On Friday, September 16, 2022, ConfidenceClub was featured in the 'Aged care and disability support' section of The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper.
Here is a copy of the complete article in case you couldn't read it. It was only published in the newspaper's printed edition.

A local company is offering real and positive support for the millions of Australians who suffer from incontinence.

Due to its personal nature, incontinence is rarely spoken about, yet it can have a significant social and economic impact on Australians of all ages.

According to a 2010 report prepared by Deloitte Access Economics, there were around 4.6 million Australians aged 15 years and over (21 per cent of the population) living with urinary or faecal incontinence, or both. It projected that number rising to 6.2 million.

Sadly, the research suggests that many people with incontinence do not seek help. “Incontinence can be a very personal and sometimes inconvenient condition to manage and is not often spoken about – even among partners and families,” says Gavin Basserabie, co-founder of ConfidenceClub.

“We have seen that if incontinence is not managed well, the psychological impact can be significant. It can lead to social isolation and feelings of rejection.

“Equally, without proper management, carers can feel overwhelmed with stress, the financial burden and the increasing time and cost spent on cleaning clothes and bedding.”

Basserabie experienced this first-hand with his elderly aunt, who ultimately had to be moved into an aged care home due to her family’s inability to support her. “It was not a great end-of-life experience for my aunt or the family,” he says. “For such a personal situation, the market for people living with incontinence was incredibly impersonal.”

This is why when Basserabie and his business partner, Garron Lipschitz, learnt of the prevalence of incontinence in Australia, they decided to use their professional retailing experience to do something about it.

“We wanted to use what we had in terms of communication and online retailing experience to help people and their carers,” he recalls.

“We realised that the market for incontinence was quite limited. We saw for ourselves how confusing it is to choose the right product in a store, how much money you can waste in trying to find the right product.’’

More than half of all ConfidenceClub’s staff are product specialists helping customers to find the right product for their unique needs. ‘‘Our mission is to eliminate the burden of managing incontinence,’’ says Basserabie.

‘‘We are so committed to this core value of ours that we have a policy that it either “Fits or it’s free” – offering a 100-per-cent money back guarantee even if someone has used up a whole packet of product.

“It may often also be an expensive condition to manage. Some people get government support through the NDIS and Medicare, but most people need to fund all or a large proportion of the costs of managing their continence themselves.

So it was a significant focus for us to provide savings through offering automatic re-orders, bulk buying discounts and a genuinely rewarding loyalty program.”

The partners spent most of 2017 developing their first disposable continence management products before ConfidenceClub website opened for business in January 2018.

It now supplies tens of thousands of Australians with millions of items each year, seeking to make incontinence easier to manage so that customers can live their best lives with confidence.

“More than 50 per cent of our customers are carers or professionals seeking to help either their loved ones or patients,” says Basserabie.

“We appreciate it is a very private matter for people, so we take that very seriously and ensure our communications are always discreet and colloquial.”

Basserabie concedes that ConfidenceClub will never be able to provide its customers with a cure for their condition, but believes its offering is a second-best option – providing products and services that make incontinence manageable.

Its products that are super comfortable, highly functional and among the most sustainable in the market, with 100 per cent carbon-neutral manufacture.

“We created ConfidenceClub because we appreciated the opportunity to make a daily positive contribution to the lives of so many Australians, their carers and the planet,” says Basserabie. “We want to be able to help people live their best lives with confidence.