Solving menopause merchandising for Issviva

Despite the scale of the menopause market and its prominence in cultural conversation, retailers had yet to agree on how to serve it well. Product range, merchandising and messaging varied widely from store to store, leaving women without a consistent or welcoming place to shop. Issviva wanted to change that and needed evidence robust enough to bring major UK retailers on board.

Digital ethnography let us observe women's real experiences of managing symptoms and shopping for solutions, from the products they already trusted to the gaps they kept running into. Online focus groups then brought a smaller group of these women together to react to the findings and co-create shelf solutions, testing signage, categorisation and messaging directly with the people it needed to work for.

Clear patterns emerged in how women wanted to find, understand and choose menopause products, spanning wayfinding, categorisation, tone of voice and the balance between trusted and new brands. Some of what surfaced confirmed what retailers might expect. Other findings challenged assumptions about how the category should be organised and communicated. Together they gave Issviva a detailed picture of the emotional and practical needs sitting behind every shopping trip, and a strong sense of where the biggest opportunities lay.

The research became an evidence based blueprint covering fixture design, category structure and in-store messaging, positioning Issviva as the authority on menopause retail. It equipped Issviva to open conversations with major UK retailers about transforming how women discover and shop for menopause solutions.