Helping to empower women with Elvie

Elvie is a company with one vision: to empower women through sleek, smart tech.

Founder and president Tania Boler was inspired to create the company’s first product, the Elvie Trainer, during her first pregnancy, when she realised “there are so many things that happen to our bodies that nobody talks about”.

“I was in a Pilates class and my instructor said, ‘the most important thing that you need to do for your body during pregnancy are pelvic floor exercises’.”

Realising there was little information to support pelvic floor health, Tania did her research and found that one in three women suffer from problems.

“I was obsessed with this problem, and I could see clearly what solution we needed. The next big challenge was how to raise money and I think I completely underestimated how difficult this would be.

“By far the biggest obstacle was the fact that we were talking about intimate women's health. We're talking about issues that nobody wanted to talk about, especially investors – and particularly male investors.”

“The most authentic way to do it”

As Elvie took shape as a business, Tania didn’t let the issue of raising money deter her and instead, redirected her energy into making her business a success. “I saw a real neglected issue, and neglect means opportunity,” she said.

“In my space, it's mostly male founders and obviously men can launch great companies for women. But I think, particularly when you're talking about intimate women's health issues, you can't just launch products when people don't even know what pelvic floor health is, when people won't talk about vaginas.

“It needs to be done in the most authentic way possible.”

Understanding users. Breaking breastfeeding taboos

Elvie’s second product, the Elvie Pump, is lauded for its ability to give nursing parents a breather and break taboos around breastfeeding.

Megan White, the company’s commercial brand lead, spoke from experience: “When I had my son, I really struggled with my identity because you spend so long feeding. The Pump enabled me to take a break so I could do everyday things that I took for granted before”.

Elvie's product team member, Sarah Liddel said: "There's a lot of complicated engineering in the Pump as we had to consider a lot of human factors.

“We wanted to make a product that was more accessible to more women. It was about understanding user needs right from the beginning and identifying the problem that isn’t currently being met. Our products have a very distinctive design and we're very proud of that; subtle, elegant and discreet”.

Understanding the needs of users is something that Simon Cross, senior design engineer at Elvie also strives to incorporate in his work. “What drew me to Elvie was getting to work on products that really make a difference to people's lives.”

Finding the right banking partner

When sales of the Elvie Pump rocketed, the business needed a banking partner to provide the right support.

HSBC’s international presence gave Tania and her team confidence that they’d found the right fit: “HSBC really proved to be the partner for us because they were able to help us in the markets where we're launching and understand some of the complexities that we had as a business.”

HSBC’s relationship director James Messer said:

How can HSBC UK’s Growth Lending proposition help Elvie?

Elvie is one of the first beneficiaries of HSBC UK’s new USD316m Growth Lending proposition. It’s designed to support the UK’s most promising high-growth tech companies with funding as well as access to HSBC’s full capabilities. The package is made up of revolving credit facilities, invoice financing and trade loans.

HSBC uses it to support tech companies that are currently loss-making with a clear path to profitability, are high-growth, supported by strong equity backing and have a proven sales track record.

The funding from HSBC complements the equity investments from Elvie’s long-term investors and the company plans to use it to invest in growth both in the UK and internationally to continue the mission of empowering women through innovative products.

The future of our partnership

Elvie’s products are available across Europe, America and Asia and market leading in the UK and the US, though this success is not where the company plans to stop. “We are aiming to launch products in new markets and launch new categories,” said Tania.

James added:

“The past few years have taught us how agile Elvie is. We’re thrilled to be working with Elvie and hugely excited for everything that comes next.”

As Tania says, “Femtech is such an exciting space to be in now, because really any issue from a woman's first period to last period has been completely neglected.

“Our ambition is to become the first ever global tech brand for women”.