“We were early-career designers who collaborated on new products for Kellogg’s, McDonald’s, Scünci, OXO, Baker’s Secret, Revere Ware, and Duracell,” Roberts said.
Featured Photo: Liv Labs was named a Fast Company 2025 Innovation by Design Honoree (Photo credit: Sandra Riaño/Fast Company)
78 million American women have a reason to worry about their pelvic floors, which can be weakened by athletics, childbearing, and aging.
Could a wearable spring be the answer?
A FemTech company with roots in Atlanta and Chicago thinks so. Liv Labs is out with its first product, the Pippa® Resistance Spring, designed to boost pelvic floor fitness while a woman works out.
The Pippa Resistance Spring has been shown to boost a healthy user’s pelvic floor fitness through neuromuscular activation.
Co-founder and CEO Melody Roberts describes neuromuscular activation as a “way to help muscles “wake up” or “show up” more fully during movement,” helping with muscle coordination and responsiveness…without the user even noticing it while wearing the product.
Women wearing our product during exercise may experience stronger pelvic floor engagement during moments of impact, better resistance to downward pressure during exertion and fatigue, and greater muscle capacity during walking and running, according to Roberts.
“Other pelvic floor strength products and services require dedication to a months-long regimen performed in private. By contrast, our Pippa resistance spring provides an immediate boost to fitness with each use. There’s no need for training: just wear and go. Pippa fits into a user’s existing lifestyle, maximizing convenience,” Roberts added.
Pippa is available for order on Liv Labs’ website, starting at $149.
The Road To Consumer Product Startups
Roberts has not always been part of startups, having worked most recently on the corporate side of Panera Bread and McDonald’s.
But Roberts, a graduate of Yale University, said that “founder mode” is her “natural state.”
“My first design manager called me a ‘misfit’,” she told Hypepotamus in an email Q&A. “The former Chief Restaurant Officer of McDonald’s called me an “opener.” Executive coaches said “you think differently.” I’ve originated almost every professional role I’ve held, which is great practice for wearing every hat in a tiny organization. Being a startup founder forces me to switch from visionary to pragmatist, from accountant to social media manager, from researcher to hustler – all in a day’s work. It’s soooo much fun!”
Roberts moved down to Atlanta from Chicago after visiting her daughter, a graduate of Emory University, saying the city won her over with its temperate climate and “critical mass of startup activity.”
Meet The Team
She is building Liv Labs (which went through Y Combinator in 2021) alongside her co-founder and inventor Carly Price, who she first met in 1999.
“We were early-career designers who collaborated on new products for Kellogg’s, McDonald’s, Scünci, OXO, Baker’s Secret, Revere Ware, and Duracell,” Roberts said. “When I took a corporate job in the innovation team at McDonald’s, I hired Carly as a consultant. When Carly needed someone to lead a startup to commercialize her invention, she called me.”
Price filed the provisional patent for what would become Pippa in 2017, at a time when “no one was talking about the pelvic floor at all: not in private and certainly not in public,” Roberts added. Today, pelvic floor health and therapy has become more mainstream, opening up more opportunities for consumer products like Pippa.
With Atlanta now home base, Roberts is introducing Pippa to the city’s active community. Atlanta runners can meet the team and learn more about Liv Labs at the vendor expo happening on February 27 and 28 for the Publix Atlanta Marathon.
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