\n Jennie Haire and Lisa Hughes, Gigi Supplements. Picture: Fergal Phillips\n <\/p>\n
Gigi Supplements, a Dublin-based supplements business, plans to expand substantially in the UK over the next year.<\/p>\n
Based in Clontarf, Gigi Supplements was founded by Jennie Haire and Lisa Hughes in 2023. The business has 36 staff and has raised \u20ac1.5 million in funding to date.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe create premium supplements for female hormonal health. Our hero product is our PMS and hormone balance blend. It\u2019s a blend of 15 nutritional ingredients to support all aspects of premenstrual syndrome such as low mood and poor energy,\u201d Haire told the Business Post.<\/p>\n
Company DetailsFounded by: Jennie Haire and Lisa Hughes in 2023Staff: 36Funding: \u20ac1.5 million <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s clinically backed to provide the right formulations in the right dose so the user gets optimal results.\u201d<\/p>\n
The business is named after Hughes\u2019 daughter, Georgia, as the founders wanted to focus on creating something for the next generation of women.<\/p>\n
Both Haire and Hughes are nutritional therapists and it was their combined experience in this field that led them to start Gigi Supplements.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had been working in female hormonal health, with clinics focused on supporting women, and kept seeing women with the same struggles. We knew there were clinically researched nutrients that could support them. Yet when we went to recommend products, we\u2019d need to tell them to use four or five different ones,\u201d Haire said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wondered why no brand had distilled it all into one product. That\u2019s the reason Gigi now exists. It was bolstered by our own experiences. I struggled with period pain while Lisa had her own issues as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
The business has enjoyed a superb start and the biggest challenge for Gigi Supplements has been managing its own success.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we launched, we didn\u2019t know what to expect but we were blown away. We sold out of stock three times in year one and then twice the following year. That reinforced that women felt their pain points were being addressed,\u201d Haire said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoots reached out to us five months in and asked to stock us. It was on our vision board but not that early. We were on the shelves nine months later. It was really a whirlwind for the first 18 months.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gigi Supplements is supported by Enterprise Ireland and Haire said the agency had provided substantial help to the business.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey forced us to focus on what our export potential was and how we\u2019d achieve that. We\u2019ve attended a lot of their workshops and leveraged some of their supports,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did the going for growth course as well as a retail workshop to understand our readiness in that regard. We\u2019re in the process of getting more strategic support from them as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
With a direct-to-consumer presence already in the UK, Haire said the next step is to back that up with an on-the-ground retail presence.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve developed great relationships with Boots and Holland & Barrett in Ireland. We want to start having those conversations in the UK. We\u2019re building it up digitally to create demand and then support it with retail,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
This Making it Work article was produced in partnership with Enterprise Ireland<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jennie Haire and Lisa Hughes, Gigi Supplements. Picture: Fergal Phillips Gigi Supplements, a Dublin-based supplements business, plans to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":596318,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[103,61,60,446],"class_list":["post-596317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nutrition","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-nutrition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=596317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/596318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}