In this episode of Add To Cart, we are joined by Ashley Hangar, the Founder of Stripped Supply, Australia’s first diabetes subscription box service. Around 1.8 million Australians live with diabetes and 280 people develop the condition each day. Living with this chronic illness can be a challenge as it impacts pretty much every aspect of life. After getting together with her partner, a type 1 diabetic, Ashley realised this was a prime area for subscription and couldn’t believe no-one else was doing it. In this chat we talk about Stripped Supply’s focus on community, particularly her Gen Z customers, the super supportive pharmacist who’s been behind the business from the start and how Ashley manages the complexity in a diabetic’s medical supply kit.
“I think that this wave of digital health is coming whether you like it or not“
Ashley Hanger
Invisible illness
“I think we all have in our head, whether we know it or not, this stigma around diabetes and what it is and how someone gets diabetes. And I think the biggest takeaway I would want people to have about diabetes is just to know that no matter what kind of diabetes you have, you haven’t asked for it. And particularly people living with type one diabetes, you’ve done nothing wrong. You don’t get diabetes by eating too much sugar. Particularly type one diabetes is just luck of the draw. It’s just bad luck.
And something that I see in Tristan and out of so many people in the diabetes community is it is such a weight on their shoulders to live with because it’s an invisible illness. We can’t tell from the outside that someone’s living with diabetes.”
Challenges
“…everyone might use similar products, but they all use them differently. So while I’ve tried to create a subscription where products are delivered on a similar delivery schedule for everybody, that’s not working for everybody. So one of the biggest challenges I’ve found is how can I give customers as much control as possible to decide what goes in those boxes and how often those boxes come.
And then even further than that, trying to work within order restrictions for medical products. After COVID, people weren’t just stockpiling on toilet paper, they were stockpiling on medical supplies, which caused some pretty annoying and frustrating restrictions on how many products one customer could order at a time. So there’s lots of different nets and webs that I’m operating in trying to make sure that at the end of the day, the customer is receiving the best support that they can receive from us.”
Diabetes sucks
“We’re Australia’s largest community of Gen Z people living with diabetes. And the reaction was pretty overwhelming. I like to think I’m a meme connoisseur. I really love to make a good meme. And our diabetes memes are second to none. But the community that we’ve created so far has been so inspiring and just building each other up and creating a place in a safe space where you can chat and you can be really honest about the fact that diabetes sucks.
And sometimes there isn’t a silver lining and sometimes there isn’t a positive side. Sometimes it just sucks. And it’s okay if we have those conversations.”
Questions answered in this episode include…
- What are some of the most common daily challenges for diabetics?
- What technologies have you used to manage your subscription offering?
- What are your tips for giving a great pitch?
Links from the episode:
This episode was brought to you by…
