Philly-made Lilu breast pump bra disrupts a billion dollar market

Jul. 23, 2020

On paper, entrepreneur Adriana C. Vázquez is an unlikely candidate to transform the $ane.four billion global breast pump market, but one portion of the global breastfeeding supplies marketplace that is expected to reach $six.17 billion past 2021.

For i thing, she identifies as a Mexican woman, and Latin-American female person founders traditionally receive a mere fraction of the venture capital funding of their white, male peers. For another, Vázquez is not a mother.

Only in her career in fintech and, later, while in Penn'southward Masters in Production Blueprint program, she was surrounded past working moms who candidly shared their pumping challenges with her.

"My director in fintech returned from maternity leave, and even with all of the back up in our workplace, like a dedicated pumping room, it was still then hard for her, logistically and emotionally," Vázquez says.

Then Vázquez started her masters programme where, coincidentally, two of her professors and a colleague were also coming back from maternity leave. "1 is a corking engineer, another is this really talented designer and the other is a successful entrepreneur. They're very tech-savvy, design-oriented trouble solvers, and nonetheless when information technology came to breast pumping, they all had myriad problems," Vázquez says.

One had preeclampsia and had to exclusively breast-pump, in order to meet her breastfeeding goals; the others, despite their eminence in engineering and design, felt completely disappointed and disheartened by their pumping output, and by how utterly defective breast-pump technology was.

As her peers struggled, Vázquez was drawn to their plight.

"All of these women feel similar it's their error that it'due south not working and they're feeling so guilty when, in reality, more often than not moms exercise face complications with breastfeeding and breast pumping," she says. "It opened my optics to the fact that no matter how avant-garde nosotros are in terms of technology, there was this huge gap when it came to something as 'natural' equally breastfeeding and chest pumping."

Vázquez decided to focus her Penn Masters thesis on improving chest-pumping engineering science and partnered up with a like-minded swain grad educatee, Sujay Suresh Kumar, who she met during an embedded systems class in 2015. Suresh Kumar was working on his Masters in Electrical Engineering; previously, he'd co-founded Jyothi, an organization working to secure better rights and safety for women in Bharat.

"No matter how advanced we are in terms of technology, there was this huge gap when it came to something as 'natural' every bit breastfeeding and breast pumping," Vázquez says.

Last September, their team—with Vázquez as CEO, Suresh Kumar equally CTO, and Shahir Salyani, a Wharton grad, as Head of Business Development—debuted Lilu, a nursing bra that incorporates massage to help moms produce more than milk, more than easily.

Pumping Power

For the uninitiated: Breast pumping is what it sounds like—extracting chest milk, via any number of newfangled devices, for storage and future utilize for bottle-feeding.

Over 85 percent of breastfeeding women have to employ breast pumps during some function of their lactation journey. As with all areas of healthcare, in that location are bang-up disparities in chest-pumping resources. While some women are privileged to access hospital-course and top-of-the-line breast pumps and accessories out-of-pocket or through insurance coverage, non all moms are equally fortunate.

In 2010, the Affordable Care Act required insurers to cover a pump and visits to lactation consultants, and the IRS categorizes breast pumps tax-deductible; simply many insurers cover no more than primitive manual devices that are frustrating and ineffective at milk removal.

Add to that the fact that while some workspaces have defended lactation rooms for breastfeeding moms and all are expected, by law, to have policies that support breastfeeding, many workplaces are just non suited to lactation. All of which presents huge obstacles to nursing mothers, particularly the six percent who, due to their babies' or their own medical issues, must rely exclusively on pumping—and information technology burdens low-income working mothers the most.

And yet it's non so unproblematic to walk abroad from breastfeeding and rely solely on formula. Inquiry continues to testify the wellness benefits of breastmilk, putting enormous medical and societal pressure on moms to nurse for their child's beginning year of life. The CDC, UNICEF and World Health Organization recommend that moms feed their babies chest milk exclusively for the first six months of life.

In their early enquiry, Vázquez and Suresh Kumar had chop-chop establish that breast pumps, in their current iteration, operate by mimicking babies' sucking move—but in the procedure, they can compress milk ducts, which limits the catamenia of gluey breast milk through them; and breast pumps overlook the other strategies babies naturally use when nursing: the move of the tongue, the kneading of the chest, the warming of information technology.

Research shows that chest massage and warmth may be effective in increasing milk supply. Merely massage requires the use of your hands, and considering that many new moms spend hours a solar day pumping, including sessions at the office (and, these days, while working from domicile), that fourth dimension is often better-spent multitasking, not tying up your hands further.

The gap in efficiency was what Vázquez and Suresh Kumar decided to focus on. "If nosotros could make it even 10 pct or 20 pct easier for moms to breast pump finer, I felt that that would be moving the needle," Vázquez says.

Over the course of their grad programs and across, Vázquez and Suresh Kumar iterated hundreds of prototypes of a easily-gratis massaging bra; at one point, in a fast-tracked group of sessions known as blueprint sprints, the team invited a accomplice of new moms to exam their revised product every Wednesday for three months straight, documenting mothers' milk output and reported comfort.

