Jones, based in New York, has just raised $ 10 million to extend its Nicotine Lozenge Company on the $ 3 billion Stody market.
HIlary Dubin realized that she was dependent on Juul, the nicotine vape which had become viral and has since been blamed for hanging teenagers across the country, while she was in a California in 2017. She was 22 years old at the time and that Dubin and her boyfriend found a Juul lying on the ground. They picked it up, took a hit and found that it was still working.
“We say to ourselves:” Well, we have not bought it, we have just found it, and now it’s ours “”, explains Dubin, 30 years old. “(Looking back), it’s pretty embarrassing now.”
A few years later, Dubin’s childhood friend Caroline Vasquez Huber realized that she had an addiction to Juul after going home during the pandemic cocovious in 2020. She was widing all day and knew she was to leave.
“In a few days, I was miserable,” said Huber, who is also 30 years old.
Huber’s mother, a doctor, estimated that she was using around 40 nicotine cigarettes per day. They went to the pharmacy and she exchanged her Juul for nicotine mints. But the royal blue bottles of medical appearance of nicotine passages embarrass him.
“You take out a nicorette, and it seems that you have a disease,” says Huber. “I just found the product so shameful.”
Jonesing: Jones, based in New York, offers subscriptions for nicotine pastilles, which can be used jointly with an application, to help people quit smoking and vaping.
With kind permission: Jones
After Huber traveled Dubin through the way of leaving, they had an idea: launching a nicotine replacement company – but the cool meeting. In the summer of 2022, the duo applied to an accelerator program at New York University and received a subsidy of $ 10,000. They won a pitch competition at the end of the course, winning $ 1.1 million in investor pre-series funding, including Good Friends (launched by the founders of Warby Parker, Allbirds and the Harry’s razor company) and began to develop an application that uses cognitive-behavioral therapy and positive encouragement to help people, Cognitivo-behavioral vapes and covers with the conjunction with the barge with the niche pepper. After a year of development, Jones, as their new company was appointed, launched in November 2023 and collected a series of seeds of $ 3.9 million from the founding collective, the following view and others.
This week, Jones announced that he had closed a series of $ 10 million A, who, who, who Forbes estimates that the company varies at around $ 45 million. The company will use capital to develop new nicotine products, hire more employees and market the company. Jones generated $ 5 million in income last year and aims to reach $ 10 million in sales by the end of 2025.
The latest startup on the replacement therapy of $ 3 billion (world annual sales) of $ 3 billion, Jones, Jones does not make its NRT pastins – it buys them from a third -party manufacturer approved by the FDA. And, yes, they come to these bright blue bottles, the same generic NRTs sold at Walgreens and CVs are packed. But Jones includes an elegant box in which users can put their mints to make the experience more chic. The company, which claims that its customers are 60% women and 40% of men, also collaborates with the Los Angeles Monbouquette jewelry brand to make a small box of Sterling silver diamond, which will sell $ 295 and can also be used as a necklace. During New York Fashion Week, Jones distributed boxes of his speakers behind the scenes during the shows by Jonathan Cohen, Kallmeyer and Tanner Fletcher.
The brand also tries to modernize marketing and the existing NRT approach. Jones uses the same approach as Warby Parker has done for glasses and what Hims does for hair loss treatments and erectile dysfunction drugs. Make the purchase of nicotine, generic viagra and cool, easy and non -embarrassing glasses. However, there is a big difference between Jones and Hims – nicotine replacement therapy is an over -the -counter medication, so customers do not need a doctor’s prescription.
The NRT market is currently dominated by large pharmaceutical companies of several billion dollars, such as Johnson & Johnson, which makes the Nicorette product brand, the Spinoff Haleon Group of Glaxosmithkline and Perrigo. There are also innovative solutions: Qnovia, based in Virginia, develops a nicotine nebulizer that he hopes to be approved by the FDA. But there are more than enough potential to go around. With 28 million smokers in America, cigarettes remain the main cause of preventable death and disease in the United States – making 480,000 people a year. This means that Jones works on an important market that needs more solutions.
Jaclyn Freeman Hester, partner of Foundry, who directed series A of Jones series A, says that she was convinced to invest in the company because she thinks that Jones disturbed current market offers and reaches a clientele that is not served by generic brands.
“Is it a big problem that matters?” Yes, this is a massive problem, “she said, explaining that most people who smoke or vape want to stop but fail. “The simple concept is that smoking has modernized and that leaving has not (so far).”
Jones also built a culture defined by Grace, say the founders, something addicted to nicotine, and other drugs and substances, moreover, do not get enough trying to stop. (Studies have shown that a typical person dependent on cigarettes is trying to leave without success about 8 to 10 times.) The Jones application allows customers to choose specific objectives – entirely or to reduce your use.
“We are without judgment,” explains Huber. “Cut, stop, do what you want. For Jones, if you slip, it’s okay. We are celebrating progress on perfection.”
And how did the founders of Jones give their ends in their attempts to leave? Well, they no longer vape, but they always use their own product. “I love nicotine,” says Huber. “I use NRT every day.”
