Can the bedside urinal get an aesthetic overhaul? New home medical supply player Boom Home Medical believes it can.
With 75 million Americans reaching the age of 65 by 2025, founders Valerie Ulene and Byrdie Lifson Pompan are convinced the time is now for the staid home medical goods industry, which encompasses everything from walkers to bath chairs to incontinence supplies, to get a much-needed refresh.
Boom’s inaugural product is the handheld urinal Loona. Constructed out of soft silicone, it was formed by the award-winning industrial designers at Herbst Produkt, the group behind household goods like Brita water filtration systems and Molekule HEPA filters. Loona’s sculptural silhouette features an integrated handle and resembles a stylish vase rather than a bedpan. Priced at $39.95, it’s available in blue, coral and gray on Amazon and at Boom Home Medical’s website.
While it may be staid, the medical goods industry is expanding. According to Grand View Research, durable medical goods racked up $59.7 billion in 2022 revenues in the United States and will advance at a compound annual growth rate of 5.7% for the next seven years to hit $92.9 billion in 2030.
Most durable medical goods are purchased at medical supply stores or on medical supply websites. Like the rest of the home medical industry, medical supply stores are squarely no frills and would benefit from updating. Boom Home Medical plans to infiltrate that channel, but also hopes to spread Loona and future launches at pharmacies, Target and even lifestyle retailers such as Goop.
“Part of making these beautiful is to bring dignity to this whole category, destigmatize it and allow people to talk about it the way people are talking about vibrators and sexual health,” says Lifson Pompan. “Now, if you go to CVS, they have a corner with durable home medical goods, tucked in the way back out of sight, and you’ve got to ask where to find that stuff. At the end of the day, we want to be front and center at all of these retailers.”
Loona is intended for people with vaginas and anyone struggling with frequent urination, a medical condition called nocturia that affects approximately 50 million Americans. Getting out of bed at night to go to the bathroom negatively impacts sleep quality. “Sleep is really important and waking up repeatedly during the night to urinate is super disruptive to your night’s sleep and consequently to your overall health,” says Ulene, a doctor specializing in preventive medicine and public health.
Lifson Pompan, who, like Ulene is in her 50s, puts a finer point on it. “When you go through menopause, you have to wake multiple times during the night to go to the bathroom. You get back into bed, and you start thinking of all the things you didn’t accomplish that day, and it’s hard to fall back asleep,” she says. Worse than a racing mind, venturing to the bathroom in the middle of the night can be a potential hazard, especially for elderly people walking around half asleep in the dark.
Per Boom Home Medical, nearly 2 million people annually in the U.S. will enter perimenopause by 2025. Although Boom Home Medical envisions its core consumers as people in menopause—more specifically, those 65 years old and over—Loona isn’t age exclusive. It can be relied upon by younger consumers recovering from surgeries or injuries, during pregnancy and for traveling or camping. Bladder infections are common among pregnant women because the inability to urinate and urine leakage during and post-pregnancy is common, occurring in 54.3% of pregnant women.
Loona’s shape acts as a natural spillway to quietly capture and channel urine into its reservoir without disturbing a bedmate. Ulene and Lifson Pompan believe they bought every single bedside urinal on the market to study Loona’s competitors. When Ulene used a competitor’s product, the sound woke up her husband. Adamant that usage of Loona wouldn’t lead to a similar problem, Ulene and Lifson Pompan spent a year perfecting the bedside urinal to ensure it’s quiet. Loona holds about 30 ounces of liquid.
Prior to starting Boom Home Medical, Ulene and Lifson Pompan founded consumer healthcare consulting practice Clear Health Advisors in 2013. The co-founders declined to share how much they spent to bring Boom Home Medical to market or a sales projection for Loona. The company was bootstrapped from the conception of the bedside urinal to its manufacturing. Following the manufacturing, Boom Home Medical raised a friends and family round and tapped one strategic investor to support Loona’s launch.
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