Victoria Thain Gioia launched Perelel five years ago as a supplement business selling vitamins tailored to each stage of the fertility cycle, from trying to conceive, to specific trimesters, to postpartum. Since then, the startup has expanded to other categories of the women’s wellness craze, from greens powders to protein.
To enter its next phase of growth, Fortune is the first to report, Perelel just raised $27 million from Prelude Growth Partners. Thain Gioia, the brand’s CEO, and her cofounders Alex Taylor and Dr. Banafsheh Bayati weren’t out looking for capital, but were approached by Prelude—and took the opportunity to bring on a strategic partner and deliver a return to early angel investors. While Perelel declined to confirm exactly who got bought out, early angel investors in the brand included the fashion influencer Aimee Song, former The Hills star Whitney Port, and former execs from Revolve and Glossier. The company declined to share revenue and has 35 employees.
Prelude was founded by Neda Daneshzadeh and Alicia Sontag, who came from the consumer world via L Catterton and Johnson & Johnson Beauty. Their portfolio includes several buzzy beauty brands, like Summer Fridays, Tower 28, and Westman Atelier.
Beauty retailers like Sephora have started carrying more wellness products outside what is strictly considered “beauty.” Thain Gioia sees the two categories as connected. The beauty industry likes to talk about “beauty from within,” and “supplements are kind of that bridge,” she says. Both products are part of someone’s daily routine. “It’s the same consumer,” she says, someone seeking efficacy and quality. “How you speak to her, a very similar business model, and how you build brand awareness.”
The supplement space is a crowded one, with competitive brands like Ritual, traditional multivitamins, and the powders and greens Perelel is now getting into.
With this new capital, Perelel aims to increase its brand awareness and reach more customers. Thain Gioia hopes to hold onto what has made the brand catch on with its consumer so far—including an individualized approach to very personal moments, like pregnancy loss. The brand sends a candle and handwritten note to women it sees cancel subscriptions to prenatal vitamins.
“How do we continue to have these moments where we deeply understand where this woman is, and we want to support her in different ways?” Thain Gioia reflects. “We can build new products and new categories and continue to support this woman.”
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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