Startup Story
Tania Morgan is the founder of MiQuann! a South African feminine wellness business focused on female self-care, hormonal health and ageless lifelong sensuality. Together with co-founder Britt Marki, this dynamic team are developing a community platform to empower women to make lifestyle and self-care choices to optimise their hormonal health enabling a better quality of life and lifelong sensuality.
LoA chatted to founder Tania Morgan to find out more about her vision for this pioneering self-care focused feminine wellness business.
“We are a feminine wellness business focused on female self-care, hormonal health and ageless lifelong sensuality.”
What does your company do?
We are a feminine wellness business focused on female self-care, hormonal health and ageless lifelong sensuality.
We are developing a community platform to empower women to make lifestyle and self-care choices to optimise their hormonal health enabling a better quality of life and lifelong sensuality. We feature curated clean product collections, intimate devices and will add supplements in due course too. There is trusted and vetted content and we invite open reviews and debate and a safe place for women to share their stories. We also believe women should always be VISIBLE. Many women experience feeling invisible after 50 or as they enter their mid-forties.
Our USP is Forever Juicy. Forever Living.
We have launched the first-of-its-kind intimate collection that keeps one’s delicate intimate lady bits (our vaginas) rejuvenated. Our formulation is unique with a combination of 5 natural ingredients that support the biome and also protect, hydrate and moisturize our intimate delicate parts (vagina).
What inspired you to start your company?
My personal journey and misdiagnosis and my lack of knowledge to be able to challenge the options I had to freeze my eggs. Also many other hormonal decisions that I feel the medical fraternity deals with en-masse and without the correct knowledge and wisdom. My partner has a similar story linked to PCOS, her skin and her pregnancies. We are both passionate about feminine wellness and empowering women to make lifestyle choices democratising access to information, products, services and a safe space and community.
“We are developing a community platform to empower women to make lifestyle and self-care choices to optimise their hormonal health enabling a better quality of life and lifelong sensuality.”
Why should anyone use your service or product?
We target women 35+ and we empower them to make informed choices about their wellness, hormonal impact on their wellness and their lifestyle choices. We have an Advisory Panel and a partnership with an integrative functional and medical practitioner. We are also working with Stellenbosch Medical School’s Research Department. We are in the process of developing our other partnerships.
This is a new frontier and one that business are only now starting to consider. We are ahead of the curve in SA and Africa as well as globally. We believe that this starts with self-care and education on hormonal well-being. Our first collection which is a range of clean intimate products for the vagina, keeps our delicate intimate parts hydrated, rejuvenated and protected. We also offer devices for pelvic health and we are developing others including technology that will enable personalisation at scale.
Where intimacy meets natural wellness and science meets pleasure. Because we don’t understand how we can look after our facial skin and our body but not pay much attention to our vagina unless we are going to the gynae or getting ready for a date.
Tell us a little about your team
Tania Morgan is Founder and CEO of MiQuann! She is a seasoned C-Suite transformational leader with a 25 year + demonstrable track record as a change agent and unconventional thinker. She is passionate about making a difference one insight and one person at a time. She has worked with numerous blue-chip multinational companies across EMEA in CPG, Luxury Brands, Fashion, Education, Communication Agencies, Fintech to name a few. She recently led a Pet Food business from crisis to turnaround to sale in 3 years. Recently a Cum Laude Global Digital MBA grad. She also runs a global consultancy under Tania Morgan & Co Pty Ltd focused on Growth That Matters (triple bottom line).
Britt Marki is Co-Founder of MiQuann!. She completed an Honours degree in Brand Communication and started working in the Agency world for leading global agencies.
She is passionate about execution and a testament of this is the Grand Prix Design Indaba Award (2007) given to the Agency team she was part of. She has numerous blue-chip clients under her belt including GX & Co owned by AVI. She is an experienced marketer with over 15 years of experience and demonstrable track record in retail and fashion. She is family orientated and married with 2 gorgeous kids. She loves to teach them and expose them to the wonders of the world and life.
Share a little about your entrepreneurial journey. And do you come from an entrepreneurial background?
My mom was a teacher but entrepreneurial and set up hospitality businesses in the Eastern Cape and a property business albeit on a small scale. My Co-Founder, Britt, has a dad who started a significant research and biotech business. Her mom started a wedding venue and rose farm. So we both come from entrepreneurial families.
What are your future plans and aspirations for your company?
In South Africa, we would like to impact feminine wellness at grass roots level and drive awareness for this. We believe access to feminine wellness should be democratised and there should be diversity in feminine wellness. We also believe there should be more research and funding for women of all races to understand more holistically what issues exist. As an example we know that mixed race women suffer from hormone-induced hypertension (one of the most affected communities in the world). We would like to gain traction with awareness for intimate health and hormonal health and become well-known in South Africa. We would like to launch our platform and collection into global markets – selected European markets and selected areas in North America. Most importantly we are focused on funding our phase 2 – developing our community and platform and extending availability of our first collection.
“In South Africa, we would like to impact feminine wellness at grass roots level and drive awareness for this. We believe access to feminine wellness should be democratized and there should be diversity in feminine wellness.”
What gives you the most satisfaction being an entrepreneur?
Being able to make a difference and to stay the course with one’s purpose and vision. The ability to nurture talent and enable people’s dreams to come true. Being able to impact women in positive ways that are meaningful and real. Also, the ability to apply creativity. With regard to MiQuann!, we would like to positively impact feminine wellness and the industry at a grassroots level – for example – women should be supported by Medical Aids with menopause and other relevant life stage conditions. We would also like to see facilitation of democratization of feminine wellness to ALL women – access to information (research diversity) and facilities and support (check-ups; pads etc) and all done within SDG goals being kind to the planet too.
What's the biggest piece of advice you can give to other women looking to start-up?
Make provision for delays! Make sure you surround yourself with really good people – people who are great at what they do and will go the extra mile, people with integrity and people who are not scared to work super smart and put in the elbow grease to get and keep things going. Manage your cashflow and make provision for access to funds upfront. Get comfortable with imperfection and focus on getting out the starting blocks and continuous improvement. Learn to be detached and make sure you operate without an ego!
Contact or follow MiQuann
Why LoA loves it…
At Lionesses of Africa, we are passionate about encouraging women entrepreneurs to take care of their health and wellbeing, and self-care has never been more important or needed than now. So we love seeing entrepreneurs like Tania Morgan and Britt Marki taking a fresh, proudly African brand-building approach to feminine wellness with their great new business focused on female self-care, hormonal health and ageless lifelong sensuality. We can’t wait to see this brand grow and empower women in their self-care space over the coming months and years. — Melanie Hawken, founder & ceo, Lionesses of Africa