Jessica Watson is the CEO and co-founder of GLORIAH, an Edinburgh start-up making natural intimate care products for women living with hormone-related vaginal dryness.
This month the business announced an oversubscribed £600,000 seed round led by Gabriel Investment Syndicate, against a £500,000 target, with Highland Venture Capital, Investing Women Angels and Scottish Enterprise among the backers. Founded in 2021 with former NHS nurse Isla Wynne Thomas, GLORIAH is using the money to grow in UK retail and prepare for the US market.
She tells Business Matters why she wants intimate care to be as normal as skincare, and why her network has helped more than money.
What do you currently do at GLORIAH?
I guess the honest answer is a bit of everything. We are still a team of two, soon to be making hires.
Most of my work is on fundraising and the commercial side, along with sales, product development and marketing.
What was the inspiration behind your business?
Our close friend went into surgical menopause at the age of 25, and that was our big inspiration for starting the business. One of her key symptoms was vaginal dryness. Like dry skin on any other part of your body, it leads to discomfort, itching and pain. The only additional symptoms are the embarrassment and stigma that come with where it is on your body.
The products on the market were sterile, dated and unsustainable in both their packaging and their formulations. We use unique, high-impact but natural formulas. Our packaging is designed to look like skincare and beauty products, not medical ones, and we use premium glass bottles and paper tubes, with no single-use plastic.
We want feminine intimate care to be as common and widely accepted as skincare.
What will the seed round pay for?
We raised £600,000, more than the £500,000 we set out to raise, and we oversubscribed in just four weeks of pitching. Gabriel Investment Syndicate led the round.
The money is going on expanding our UK retail presence, preparing to enter the US market, regulatory work and stepping up our marketing. Before this round we had already secured more than £110,000 in non-dilutive and accelerator support, including from Scottish EDGE and Zero Waste Scotland.
Who do you admire?
I admire Anne Boden from Starling. If you have not read her book, Banking On It, I highly recommend it.
Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently?
I would have tried to do less and do one thing really well. We worked full-time jobs alongside bootstrapping for the first three years to get a minimum viable product to market.
I wish I had focused harder on landing on one channel and gaining traction faster, rather than being so scattergun. It is easy to get distracted.
What defines your way of doing business?
Direct, to the point and determined. We are now clear on our mission, what we do and do not stand for, and the plan to achieve it.
What advice would you give to someone starting out?
Make the most of the extracurricular experiences available to you as an undergraduate. While studying for a Business and Management degree at the University of Glasgow’s Adam Smith Business School, I co-founded the university’s Marketing and PR Society and was its vice president.
I also took entrepreneurship as an elective, a course where you fully create, launch and sell products and essentially build a business. That was a great experience.
I would also suggest taking a graduate scheme that lets you rotate around a business. I moved to London and joined Sky, changing team every six months on the scheme and then every 18 months as I moved from manager up to head of department, across London and Germany. I gained so much of the experience I needed to start GLORIAH.
It is important to build your network as early as possible. I knew no one in business and did not have anyone to answer my questions. If I started a business now, I could save two years compared with the first time around. Someone out there would have had the knowledge to share with 25-year-old me.
Join an accelerator. The NatWest Hub has been amazing for us. Post your journey authentically on LinkedIn and get out to events. Our network has helped us more than money.
