By Jacqueline “Jack” Perez, Founder of Kuel Life

Twenty-three years. That’s how long the FDA sat on a black box warning that scared a generation of doctors away from treating us. They finally pulled it in November. Demand surged. By March, pharmacies couldn’t keep estrogen patches on the shelves, and women who’d just gotten permission to treat a medical condition couldn’t fill the prescription.

Everyone called this a supply chain story. It’s not really. Manufacturers weren’t ready, sure, but that’s not bad luck. They didn’t build enough capacity because nobody believed this many of us would show up the second we got permission to ask. This broke because retail and medicine both decided this customer wasn’t worth building for. The shortage didn’t create that problem. It just dragged it onto the shelf where everyone could see it.

The Demand Was Always There. Nobody Built For It.

We control an estimated $15 trillion in purchasing power, and retail still treats us like an afterthought.

Here’s why. A 2023 survey of OB/GYN residency program directors found only 31 percent of programs offer any dedicated menopause training. A separate survey of residents found fewer than 7 percent felt ready to actually treat a patient through it. That gap didn’t stay in the exam room. It walked straight onto the pharmacy shelf the second real demand showed up, because nobody planned for this many of us to need it at once.

Some retailers are catching up. Walmart and Ulta have built out dedicated menopause sections. Credo Beauty added its first menopause assortment last year and called it a gap in their wellness lineup. Fine. Good instinct. Credo got there in 2025. We’ve been standing here since long before that, cash in hand.

The Trust Gap Is the Real Risk to Your Shelf

Here’s where it gets dangerous for anyone moving into this space now. We’ve been burned before, and we notice.

Harvard Health caught two retailers selling the same night cream from the same manufacturer, one labeled “menopause skin care,” priced 25 percent higher, identical formula. We clock that. Every time.

We’ve spent our whole lives being sold to. We know the difference between a brand that did the clinical work and one that just changed the packaging and hoped we wouldn’t ask questions. We’re asking now.

What This Means for Anyone Stocking This Category

If you’re stocking shelves or running marketing for this category, here’s what actually matters.

Stop reacting to the news cycle. The patch shortage was obvious the second that warning came off. The next regulatory shift in this space will move just as fast. Have inventory ready before the headline hits, not three months after.

Charge for what’s actually different. We’ve had decades to learn what’s in a jar. A markup with no formulation change gets caught, and it gets posted about in the group chats and Facebook threads where most of this conversation is actually happening.

And quit treating this like a campaign. Menopause Awareness Month is fine for visibility. It’s not a substitute for a shelf that’s stocked and honest the other eleven months of the year. The category’s sitting near $600 billion now because retailers like Credo finally started treating it like permanent real estate instead of an endcap.

The Bigger Pattern

We’ve spent decades being the demographic that complains the least and walks away the most, from doctors, from brands, from anyone who decided we weren’t worth the trouble. That’s over.

The shortage will resolve. The lesson doesn’t expire. Retailers who treat us like $15 trillion instead of a seasonal trend will be the ones still on the shelf next time.

About author

Jacqueline Perez is the founder and CEO of Kuel Life, a media platform dedicated to normalizing aging for women in midlife and beyond. She writes about all of it—the health crises, the career pivots, the relationships, the reinvention, and the staggering economic power of women the media keeps ignoring.

Sources

1. HHS/FDA, “Fact Sheet: FDA Initiates Removal of ‘Black Box’ Warnings from Menopausal Hormone Replacement Therapy Products,” Nov 10, 2025. https://www.hhs.gov/press-room/fact-sheet-fda-initiates-removal-of-black-box-warnings-from-menopausal-hormone-replacement-therapy-products.html

2. NPR, “Why the ‘mad scramble’ to fill hormone therapy prescriptions for menopause,” March 10, 2026. https://www.npr.org/2026/03/10/nx-s1-5742817/menopause-hormone-therapy-shortages

3. Allen et al., Menopause journal (2023), survey of 145 OB/GYN residency program directors, as reported by Augusta University. https://jagwire.augusta.edu/ob-gyn-residency-programs-should-offer-more-menopause-training/

4. Mayo Clinic Proceedings survey of family medicine, internal medicine, and OB/GYN residents (2019). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30711122/

5. CEOWorld, “The $15T Blind Spot: Women 50+ Are Your Competitive Advantage,” Jan 24, 2026, citing NRC Health nSight Report (June 2025). https://ceoworld.biz/2026/01/24/the-15t-blind-spot-women-50-are-your-competitive-advantage/

6. Harvard Health, “Menopause marketing: Hype vs. truth,” July 1, 2023. https://www.health.harvard.edu/womens-health/menopause-marketing-hype-vs-truth

7. Modern Retail, “As more awareness comes to the menopause care category, brands are evolving their messaging,” Sept 8, 2025. https://www.modernretail.co/marketing/as-more-awareness-comes-to-the-menopause-care-category-brands-are-evolving-their-messaging/