystem that could support us,” Heather told Money.
“We are driven, independent women who always search for solutions… and we were actually like, ‘Why have we got to this point in our lives and we feel overlooked and underserved by brands we’ve trusted all our lives?'”
Heather cashed in her leadership business, co-founder Sam left her job at Innocent, and together they set up Gen M.
‘What’s menopause got to do with us?’
With the market expected to be worth more than $24.4bn by 2030, serving more than one billion women worldwide, Heather said she was determined to make “menopause the new vegan”.
She commissioned independent research into the menopause market which found 87% of women had similar feelings to them and 96% wanted a one-stop shop for products.
Heather started approaching brands, inviting them to list their products on a website.
“Every retailer asked, ‘What’s menopause got to do with us?’ We realised we were in a worse situation…