In that location were design bumps forth the way, of course. At 1 point, for example, they had a version of the bra that a user would accept to plug into the wall, and the mechanism that powered the massage was external to the bra. "We speedily learned that was besides clunky and as well much of a headache," Vázquez says. They got feedback on everything, from materials to colors to sizes. "We went back to the drawing board often."

Ultimately, they landed on a sporty bra made (in Prc) of three layers of material, including a wet-wicking inner layer, with bloom-shaped, air-filled massage inserts. Calling their company Lilu, a mashup of the Esperanto discussion for cradle and the Albanian discussion for lily, they created a bra that is compatible with almost breast pumps on the marketplace.

On boilerplate, users reported a 30-percent increase in the amount of milk they're able to produce per pumping session, with outliers producing as much as twice or three times their not-Lilu output.

Lauren Archer is a Westward Coast postpartum doula and lactation consultant with more than 21,000 followers on Instagram. She'due south as well been nursing her own child—for three years. As a female parent and a women's healthcare provider, she's intimately familiar with the breastfeeding market place, and the many brands that casualty on the societal and medical pressure new moms experience when it comes to nursing.

Archer is about impressed by appurtenances that are rooted in the science of lactation. Then she was intrigued when she received the Lilu bra.

"At first, it seemed kind of intimidating. Because of its motor, it's a bit larger and heavier than a typical nursing bra. Just once information technology was on it was really comfortable, and the beginning time I used it, I yielded additional milk that I usually don't," Archer says.

Archer has since recommended the bra to clients. "Any time people pump, I've always encouraged them to massage for at to the lowest degree the final two minutes, to avoid getting plugged-upwardly and to really motility all that milk downwardly out of the breast," she says. "The Lilu bra is actually a really proactive device—you can just put it on and it will accept you covered the whole time yous're pumping."

A good market place opportunity

Forth their startup journey, the Lilu team picked upwardly backers similar Dreamit, Penn Center for Innovation, and the health technology company Philips, among others; to engagement they've raised $750,000 betwixt grants, prizes and early phase venture capital funding.

Still, Vázquez acknowledges the challenges of being a Latinx adult female in the startup world. A 2022 study found that, between 2009 and 2022 Latin American female founders raised just 0.four pct of the $400 billion invested by venture capitalists, and the $1.3 billion they raised in a decade was less than the $1.9 billion women founders in general raised in just i year, 2017. (Male founders raised astronomically more: $66.9 billion in 2017.)

"As a Latinx female founder, I do fall under a category where securing VC funding can be more than difficult," Vázquez says. "I try to not think about information technology like that or it'd feel nosotros've lost the race earlier we even become started.

"As a Latinx female founder, I do fall nether a category where securing VC funding tin exist more difficult," she says. "I try to not call up about it like that or it'd feel we've lost the race earlier we fifty-fifty get started."

Instead, she focuses on sharing the compelling testify Lilu has gathered to show why innovation is needed in the space, and why it is also a expert market opportunity.

Lilu also has the mentorship of Dr. Diane Fifty. Spatz, professor of perinatal nursing and the Helen 1000. Shearer Professor of Nutrition at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. She is a nurse scientist and founder of the CHOP Mothers' Milk Banking company, which provides pasteurized donor human milk to infants hospitalized at CHOP, and she'due south published more 160 peer-reviewed articles virtually the use of human milk and breastfeeding.

Prior to Covid-19, Spatz and the Lilu team had planned to start an Internal Review Board-approved, controlled, clinical trial, to measure the effects of the bra. In light of the pandemic, all clinical trials not related to Covid-xix have been put on hold.

In the meantime, the team recently conducted a user survey, in which respondents reported satisfaction with the bra'due south comfort and its power to free upwardly users' hands to do other things. The drawback of the survey: Respondents were predominantly well-educated white women.

Which makes sense, given the bra's price tag: Regularly $189, information technology's been marked down to $97 during Covid-19, in recognition of how many mothers report being at their breaking point as they straddle the seemingly impossible working-parenting carve up.

The team hopes that, with increased sales, Lilu's price tin continue to come down. Positive findings from the clinical trial could contribute to lowering the price besides: If the outcomes are dramatic plenty, it could make a example for insurers, at least the more progressive ones, to embrace the cost of it.

Since September, Lilu has sold 600 bras through their website; in the concluding month, FSA Shop and Motherly have started carrying it besides. Vázquez says Lilu could be profitable in 2022, if not sooner, but they're committed to funneling earnings back into inquiry and evolution. She hopes to accept Lilu international, and is encouraged by recent involvement from investors abroad.

Archer, the doula and lactation consultant, says she's always mindful of her clients' purse strings; she encourages expecting mothers to "endeavor before you buy" (the Lilu bra is easy to wash, and since no milk passes through it, it'south condom to share); she also encourages women to put items like the Lilu bra on their baby registries.

"Put services and those bigger items on your registry so that your community can assist you," she says. "Considering onesies are swell, merely they're really non going to alter the trajectory of your breastfeeding journey."

The Lilu bra, on the other hand, just might.

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Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/lilu-breast-pump-bra/

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