Want a Covid Test With Your Viagra?

Roman’s new at-home Covid-19 antigen self-test.

By Alyson Krueger, Published on January 1, 2022

Our work for On/Go was featured in The New York Times. Check it out here if you missed it:

“A health care company known for hair loss and erectile dysfunction treatments diversifies its product line, and earns new fans along the way.

Like many New Yorkers the week before Christmas, Dinah Chamberlain, 39, was on the hunt for at-home Covid-19 tests. She was going to visit her parents in Wisconsin, and she wanted to test regularly while with them.

“I heard that one pharmacy near me in Williamsburg had them. I called them, and they said they only had five left,” she said. “I ran over there to watch the person in front of me buy the last one.”

Soon after, she saw a post on Instagram from a local news site in her Brooklyn neighborhood saying that Roman, a health care provider known for catering to men, had tests in stock and could get them to customers within two days.

The New York City-based start-up was founded in October 2017 as a digital men’s health clinic. It is a place men — especially those who make up the target audience of cheeky subway ad campaigns — can get treatment for conditions including hair loss, erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation. And no in-person doctor’s visit is needed; everything can be done virtually.

Ms. Chamberlain, who works as a men’s wear designer, had vaguely heard about the company through subway and television ads, but she certainly never expected to become a customer.

Until now that is. She had tests shipped to Wisconsin immediately.

“It’s funny that in an emergency situation I am turning to an erectile dysfunction company,” she said. “I mean, good for them for having them when no one else did.”

Since its inception Roman, now called Ro, the umbrella company name, has grown beyond serving men who have problems they want to take care of quietly.

A year after the company launched, it created Zero, a virtual, medical program to help people stop smoking. Within three years it had Rory, the women’s version of Roman with services including skin care and sexual health treatments, and Ro Pharmacy, an online pharmacy that distributes over 1,000 generic prescriptions across the United States.

It now owns Modern Fertility, a reproductive health clinic; Kit, a company that does at-home diagnostic testing; and Ro Mind, a mental health clinic geared toward treating anxiety and depression.

Products offered by Roman now range from treatments for erectile dysfunction and hair loss to at-home Covid antigen tests.Credit...Ro

According to Ro, clients span all ages and have a wide variety of medical needs. “People might be more familiar with us because of where we started, but when we look at our data, the majority of our patients are signing up for something other than E.D.,” said Zachariah Reitano, one of the co-founders. But it wasn’t until the company started selling at-home Covid tests in November that many customers started to get the message that the company was more than a way to get generic Viagra “from the comfort of home.”

People who never would have thought of even going to the company’s website are becoming enthusiastic customers. They are posting about Roman and Ro on social media, giving the company free, organic advertising.

It’s a gift health care companies don’t always get, said Mr. Reitano. As he put it, “It’s rare that people have had such a great health care experience that they want to post about it on social media.”

When Evan Hoffman, 42, a software engineer who lives in Bellmore, Long Island, found rapid Covid tests on Ro’s website, he tweeted about it. “I saw multiple people on Twitter, blue check mark people, complaining that they couldn’t find a test, so I sent an ad to them and said, ‘Go get this thing. They have it in stock,’” he said.

He was aware of the company’s reputation. “In my head Roman is the Viagra company,” he said. His thoughts were confirmed when after he bought the Covid tests he got ads for all sorts of erectile dysfunction products. “I’m like, ‘no, please God no,’” he said. “I need to click on some other stuff to train Instagram to stop sending these.”

But he posted about the company anyway. He thought it was too important to spread the message about where to find Covid tests than to worry about the potential for embarrassment. “It was like I had found a diamond in the rough that nobody had discovered yet,” he said.”