Good morning, Broadsheet readers! CVS and Walgreens will offer the mifepristone abortion pill in states where abortion is legal, Nikki Haley gets two GOP endorsements, and a personal care brand tackles taboos. Have a productive Monday.
– Mega launch. Katie Sturino launched the brand Megababe almost seven years ago with an unusual product for an influencer-backed beauty or personal care brand: a “thigh rescue” stick that prevents chafing caused when thighs rub together. Chafing prevention products were on the market, but mostly for cyclists and not aimed at women.
Sturino, who has 800,000 followers on Instagram, is known for her content about plus-size fashion, from tracking whether brands carry her size in store to styling celebrity outfits on a plus-size body. When she had the idea to start a brand that sold an anti-chafing product, she heard mixed reactions. “A lot of [investors] were very dismissive and said it was too niche a product,” she remembers. “I even had someone tell me we would need to put an anti-cellulite property in it if women were going to buy it.”
She and her sister, who runs the business side, ended up self-funding Megababe and focusing on profitability; it’s grown at least 33% a year—40% in 2023—with minimal marketing and been profitable since shortly after its launch.
Now the brand is preparing to reach a wider audience with a launch in Walmart, Fortune is the first to report. The launch now underway in 4,000 stores will double Megababe’s retail footprint; its products are already sold in Ulta Beauty and Target. “I always wanted us to be in stores that allowed us to be within five or 10 minutes of [every home in America],” Sturino says. “And that’s what Walmart does. Ulta and Target, they’re in a lot of the country—but Walmart is everywhere.”
Megababe founder Katie Sturino tackles taboo problems in personal care. Courtesy of Megababe To get ready to meet Walmart-level demand, Megababe expanded its team (though it is still small, with only nine members), and changed a supplier. The brand is also preparing for a launch at Boots in the U.K.
In addition to its chafe stick, Megababe sells other products that tackle seemingly “taboo” problems from sweat to butt acne. The brand launched a men’s line called Megaman that sells some of the same products rebranded for men (“We heard from too many customers that their husband didn’t want to bring their chafe stick to work,” Sturino says), plus additional products designed for men like a “ball-tastic” deodorant. In Target, the brand has been available in the deodorant aisle; in Walmart, it’ll be in the natural aisle.
In the Ozempic era, with body positivity seeming to backslide amid a renewed cultural obsession with thinness, Sturino believes in her brand’s mission more than ever. “We really are not afraid to go anywhere,” she says.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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- On the shelf. CVS and Walgreens announced on Friday that they will start selling the abortion pill mifepristone in the U.S. this month after receiving FDA certification to do so. The pharmacy chains will start offering the pill in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, California, and Illinois, but plan on expanding access to all other states where abortion is legal. Neither CVS or Walgreens will distribute the pill by mail. CNN
- Back to back. Days before Super Tuesday, Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R–Alaska) and Susan Collins (R–Maine) endorsed Nikki Haley for the Republican nomination, the first two GOP senators to back the former UN ambassador. (They were also among the seven Republican senators to vote to convict President Donald Trump of impeachment.) The Hill
- Protégée-turned-president? Physicist and former mayor of Mexico City Claudia Scheinbaum is dominating the race to be Mexico’s next president with a 32-point lead over conservative Xóchitl Gálvez. With election day three months away, Scheinbaum is now tasked with stepping out of the shadow of the current president, one of her closest allies, and defining her own profile. New York Times
- Statue plan erodes. Members of the Arizona State House of Representatives blocked a federal plan to erect a statue of Sandra Day O'Connor, the first female Supreme Court Justice, in the U.S. Capitol. Republican representatives critical of O'Connor's moderate conservatism described her as "undistinguished" and "the worst thing that happened to the federal bench," while some Democrats voted against the plan due to her family's wishes. The 19th
- Getting on board. Institutional investors are pressuring Japanese companies to add more women to their boards. ISS only endorsed Canon CEO Fujio Mitarai’s reappointment after the camera maker nominated Akiko Ito, former commissioner of Japan’s Consumer Affairs Agency, as an outside director. If approved, she’ll be the first woman on Canon’s board in its 87-year history. Bloomberg
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"When you don’t dress like everybody else, you don’t have to think like everybody else."
–Fashion icon Iris Apfel, who died at 102 on Friday
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