The fact of that matter is that the healthcare system was not built with the consumer in mind. That is, until hims & hers came along. 

This three-year-old company has been making waves in the industry, and for good reason. Its platform has facilitated more than two million medical visits and is valued at more than $1.6 billion. And all of this in an industry that has been immune to disruption for decades. 

hims & hers is the first true consumer healthcare brand that, through its platform, creates an easy, transparent, and high-quality experience for all those frustrated with their current healthcare option. Its mission is to help people finally feel empowered to talk about and get treated for certain conditions, and Hilary Coles, the co-founder and VP of Merchandising for the company, is responsible for making that happen.

On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Hilary explains why humor really is the best medicine when it comes to marketing, and she talks about how brands should approach experimentation. Plus, she provides tips to anyone who is thinking about trying to disrupt a big industry, and why she thinks it’s a risk worth taking.

Main Takeaways:

• Everything the Light Touches: Talking about certain things is uncomfortable — especially when it comes to your healthcare. But for a brand to make an impact, it has to have a message, reach into those uncomfortable places, and make it okay for those you’re trying to reach to talk about them too. By embracing humor and truth in marketing, you create an authenticity that is often missing and you open the door for your target consumers to feel empowered to take action.
• Social Experiments: Making experimentation and ideation a social process is one of the best ways to bring the most creative ideas to the table. When you invite everyone to contribute, and when you are honest with everyone about what ideas worked and which failed, you create an atmosphere that encourages risk-taking and you are more likely to experiment in channels or with opportunities your competitors are overlooking.
• But Why?: Having an endless curiosity and need to ask “why” is the best way to disrupt an industry, and also to keep improving your processes. Too often companies or entire industries fall back on doing things the way they have always been done. The company that comes in and consistently questions how and why things are done a certain way and then changes them is the one that consumers will begin to take notice of.

For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.

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Transcript:

Stephanie:

Welcome back to Up Next In Commerce. This is Stephanie Postles, co-founder of mission.org. Today, I'm really excited to be chatting Hilary Coles, the co-founder at hims and hers. Hilary, welcome.

Hilary:

Thank you so much for having me.

Stephanie:

Yeah, I'm really excited. I think we're going to have such a good conversation and there's so many areas where we can take it. I was doing a bit of research, and there are so many case studies built around you guys. Did you know that?

Hilary:

I didn't actually know that. Is that true?

Stephanie:

Yeah, I found at least three and so many articles diving into your business model. So, there's a lot of content I want to cover, and maybe first we need to start with what is hims and hers?

Hilary:

hims and hers is really the first consumer health care brand, and what that means is that we prioritize the consumer and really thought through every aspect of the business in order to suit the consumer, in order to give them choice, in order to give them control, in order to give them transparency into how they take care of themselves because we thought it was way too hard to take care of yourself today and navigating the health care system is incredibly difficult. And that's really because it's never been built with the consumer in mind, and so everything we've done from the beginning has been really just to champion the consumer. And so, today hims and hers is a platform that allows you to treat everything from dermatological conditions like acne to sexual health and wellness, to metal health, to hair care, all conveniently from home, which after this year has never been more important.

Stephanie:

So, as a new customer, I can essentially get on there, have a virtual doctor's visit, maybe even get a prescription for something I need, and then even order it on your platform, like it's everything from start to finish? Am I thinking about that correctly?

Hilary:

Exactly. Everything happens on our platform, and the reason why we did that is so that we could ensure that from start to finish we were in control of the level of quality that you would experience as a consumer. So, from the moment you come on to our platform, you select what you're interested in, what your health care goals are, you are given education, you are given a direct relationship with a provider, you are given product options, and you are able to make that decision that's right for you. And then, you're able to skip going to the pharmacy, skip taking off work, finding child care, taking off time in your day to go see a doctor, and able to talk to a doctor from wherever you feel comfortable. And then, having that product shipped directly to you and managed by you, which is again, just totally revolutionary from the way we've thought about health care to date, which has never prioritized the customer's needs but has focused really on everyone else in the healthcare industry except for the patient.

Stephanie:

Yeah. When I was looking through it I'm like, "Oh my gosh, this is what I've needed all my life." I've always thought everything with health care feels backwards and old school, and I'm like, "How have I not heard of this?" I mean, I'd heard of you guys before but I didn't know it was also for women.

Hilary:

Yeah, it's such a good point, and the reason why we developed hims and hers is because when we looked at our lives and the level of control and choice we have with with, you can choose a hundred different things to be delivered to your house in the next 20 minutes for lunch. You can choose your mode of transportation, you can choose what kind of couch to get delivered to your house. You can choose what kind of workout you're going to do today at whatever price you want, but when it came to your health care it was like this weird thing that you put off doing because it was so inconvenient. You never knew what it was going to cost. You were made to kind of go on a maze to figure out who's the right provider, are they covered by your insurance, how do you pick an insurance plan? And it's so unlike the rest of our world works today, and I think consumers are too smart for that and they expect better. And so, we really just developed something that fit into the rest of our lives.

Stephanie:

I love that. So, just so everyone knows the scale of where you guys are at, because I saw a lot of numbers from all my research, everything from evaluations, your revenue numbers, but I'd rather hear it from you and know it's accurate. Where are you guys today? What's your evaluation or what revenue numbers can you share just so everyone knows how big you are? Like, you're legit.

Hilary:

We're legit. So, in the past three years we've done well over two million medical visits, and when you think of a big company like Teladoc in this space, it took them 13 years to get to one million visits, so we've accomplished double that in three years. We are valued at 1.6 billion dollars.

Stephanie:

Billion, everyone.

Hilary:

Which we think there's so much more to do, because if you think about it, the health care industry is really the last trillion dollar industry that hasn't been disrupted. So, we really think this is just... It sounds like a big number, but it's just the really top top tip of the iceberg. The majority of our business is subscriptions, ongoing reoccurring revenue, and yeah. There's lots of excitement coming. We have more than a dozen conditions that we treat with almost 100 skus, so we've really... I think that's been a key differentiator for us in this industry as more and more people enter the D to C healthcare industry. When you look around at the landscape, so much of it is pretty niche and one condition focused, and what we've strived to do from our early days is be this umbrella company where you really can treat multiple conditions, you really can take care of yourself very practically on one simple to use platform. We're not expecting you to jump around.

Stephanie:

And that's great, it really is. It's like the future, it's what I'