Queen V Relaunches As A Key Piece Of Parent Company Reckitt’s Restructured Intimate Wellness Division

A little over a year after its acquisition by Reckitt, Queen V is relaunching with aspirations of becoming one of the crown jewels in the consumer packaged goods giant’s reimagined intimate wellness division.

Lauren Steinberg, 28, who founded the brand in 2018 after battling recurrent yeast infections, remained on board post-acquisition in the role of global brand marketing director and has overseen the relaunch, which includes an overhaul of Queen V’s website and a rollout of new “microviome-friendly” formulas designed to support the vagina’s unique microbiome.

“PH balance is the standard for vaginal products,” says Steinberg. “When you walk through the aisles, most products say pH balanced, but Queen V is taking this a step further and our products are also ‘microviome’ friendly. We’ve actually trademarked that term. Queen V is all about educating consumers in an easy and fun way. There are tons of different microbiomes. Your skin has a microbiome, your gut has a microbiome, but your vagina also has a microbiome. The future of vaginal health is understanding the microviome and addressing its needs.”

The revamped Queen V’s assortment has seven products across three categories: Maintain Your V, Enjoy Your V and Help Your V. The products range in price from $4.49 for the V Bar cleansing bar to $27.49 for the DD Probiotic supplement. The products are more colorful than ever, an expression of the brand’s ethos that consumers should be loud and proud about using vaginal care products. Steinberg is quick to add that Queen V hasn’t strayed far from the products that previously earned it a devoted following among millennial and gen Z shoppers. Psychographically, Steinberg describes the Queen V consumer as “open and curious.”  

Queen V leveraged Reckitt’s science expertise for its reboot. “There is hard science to the vagina. There’s a reason gynecologists exist, and there’s an entire team of medical professionals within Reckitt that are working on these products,” says Steinberg. “When coming back to the market, we wanted to make sure that these products were best in class and the most effective products that could possibly be on the market.”

The brand is now ready to introduce its improved offerings to the world. When its e-commerce site returned early this month on Shopify, it was in the top 1% of Shopify’s launch days. Retail is next. When Queen V entered Walmart in 2018, it was sold in 4,100 stores. This month, Queen V will reenter Walmart in 4,588 doors and be on Walmart’s site online with its seven products. In April and May, the renovated Queen V selection will also launch in 7,351 Walgreens doors, 248 Urban Outfitters and 255 Meijer stores. On April 2, the brand is due to launch online at Target.

Before the Reckitt acquisition, Steinberg mentions Queen V “dipped its toes” in international expansion and entered Sephora Australia briefly. Under the RB umbrella, the brand will be able to expand abroad through the corporation’s established global channels. “The goal of the company is to provide all people with vaginas with accessible and affordable products, and all people are everywhere,” says Steinberg. “So, eventually the brand will be taken globally, but right now we’re really focused on winning in the U.S.”

Queen V was formerly part of the now-defunct Los Angeles-based CPG incubator Brandable, which was founded by Steinberg’s fiancé Oliver Bogner in 2017 to energize retail shelves with brands crafted for millennial and gen Z consumers. At Reckitt, its position in the intimate wellness division, formerly called the sexual wellbeing division, within the global health unit places it in a portfolio that contains category leaders Durex and K-Y.

Reckitt’s global health unit had a rough start to 2021 before ultimately finishing strong in the fourth quarter with 17.5% revenue growth compared to 3.3% for Reckitt as a whole. Olga Osminkina-Jones, SVP and global growth officer for intimate wellness at Reckitt says the company is prioritizing sexual wellbeing. That prioritization led RB to create the intimate wellness division as a standalone division in its organization.

“Queen V and Lauren’s vision is in alignment with our strategic choices, one of them being expansion into large and fast growing female wellness space,” says Osminkina-Jones. “We are looking at the intimate wellness space with a consumer-first lens, deeply understanding how consumers see it, where they see its boundaries, which are much wider than the act of sex, how we used to look at this category. It’s a new aperture, if you will, that we apply to this category through a very extensive global learning agenda.”