Many brands, especially in CPG, are born from known challenges and pain points; they are innately designed to serve an established market need. For Brianna Bitton, the market need that validated her brand, O Positiv, hit extremely close to home.
“I have dealt with debilitating PMS and period pain for a majority of my life, and it was really a lot for me. I would call out of work and it was affecting my daily life,” Bitton said in an interview with Small Business Xchange. “I would talk to my friends and family members, and really realized that this was such a universal experience for women, yet we were so conditioned to just deal with these things. There’s nothing you could do about it.”
But Bitton tapped the entrepreneurial mind of her brother (and soon-to-be Co-founder and CEO) Bobby, and together they came up with the initial idea for O Positiv, which focused on PMS and period care.
“We thought there had to be something out there for this issue,” Bitton said. “Something on the market other than birth control or hormone-altering medications to help women. We did some research and realized there was absolutely nothing on the market advertised to women to help with their period and PMS pain, so we set out to solve it. We saw such a gap in the marketplace and realized that we really had something here, and we wanted to solve PMS the natural way.”
Since this realization, the Bittons have grown the O Positiv brand to expand beyond period care and hormones to include various women’s health issues, such as vaginal and urinary health; menopause; gut and metabolism; hair growth; and conception support. Brianna Bitton sat down with SBX to share her experiences building O Positiv to a team of nearly 70 employees, and how she has crafted the brand’s creative direction to align with their community’s wants, needs and expectations.
SBX: Once you and your brother validated the gap in the market, what was the next step in building O Positiv?
Bitton: We spent two years on research and development, working with nutraceutical scientists and manufacturers across the country. Our first product was FLO, which is our PMS gummy vitamin, and our first supplement. After we released FLO, we had such an incredible response from customers and women that we realized that there were so many other issues that women deal with on a daily basis. We wanted to approach them in the same way, taking a natural, proactive approach, instead of a reactive approach that medications like a Midol or an Advil take.
We went back to the things that I struggle with and the women surrounding us were struggling with, and then took the same [development] approach to urinary tract health, to menopause, to ovarian health. We continued developing products within this niche of women’s health and addressing these taboo topics head-on, to make women feel like they have a support system and there is something that they can do about these issues.
SBX: There’s obviously science behind the products. How do you educate consumers about why and how these products work while also resonating with them on an emotional and personal level?
Bitton: It’s a two-fold approach. Number one is connecting with our customer and making women realize there’s something out there that can help them. We really wanted to promote O Positiv in a way that was kind of whimsical. These are serious topics. These are things that we’ve historically been so hush-hush about, but we wanted to kind of blow up the spot. When we came out five years ago, there was no other option available unless you went to a health food store and bought all of the ingredients individually or took a handful of pills every day. So our priority was to get out there to the masses and make sure that women knew about us and knew that there was something available for them. We wanted to relate to our customer. We also wanted to take on these taboo topics head-on. And third, we wanted to be an authority in the women’s health space, to make our customer feel confident and comfortable that we were providing a product that would help their body.
With those three elements combined, we found our brand voice, which is a health-savvy woman who is advising her friends and family. That’s kind of the vibe we wanted to project; a big sister, a cool aunt or health-conscious friend at brunch who just found out about these amazing products and wanted to share with you. That’s our brand voice, our ethos and our approach.
SBX: Can you share any examples of how whimsy has shown up in your marketing?
Bitton: Our initial ads were [focused on this idea that] PMS effing sucks. And we recently had billboards all over the city, and now we have them in about a dozen cities — billboards that say, ‘Vitamins for Your Vagina.’ We want to remove the embarrassment around saying words like ‘PMS,’ ‘periods’ and ‘vagina.’ We want to call it how it is because it makes women feel a lot more comfortable talking about it. We’re essentially setting the tone by being open about this and we’re giving women a platform to speak about these things.
SBX: What has providing that type of platform inspired in terms of audience engagement?
Bitton: We noticed early on that our outspoken ads, primarily Facebook and Instagram ads, inspired an entire community within the comments section. Women would reply, sharing their experience with our supplements, while others would ask whether our products worked. It became this forum of information and firsthand experiences, from woman to woman. We found that that was so incredibly valuable for us.
Once we get the attention of these women, they then see the studies and actual evidence that the ingredients in our supplements are all natural, they’ve been used for thousands of years and we have clinical studies behind every ingredient. We also have a wonderful medical advisory board that hits home that these products are scientifically proven to make a difference in your life.
SBX: How do you incorporate the insights from your community to develop the brand?
Bitton: We use feedback as data [to determine] how we should continue to advertise to our community. But I think, more than anything, we really love to see how the community has been built within itself, if that makes sense. The comments and discussions within the ads have almost proven to be additional advertising, if you will. The women talking about our products and advocating for our products by sharing what they used, and how many days it took them to see results, has only added to the legitimacy of our products.
These conversations go hand in hand with the ads to solidify and validate our business. But I do think that there are a lot of comments that help us indicate where to go next. For instance, a lot of comments for our first FLO gummy vitamin asked if there was a sugar-free option because they were either keto or diabetic. So we released a capsule version of all of our products, and now some products, like our probiotics, are just capsules.
SBX: You specifically mentioned Facebook and Instagram ads as big drivers for these community conversations. Is Meta your biggest channel investment?
Bitton: Meta is definitely our largest channel. Their Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns (ASC) technology has been absolutely instrumental. At first, we were so used to creating the exact parameters of who we wanted to advertise to, and then when Meta came up with this technology to do the broad targeting with their AI, it ended up being incredibly accurate and a huge benefit for us.
But we do dabble on other social channels like TikTok, that’s been really nice for us [as has] Amazon. And then we’ve been really seeing a great response in retail. We launched in Target in December of 2023, and seeing our product lines there has been incredible, but even that goes back to Meta and our digital ads, because I think so many people, especially for our menopause line, have seen our ads on their Instagram or Facebook feeds. It just takes a bit more time for them than to simply click an Instagram ad, [but] when they see us [in stores] at the end cap, they get that brand awareness like, ‘Oh, I’ve seen this on my Instagram.’
SBX: Are there bigger ambitions to expand into more retail stores?
Bitton: We’re really excited about what Target’s been able to provide for us and we want to stay committed to the retailer and explore that relationship. But ultimately, we want to continue to create new products within this niche we have, which is women’s health, the endocrine system, and we’ve realized that this is something that has resonated with women. I personally have ovarian health issues. I’ve had PMS and hormone issues. I have a thyroid condition. Just me alone having all these issues and no resources until now shows how much [our products are] needed. That’s where we want to keep expanding.
SBX: You have been on quite an adventure starting and building the O Positiv brand. What lessons would you share with your fellow small business founders and entrepreneurs?
Bitton: It was such a process building this business that I think one of the learnings is the commitment it takes. So many people have brilliant ideas every single day, but I think the difference between making them happen and not is commitment. It takes a lot of work and a lot of faith to make these things happen. You’ve just got to buckle in. We thought [creating FLO] was going to be so much easier than it was. And most times, getting off the ground is a lot more difficult than you think. But then you come out on the other side and realize it would have been so easy to give up.
I also think bringing people on that know more than you do is instrumental. We would be absolutely nothing without our team. Every time we’ve been able to make that extra little hump of growth, it’s because we have a team of people that are equipped to help us do that. My brother also was really the one that reaffirmed we had something and that we were going to do this. He made the [investor] deck, and kept making the decks, and was on the phone with the manufacturers, and he’s the one that followed through and made it happen. I’m so grateful for him keeping us accountable.