Amongst an aging population, urinary incontinence can be a common and, sadly, often embarrassing problem. And while adult diapers serve as a quick solution, they can carry an unfortunate stigma that makes in-store purchases or even boxed deliveries uncomfortable.
Norton Hurley, new subscription service that discreetly delivers "adult absorbent underwear," is aiming to solve this problem.
“It’s an embarrassing issue for most people, so our goal is to provide a little more dignity for people dealing with this,” said Rev7 CEO David Woodbury, who is overseeing the operation of the Norton Hurley brand and product. Rev7 is an innovation and growth agency with headquarters in Spearfish, South Dakota.
“We felt a real potential opportunity to win the digital, or e-commerce, side of the market."
The idea for Norton Hurley started via a LinkedIn post from gener8tor co-founder Troy Vosseller. The Milwaukee-based chain of concierge accelerators (which recently teamed up with the Brandery to help power the latter's operation) was looking to enter this intriguing marketplace with an investment, and wanted a partner to run the company. Enter Woodbury, who saw the post and sent Vosseller a message on Dec. 2.
Woodbury then came to Cincinnati on Dec. 5 to join The Brandery’s Batch 9. Within three weeks, they built a functional website and, by the first week of January, had a positive cash flow.
“We are the operation team that’s bringing this to market,” Woodbury said, of himself and Rev7, who also operate a couple of other in-house startups.
The first thing it took to launch Norton Hurley was a lot of research — on competitors, products, supply chains and manufacturers. They noticed there are two segments to the marketplace. One is institutional, such as nursing homes. The other is retail, such as Walmart and Amazon.
“We felt a real potential opportunity to win the digital, or e-commerce, side of the market,” Woodbury said.
After getting up and running quickly, the company is looking to expand and innovate in this e-commerce space. Norton Hurley is developing a newer, thinner diaper that will not be as noticeable, but will still be able to absorb.
“It is going to have multiple levels of incontinence support,” Woodbury said. There will be light, medium and heavy users. Most companies use a “double-core,” but their new product will have a “single-core technology,” which is a new technology to reduce the profile. There will be different colors, so they look more like underwear.
With over 300 subscribers and positive cash flow within a month, there wasn’t necessarily a need for any investments. They decided to open a seed round, which is currently about 90 percent closed, and they are also seeking vertical integration with one of their manufacturers.
