KIC founders Laura Henshaw and Steph Claire Smith are entering brick-and-mortar retail, launching a hydration line specifically for women.
When Laura Henshaw finished training for the New York Marathon in 2024, she wanted to maintain her hydration routine without consuming the extreme sodium levels required for endurance running. Henshaw’s business partner and Forbes Australia 30 Under 30 alumna Steph Claire Smith, had encountered a similar problem when she transitioned out of the postpartum phase of her pregnancy.
Searching for an everyday hydration supplement designed for women, the KIC founders found not only empty space on the shelves, but also a new area of opportunity for their wellness empire.
The market offered products geared toward extreme athletic performance or specific perinatal phases, but it fundamentally lacked an everyday hydration solution tailored to female physiology.
“That’s the gap we’ve tried to fill,” Smith tells Forbes Australia. “Hydration is important for everyone. It’s not just important for people who are pregnant or postpartum. It’s not just important for athletes. It’s important for the everyday.”
Re-engineering the electrolyte balance
To ensure the hydration formulation, available in Priceline and online at The Muse, met exact clinical specifications, KIC brought on perinatal and sports dietitian Caitlin Ireland. Her insights revealed what Henshaw and Smith suspected – the majority of existing hydration formulas are high-salt and cater primarily to male endurance and sweat rates.
“If we look at a lot of the hydration formulas, yes, some of them are two-to-one sodium to potassium, but a lot of them are actually under five-to-one,” Ireland says. “So they’re really a big salt bomb, and that is just really not what women need. The research is showing that women are well and truly exceeding their sodium requirements each day through real food.”
Women generally sweat less than men and consequently lose less sodium. The real nutritional deficit for women, Ireland notes, is potassium and fibre.
“Less than five per cent of Aussie women are actually getting up to that suggested dietary target for potassium,” she says. “Potassium is so, so, so important when it comes to hydration on a cellular level.”
To address this biological difference in the Everyday hydration product KIC tailored to women, the traditional electrolyte formula is flipped to a two-to-one potassium-to-sodium ratio. Potassium in the choline and folate-inclusive Bump range for pregnant women is even higher.
The formulations also include partially hydrolysed guar gum to support digestive health, addressing data that shows up to 75 per cent of Australian women do not consume enough daily fibre. The KIC hydration range also sports no added sugar, no sugar alcohols, and no artificial colours or sweeteners.
The hydration opportunity
Tailoring a hydration line to the Everyday needs of women marks a strategic pivot for the startup, positioning it to pioneer and own a new category that straddles two expanding sectors. The traditional Australian sports drinks market is substantial, valued by Expert Market Research at US$251.99 million last year, and growing at 4.3 per cent CAGR.
Creating a product for everyday female physiology rather than just the high-intensity athlete, however, KIC is also tapping into a broader market. According to data from IBISWorld, the functional beverage market in Australia reached a valuation of US$1 billion this year, spiking 12.3 per cent from 2025. It is expected to double in size over the next decade.
KIC is entering a landscape currently dominated by clinical pharmacy staples like Australian-founded Hydralyte on one end, and high-sodium, fitness-focused brands like LMNT and local player Sodii on the other. Liquid I.V., the global hydration heavyweight, also has significant market share.
While there are existing Australian-founded products targeting specific female demographics – such as Hydramama in the perinatal space or The Lady Shake’s weight-loss-adjacent offerings – the founders believe they’ve identified a commercial void in the premium “everyday wellness” category.
Moving from a digital community to physical retail
Historically, KIC’s revenue streams have been anchored in digital products. The business began in 2015 when Henshaw and Smith published an e-book on healthy eating called Keep It Clean. Three years later, they launched an app with an abbreviated name: KIC.
Today, the founders say KIC has surpassed one million downloads. They launched a podcast, editorial platform, and social media that together reach more than 2.5 million community members.
Recently, the business strategy expanded to the physical world. In April of this year, KIC opened its first physical studio in Cremorne, Melbourne, providing somatic and mindful movement rather than high-intensity, transactional fitness classes.
Beyond serving as an additional revenue stream, the physical studio provides a built-in focus group. During the 18-month research and development phase for the KIC hydration line, the founders used the space to test product formulations and gather direct, unfiltered feedback from their community.
“We take a lot of responsibility in the fact that we are a very well-trusted brand in the wellness space,” Smith says. “And so we don’t just slap our label on anything.”
Operating in a competitive landscape, KIC is notable for being entirely bootstrapped.
“We grow sustainably,” Henshaw says. “We are not about trying to achieve hockey stick growth. We don’t have investment capital. Maybe in some ways we’ve been too risk-averse, and maybe the business could be bigger by this stage if we weren’t.”
To maintain operational efficiency as they scale, the co-founders typically divide and conquer. Henshaw focuses primarily on the commercial side of the business, while Smith drives community and brand. While they align on big-picture strategy, their day-to-day roles on specific projects usually remain distinct.
For this retail launch, however, they intentionally bypassed those operational boundaries to co-pilot the entire project. “When we are launching a new product that is so closely tied to our brand, and to us personally, it is very important that we both feel incredibly passionate about it and feel like we’ve got the product where it needs to be,” says Henshaw.
Development of further product extensions for the hydration line are currently underway, the founders say, alongside early-stage exploration of expanding the physical studio footprint.
“We never, ever sign off on anything if it’s just good enough,” Henshaw says. “Good enough is not good enough at KIC. It has to be excellent because it’s a really saturated market.”
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