Key Takeaways:
Women’s health has lived in the margins of medicine and consumer wellness for too long. Often underfunded, oversimplified, and quietly dismissed as a niche not worth research priority, the category is constantly called out for change.
Hannah Samano set out to lead that change when she founded research-backed Unfabled in 2021, a sustainable brand spanning menstrual care, supplements, and sexual wellness. Five years later, the brand has become a rapidly scaling wellness business based in the UK. In October of last year, Unfabled received a $1.7 million funding top-up, bringing its total seed capital to $3.9 million, prompting a nationwide rollout into 737 Boots stores—an expansion of more than 1,000%.
Unfabled’s rise is more than an impressive founder story; it's a case study in what happens when a woman’s lived experience is treated not as an anecdote but as infrastructure.
Building the Structural Opposite
Although women make up half of the global population, only 5% of health research focuses on women's health, and just 1% on non-cancer-related conditions. Samano is blunt about why this gap has endured.
The founder believes that women's health research has been “shaped by stigma, silence, and the assumption that men’s bodies were the default.” Which has led to anything uniquely affecting women—from periods to hormones and chronic pain—to be "minimized as ‘normal’ or ‘too emotional’ to warrant serious investment.”
Unfabled was designed as a brand that centers women’s experiences, structurally opposite to how the wellness industry has historically dealt with women's health. Instead of relying on traditional, pharma-first R&D timelines, the brand focuses on women’s lived experiences at scale. Its community of women shares continuous insights into symptoms, frustrations, and what actually works. These insights translate directly into product development, education strategy, and retail execution.
“We treat women’s voices as the most powerful dataset in health,” Samano said. “That changes everything.”
Distrust in the Wellness Aisle
One of Unfabled’s earliest and most surprising discoveries was not a lack of interest in supplements, but a deep distrust in the wellness aisle itself. Early research found that 80% of women wanted to shop for supplements, but they didn’t know where to start. The most common pain points were confusing claims, branding that was too hyper-clinical, and a lack of empathy in or translation of technical language.
Instead of adding another voice to the noise, Unfabled positioned itself as a human, culturally fluent, and transparent interpreter in the woman’s wellness industry. The outcome was a brand that felt less like a supplement company and more like a trustworthy friend who understands hormonal cycles, fatigue, cramps, and sleep disruption.
This “trusted friend” branding became the foundation of Unfabled’s commercial engine. As a result, women didn’t just buy once; they returned, advocated, and brought others along with them.
TikTok to Till
As many wellness brands have done, Unfabled built its early momentum on TikTok. But unlike most other wellness brands, its vitality converted into brick-and-mortar success, something that rarely happens at legacy retailers.
When Boots first introduced six Unfabled Essentials supplements into 50 stores in December 2024, the results were almost immediate. Educational point-of-sale materials paired with community-validated formulations drove more than a 3x uplift, while repeat purchase rates ran four times higher than category norms.
“Virality is easy, but trust is hard,” said Samano. “We don’t go viral because we're entertaining—we go viral because women feel understood."
This emotional resonance meant that customers were already educated and confident by the time they encountered Unfabled on the shelf. The products weren’t impulse buys; they were pre-sought solutions.
Boots took notice. Less than a year later, the retailer expanded Unfabled’s footprint to 737 stores nationwide. The brand is now one of the first wellness companies from the inaugural Boots Ignite cohort to scale at this level.
Mission-Based Funding
Unfabled’slatest funding round was led by Arāya Ventures, founded by Managing Partner Rupa Popat and backed by British Business Investments (BBI), marking BBI’s first-ever commitment to a solo general partner. Notably, 67% of Unfabled’s investors are women, compared to an industry average where just 14% of angel investors and 15% of senior VC leaders are female.
Samano said that the investment “changed everything” for the brand. “We’re no longer justifying why women’s health matters, we’re discussing how big it can become.”
Popat sees Unfabled as a blueprint for the future of the category. “It’s community-driven, culturally relevant, and commercially explosive,” she said in a press release. “Hannah has built momentum that translates directly from DTC into retail success."
The alignment between Unfabled’s community-powered model and Arāya’s Super Angel Fund—designed around women supporting women—feels deliberate rather than symbolic.
R&D Meets the Pace of Culture
Unfabled Labs, the brand’s product engine, operates on a different timeline than traditional wellness companies. Instead of multiyear cycles, it relies on continuous dialogue with its audience.
A standout example of a successful product is the Magnesium Superblend, now one of the brand’s bestsellers. While magnesium supplements crowd the market, Unfabled’s community revealed why so many women were still struggling: mainstream formulations relied on forms like magnesium oxide or citrate, often poorly tolerated by women and dosed for male bodies.
“Women told us these products ‘tore their stomachs apart,’” Samano recalled. By reformulating around gentler forms and female-specific dosing, Unfabled didn’t invent a new ingredient; it fixed a formulation that hadn’t been created for women in the first place.
Designing a Movement
Unfabled doesn’t stand as a brand alone, but as a “movement powered by lived experience.” That momentum, Samano insists, is intentional.
The brand’s architecture rests on three pillars: radical listening at scale, culturally fluent storytelling, and products that solve real problems. When those elements align, community becomes a growth engine rather than a marketing tactic.
This approach has resonated particularly strongly with Gen Z and Millennials, demographics long courted but rarely retained by the wellness category. Contrary to industry assumptions, when it comes to wellness, these consumers aren’t chasing trends; they’re interrogating claims, demanding transparency, and rewarding reliability.
Before launching any product, Samano asks herself and the team, “If TikTok didn’t exist, would women still buy this?” If the answer is no, the product won’t be pushed out.
The Category's Coming of Age
Samano sees women’s health today where beauty was 15 years ago—on the brink of a shift from functional and clinical to cultural and aspirational. In the next five years, she predicts a split between everyday wellness products that feel as mainstream as skincare and a new layer of personalized, data-driven solutions built on real-world female insight.
Unfabled, Samano believes, will sit at the center of both. “The legacy I want to leave is a world where women’s health is treated with the scale, ambition, and investment it has always deserved.”
With capital in place, national retail distribution secured, and a community-led model proving both culturally and commercially potent, Unfabled isn’t just scaling—it’s redefining what success in women’s health can look like on the high street and beyond.