After a Rocky Start, Semprae’s Female Arousal Oil Gains Traction

In 2004, Zestra Laboratories started making an over-the-counter female arousal ointment that it sold in hundreds of Wal-Mart (WMT) stores across the country. Notwithstanding a seemingly immense market of women who experience sexual difficulties -- 43 percent in the U.S., according to an influential University of Chicago study published in the “Journal of the American Medical Association” in 1999 -- the privately held North Charleston, S.C., business filed for bankruptcy in 2008.

“The company was undercapitalized for their business model -- mass retail distribution -- and didn’t provide women with the communication or the discretion many want,” says Rachel Braun Scherl, whose Saddlebrook, N.J., business, Semprae Laboratories, bought Zestra’s assets for $2.5 million in early 2009. Scherl and her business partner, Mary Wallace Jaensch, who together had run a consumer products consulting firm for 15 years, set about resuscitating Zestra, tapping $8.5 million in venture capital.