Chris Salgardo, founder and CEO at Atwater, joined Cheddar News to discuss how the company is making men's personal care mainstream. “I think that the simplicity of it is what's really resonated,” he said.

Atwater Introduces New Skincare Line for Men

joining me now is chris sal Guardado founder and Ceo at Atwater chris, thanks so much for coming on the show. I love talking about skin care. Um so I'm glad that we can talk about that. You've got the male perspective. How is your company, which did launch relatively recently help men get healthier skin this year? Yeah. You know, we launched four months ago. We went, we did, we went online at Atwater skin dot com and then we launched with Nordstrom's as our first retail partner. And it's been amazing and you know, knock on wood. We've been off to a great start. We took a very unconventional approach. First of all, you know, men's is such a huge market. I think in 2022 market insights headed around $13 billion. And we see growing too, I think around 29 billion by 2029. You know, it's largely a mass game we're playing in prestige. But the response to the brand has been truly tremendous. And I think that the simplicity of it is what's really resonated. And I like what you said about smart solutions because I've been in the business for almost 40 years and that's always been my approach and everything that I've seen in everything that I've run. It's like, keep it simple doesn't mean the product needs to be simple, it should be effective, but ultimately it should make a difference for him. And we're seeing products like our number one selling product is eye cream, which you know, when you think of men, they still, yeah, I want to talk about the eye cream in a second, but I do want to jump in because let me tell you as important as this in is for men, it's important for women to write. I mean if if you have a partner or you're dating like you want that person to have good skin care and a good routine as well. So it's mutually beneficial. I just want to put that out there. You can tell me about the eye cream and what really kind of does make the products different. Right? I mean, what makes them something that men should turn to? So simply like when I looked at the marketplace, you know, there's this movement towards clean beauty and what is clean beauty really mean, you know, clean beauty means that you are formulating products without toxic ingredients that we know of. And in the men's arena, I still found that a lot of companies were using alcohol, which is you know, we should have stopped using alcohol a long time ago, but there's still fragrance in the products. You don't want fragrance in your products, like that's just got to go away And I think where a lot of companies have really gotten it wrong, has been around textures. And so I did a lot of my formulations finish them by 2019, but spend the next couple of years through. COVID fine tuning the textures and making sure the textures are right. So for men, even if you're a very dry skin, we don't want to feel it on our face. We want products that are gonna be comfortable for us that are going to do their job but are gonna be non distracting. And then we built all the formulas around the idea of brightening you want healthier skin, you're buying over the counter. Men, are we men or women? Brightening is really a claim that I've seen in my time in the business that you can really deliver. So we put in the best key ingredients that we could um but kept it vegan, kept it fragrance free, kept it simple and not over complex product ingredients. You know some brands used 50 70 ingredients. You don't need that. So I did all that out and just kept it very simple for him. Okay so let's for him and her from my vantage point. But I get it for him to obviously what is the app price point on these products? So it's a great point. So we did it. So our prices start at 12 and they go as high as 35. And you have to remember that again, men's those numbers I was saying earlier, men's is really largely a mask game. So pricing strategy matters and you know, we didn't do any outer cartons, we didn't do any inserts because we don't want to pass on those costs or consumer. And so it's quite affordable. The brand and the products last quite a while but were like what I would say we are entry level pricing in the prestige category from them. And it sounds like to I mean despite the many different climates, you know the pickup and pollution with your keen background chris leading keels that these are not gonna without the fragrance, it's not gonna cause a rash, it's gonna be very gentle on the skin. Um And it sounds like that is one of the key appeals as well. Yeah I mean it's it's been interesting like what I'm loving that we're seeing so far is we're getting a very loyal client. He's buying for five items which is really high and then skincare and he's really replenishing quite quickly. So he's into the products and he's buying them again. And that's the kind of data that you want to see. We're also talking to all groups. I would tell you are split if I had to look at it by age group is pretty evenly split starting by the twenties all the way up to men in their fifties. So we're capturing a really interesting client. And one thing you said, I think it's super important ladies please help your guys because if they're struggling help him find some products go online, select him some products and everybody can use them. I've done it before. I'll do it again. Chris sell Cardo founder and Ceo that water thank you