Why ‘brand’ is the supplement the male fertility market desperately needs

By Tom Moloney, senior strategy director, Koto

Male fertility is entering the mainstream health conversation.

Not because men suddenly became proactive about their reproductive health (if only), but because the data is now too loud to ignore.

Sperm counts are dropping, awareness is rising, and the market – valued at US$4 billion in 2022 and projected to reach nearly US$6 billion by 2030 – is a boom industry in waiting.

For businesses rushing in there is a catch: This is arguably the most emotionally charged, culturally tangled, and stigma-heavy area of health.

Anyone entering the category isn’t just competing on product; it’s competing with centuries of myth, shame, and silence. It’s precisely when brand—good brand—matters.

How we got here

For most of history, fertility has been framed as a women’s problem, they carried the load – socially, medically, and commercially.

Men were bystanders – occasionally supportive, often oblivious – and in the background lurked persistent myths that fertility equalled virility, that age didn’t matter, and that men were somehow exempt from biology.

We’ve come to accept that reality tells a different story, with males being solely responsible for about 20 per cent of infertility cases and a contributing factor in another 30 per cent to 40 per cent of them.

Those harmful narratives around men’s health, exasperated by decades of societal interaction and media depictions, are now beginning to unravel.

Fertility is complicated. Men are all different. And it’s ok to talk about it.

The shift began, somewhat poetically, with erections.

When Viagra’s patent expired, it opened the floodgates for a wave of direct-to-consumer male wellness brands, like Hims, Manual, Numan and others, blending good UX with design-forward identities and a disarming sense of humour.

These brands normalised male sexual health in a way that public-service announcements (and even Pelé) never could.

They proved that if you want men to change behaviour, you can’t shame them into it – you have to design them into it.

Male fertility brands must now follow this path, but with bigger cultural baggage to untangle.

The state of the category: No leader, just lanes

Today’s male fertility market breaks into three broad groups:

1. DTC testing and analysis (computer-assisted semen analysis in sleek, at-home kits)
2. Supplements (from serious science to questionable wellness)
3. Lifestyle and wearables (monitoring health markers that correlate with reproductive function)

Some combine all three – like Legacy (US) and ExSeed (UK/EU) – but most stick to one and none have managed to break through as the household name.

There’s no doubt that the category is heading toward commoditisation, and in the long run brand will be the only real differentiator.

The cultural reality: myths, shame, masculinity and avoidance

Male fertility lives at a difficult intersection.

There’s masculinity myths plagued by the misconception that “fertility = manhood” and shame driven behaviour that results in men avoiding testing and retreating into silence rather than facing the problem head on.

You could argue that women’s fertility still has those stigmas too, but brands in this space are way ahead in breaking down the barriers and making women more comfortable with the science.

On the other hand, male fertility is largely characterised by lab reports and hushed waiting rooms with zero emotional scaffolding.

There’s also a pretty low health literacy among men when it comes to fertility, and most don’t know what actually impacts sperm quality.

Because of all this, you could easily fall into the trap of thinking that this is a low-need market, when in fact it’s a low-visibility one. The appetite for change is clearly there.

Meet the early players – and what they can teach us

Sperm Racing

A brand built on absurdity, humour and viral energy.

Their approach is ethically debatable and  surprisingly educational. It’s high-risk, likely narrow in its appeal, but high-recall – so there is a method in the madness.

Swimclub

Positioned as stigma-busting but earnest, they mix a bold aesthetic with a personal founding story (“We built what we wished we had”), which builds trust quickly.

This combination of approachable personality and differentiated aesthetics is a good brand-building hedge bet.

ExSeed

This brand is the category’s “table stakes”.

It’s accessible and straightforward – clear value prop, TrustPilot badges, and simple UX walkthroughs.

It’s not exactly pushing culture forward, but is aligned to what many men want today: something discreet, affordable, reliable.

Where the real opportunity lies: brand positioning

Most men don’t see fertility as a health metric at all as it sits outside the usual frameworks of performance, fitness or preventative care.

The brands that can reframe it in language men already understand will have a head start.

Change the frame and you change the behaviour; position fertility differently (Longevity? Pre-conception wellbeing? Overall Health Performance?) and it stops feeling like a crisis point and starts feeling like a sensible, proactive step.

To bring brand positioning to life, you must design the experience, not just the kit.

Men tend to drop out at three key moments: deciding to test in the first place, getting through the testing process, and trying to understand the results.

Each of these stages offers a chance for brand and UX to soften friction and reinforce identity.

The visual codes of the category are also crying out for reinvention.

The future of male fertility branding doesn’t need to be blue, black and stoic or built on clichés of toughness or neutrality – it could lean into warmth, contemporary wellness cues and inclusive language that doesn’t embarrass or infantilise anyone. In short: less shame, more agency.

Last, but certainly not least, is community: the biggest cultural whitespace of all.

Female fertility brands have built powerful, supportive communities because the category demanded it.

Male fertility has nothing comparable, leaving space for brands to build environments where men aren’t isolated by stigma.

This is culture-building work, not content-marketing.

The cultural pivot: from “her problem” to shared responsibility

For the first time, fertility is becoming a couples conversation, not just a women’s one.

Brand will play a powerful societal role in accelerating that shift by putting male fertility on an equal footing.

It could work wonders for normalising early testing for both partners, reframing from shameful crisis to proactive step.

So will male fertility finally have its Viagra moment?

Maybe – but the businesses that really break through will have to get brand right.

They’ll have to be smart enough to balance science and story, brave enough to challenge shame, creative enough to design clarity, and culturally attuned enough to shift a taboo into a normalised health behaviour.

In a space this emotionally loaded and commercially ripe, brand is the supplement businesses need to take to improve their chances of success.