Lo Bosworth’s Slow-Build Playbook Is Beating Femtech’s Funding Bust

Lo Bosworth spent nine years building Love Wellness on just two outside funding rounds worth a combined 24 million dollars, reaching about 50 million dollars in annual revenue before she ever touched a mega venture round. In a recent interview, she laid out the mindset behind that pace: listen to what women actually need, test before scaling, and explain every product in plain language.

That patience reads differently now than it did when reviewers mocked her “baby brand” in 2019. Venture funding for women’s health startups is shrinking hard in 2026, concentrating around a handful of scaled companies and squeezing anyone chasing a first check. Bosworth built Love Wellness without ever needing that cycle.

A Reality Show Paycheck Bought Five Products

Bosworth spent the 2000s as one of the faces of MTV’s “Laguna Beach” and its spinoff “The Hills,” shows that turned a group of Southern California teenagers into tabloid fixtures. She used what was left of that money, not a venture check, to launch Love Wellness in 2016.

The company’s first idea came from boric acid suppositories, which had solved her own recurring infections but were hard to find or afford at the time. She built five products around vaginal and gut health and ran the business alone out of what was essentially a living room operation.

The reception was rough. “It was not an immediate success,” Bosworth told Fortune. “The media was confused. The brand was made fun of and I was made fun of.” She had moved from California to New York around the same period, trying to put distance between herself and the entertainment industry.

Why Does Love Wellness Avoid the Feminine Care Aisle?

Love Wellness deliberately places its products in the natural beauty section at Target and the digestive health aisle at Walmart instead of the traditional feminine hygiene aisle. Bosworth has said shoppers linger and read labels in those sections, while the tampon and condom aisle pushes people to grab items and leave.

“If you go into the condom or tampon aisle, you’re running in and out,” she told Fortune, describing that part of the store as one that discourages browsing. “But in a different part of the store where you’re more comfortable picking up products and reading labels, you’re much more open to discovery.”

She has also pointed to newer vaginal health startups such as Evvy and Uqora as proof the category shifted the way she hoped. “I’m relieved we were so early to the category,” she said.

Recovery wearables have made a similar jump out of clinical settings, where wearable TENS massagers are quietly outgrowing the spa trip as at-home devices win everyday shelf space instead of staying confined to physical therapy offices.

The Math Behind a Decade of Small Checks

Set against a normal venture timeline, Love Wellness moved at a crawl. Here is how the money actually landed:

1. 2016: Bosworth self-funds the launch with the remainder of her reality TV earnings, debuting five products with no outside investors.
2. 2019: The company takes its first outside money, a 4 million dollar Series A led by PDC Beauty and Wellness Co, after sales had climbed 1,200% between 2017 and 2018. Ninety percent of revenue still came through the brand’s own site.
3. 2021: Encore Consumer Capital adds 20 million dollars, the company’s only other disclosed round.
4. 2023: Bosworth steps back from the chief executive role at roughly 50 million dollars in annual net revenue, handing daily operations to a new CEO.
5. 2024: Cumulative retail sales pass 100 million dollars since 2021, with products in 1,650 Walmart stores alongside Target and Ulta.

Two checks, nine years, one modest step back. Most venture-funded consumer brands raise that much in a single round before they have proven anything.

Love Wellness Versus the Honey Pot Playbook

Love Wellness was not the only feminine care brand betting that a founder’s own story could crack open a stigmatized shelf. Beatrice Dixon started The Honey Pot Company, a plant-based feminine care brand, in her kitchen in 2012 and landed 1,100 Target stores by 2017.

The two companies show how differently that same bet can play out once the money and the backlash arrive.

The Honey Pot’s history has been louder. A 2020 Target commercial in which Dixon spoke about opening doors for Black girls drew a wave of one-star reviews and boycott calls that Trustpilot had to suspend and investigate. The backlash backfired, and sales rose instead of falling.

The company found itself back in a similar fight in early 2025, when retailers began rolling back diversity commitments. “Often brands must partner with Target or Walmart before any other retailers take a shot,” Dixon, founder of The Honey Pot Company, wrote in an Instagram post pleading with shoppers not to boycott brands like hers. Love Wellness has never faced a controversy on that scale.

Women’s Health Investors Are Pulling Back. Not Here.

Bosworth’s arithmetic looks different set against 2026 venture data. The wider funding environment she built inside has gotten noticeably tighter.

• Femtech-specific startups raised 724 million dollars globally in 2025, but Dealroom’s first-half 2026 pace points toward a full-year total near 478 million dollars, or femtech funding pace cooling 34% in 2026.
• Broader women’s health tech funding plummeted from 1.4 billion to 648 million dollars in 2023, before menopause tech and virtual care carved out pockets of growth.
• Forbes reported in April 2026 that capital is concentrating around a handful of already-scaled healthtech players, leaving early-stage women’s health founders facing a harder fundraising climate than a year earlier.
• SVB’s 2026 report offers a partial counterpoint, with a rebound in deal volume projected for 2026 even as narrower femtech trackers show a pullback.

The trackers do not fully agree on where 2026 lands, since they measure different slices of the market. What they agree on is that 2023 through 2025 were rough years to be raising a first institutional check in women’s health, exactly the stage Love Wellness passed through years earlier on much smaller sums.

The Skill That Doesn’t Show Up on a Balance Sheet

Bosworth has framed her job as translation: turning a scientific idea, like vaginal pH balance or gut-linked mood symptoms, into instructions a first-time buyer can follow without embarrassment. That includes realistic claims about how long a product takes to work and customer support that answers confused shoppers instead of ignoring them.

It is not a glamorous skill, and it rarely shows up in a pitch deck. But it keeps returns low and repeat purchases high, because a customer who understands what she bought is less likely to send it back.

Love Wellness now ships from the same New York base it has used for years, still smaller in headcount than many single Series B startups, selling next to the shelves that used to embarrass its customers.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Lo Bosworth still the CEO of Love Wellness?

No. Bosworth stepped back from the chief executive role in 2023 after growing the company to about 50 million dollars in annual net revenue. She brought in Maria Dempsey, previously CEO of Nest and an alum of Lancôme and Clarins, to run daily operations, while Bosworth stayed on as the company’s founder and public face.

Who is Encore Consumer Capital, the firm that backed Love Wellness?

Encore Consumer Capital is a San Francisco private equity firm that typically invests in companies generating between 10 million and 100 million dollars in annual revenue. The firm has raised more than 600 million dollars in equity capital and invested in over 35 consumer businesses to date.

What is Love Wellness’s legal company name?

Love Wellness operates under the legal name Ogilvie Brands, Inc., a nod to Bosworth’s own middle name, and is registered in New York, where the company is headquartered.

How did Lo Bosworth’s own health problems lead to Love Wellness?

Bosworth spent roughly two years dealing with recurring yeast infections, urinary tract infections, anxiety and depression before a vitamin panel linked the symptoms to nutrient deficiencies, a diagnosis doctors took more than a year to reach. That frustration, not a business plan, pushed her toward the gut and vaginal health formulas that became the company’s first products.

Is Lo Bosworth married?

Yes. Bosworth married Dom Natale in 2025 and has one child, according to public records.