Buff Beauty The Cuticle PenIsabella BejaranoKatia Beauchamp was tired of the vicious cycle of manicures. Known for being the co-founder of Birchbox and transforming the beauty world through highly curated sample boxes, she had an idea to change yet another category. Her new concept had been marinating for over a decade. “It started as a kernel of an idea,” she says. “There was a mix of things that were happening, becoming a professional woman and feeling a sense of empowerment, and noticing these moments where I didn’t feel that sense of powerfulness, and one of them that always stood out was getting my nails done, and it was very visceral. I went from being able to do so much and all of a sudden I couldn't reach into my purse. I was just sitting, waiting, sitting, waiting for a really long time and when you're busy that felt difficult.”It wasn’t just waiting for her nails to dry that Beauchamp found to be a pain point—it was the entire process. “Moreso it is how short-lived the experience was, preserving [my nails], not doing things so they wouldn’t chip and break, and then all of a sudden it was time to do it again, and it felt like this unhealthy relationship with myself and I didn't like it.” Once she had small children she decided that was a great excuse to leave manicures behind and go bare because she simply didn’t have the time. “It was an empowering experience overall, and a thing that came off my to-do list,” Beauchamp says. “I started to learn about how to like my bare nails and keep them looking clean and nice. It really did feel like this mini revolution and something meaningful to me. I started talking about it a lot with my friends, saying I wonder if the beauty industry would ever have a brand for bare nails, and ideating almost playfully.”The Buff Beauty collectionIsabella BejaranoThat’s how the idea for Buff Beauty was born, with Beauchamp serving as co-founder and CEO. The brand is creating a new category in personal care dedicated to nails, but the focus isn’t on polish. Buff Beauty embraces the beauty of bare nails and the health and care required to have the best version of them. Essentially skincare for nails, Buff Beauty believes that hands and feet deserve the same self-care rituals as the face. “We’d learned how to take care of our skin and even our hair in a different way; there was this skinification of everything,” Beauchamp says. “Consumers were getting wise to it, and we started thinking about would the principles apply to nails? Would it make a nail more beautiful, brighter, clearer, smoother? So, we worked on a chemical exfoliator, a serum and an oil, and it was quickly transformative.”Buff Beauty teamed up with a female formulator with a PhD in keratin studies to ensure the formulations weren’t just efficacious, but also had a great texture and user experience. Next, they focused on how they would convince people to be compliant and apply it regularly. “All the while we were thinking through an industry that's built on enticing you by showing you beautiful, bright, fun [nail polish] colors,” Beauchamp says. “It became clear that the wall of nail tools that you see in so many drugstores and mass retailer stores was overlooked. Nail tools felt like an afterthought. Those two ideas converged. How do we become the brand that is synonymous for being obsessed with wrist down, ankle down beauty, and turning the experience into what we become accustomed to as beauty customers? Someone thinks about every aspect of the user experience from an efficacy perspective, from a design perspective, from an interaction perspective, and so that's what we decided to do.”Buff Beauty's skincare for your nails trio of productsBuff BeautyLaunching today, Buff Beauty is introducing everything you need for healthy, beautiful bare nails and all of it is designed to be user-friendly. Initially they are launching direct-to-consumer and then expanding with a major national retail partner next month to make the brand accessible to as many people as possible. Buff offers two types of exfoliation for nails, both chemical and physical. The chemical exfoliator, the Resurface Surface Exfoliant, removes all of the dead skin and helps prep the nail with lactic and glycolic acids, plus it has a silicone tip for mess-free application. For the skincare for nails routine, next apply the Nail Serum onto nails, cuticles and surrounding skin. Finally, the Revive Finishing Gel Oil locks everything in and adds shine. Beauchamp uses the serum and oil several times throughout the day, especially after she washes her hands. “If I’m in a sandal and my heels are cracked, if I want to just gloss up my feet, I think of this as lip gloss for your nails.”Then there’s The Shine Sheets nail buffing pads for physical exfoliation. “It creates that pretty shine on the nail that everyone talks about,” Beauchamp says. “But I've learned that you should only do this twice a month because you don't want to thin your nail plate out too much.” Afterwards, apply the serum and the oil, which will maintain that shine. Buff Beauty founder Katia BeauchampBuff Beauty As for tools, the assortment at launch includes The Little Clipper nail clipper, Edge trimmers that’s ergonomic and easy to use for hangnails and dead skin, Horizon cuticle push back to clean under nails too, Great Plane nail file with a holder that has a different grit on each side and is refillable, and the Dune nail cleaning brush that can be used in the shower to deep clean and exfoliate the hands and feet up to twice per week.The timing couldn’t be better, as bare nails are now being dubbed the new luxury. “I think I’m good at sensing market readiness happening,” Beauchamp says. “It was similar with Birchbox. When we had that idea, people who knew the beauty industry immediately told us it was a very bad idea because no one had ever paid for a sample. Our instincts were we felt that the confusion of how to shop for beauty is at high volume and people will understand the value of learning about what they want to pay money for. It's a similar experience here, where this was percolating, but all of a sudden I felt a market readiness. I'd been talking about my bare nails for a long time and about a year ago it started feeling like there was so much interest in what I was saying and starting to see a different reaction. Timing has so much to do with whether something can take shape, and we understood that this had potential, and now there is a conversation around it. But I don't think this is a fad. Ultimately, this idea that a new lane, a new definition of a done bare nail product makes sense.”Buff Beauty's skincare for your nails collectionBuff BeautyHowever, Beauchamp admits that marketing messaging has convinced women they need to have their nails done to look polished. But beauty times have changed, as we have embraced no makeup makeup and natural texture in lieu of blowouts. “Right away, I understood that there is a psychology to this because we have been pummeled by images of what beauty is, and honestly there is no bare nail imagery available,” she says. “I do see it as part of our responsibility to create a new aesthetic that people feel is desirable and aspirational to sit alongside this other aesthetic. I don’t think this is about replacing—it's about adding a lane that is a definition of not seen as somebody who is unfinished, undone, not caring for themselves.”Nowadays most women have a skincare and hair care routine, and Beauchamp is hoping that Buff Beauty will encourage them to start a nail care regimen. “One of the things that we have learned about taking care of ourselves in general is it's not necessarily complicated,” she says. “It's about consistency, and one of the big challenges with taking care of our hands and feet is they're constantly in use. We created products so that you don't feel like you have to stop, and then we added things that have never been added to this category of product because we know that they are effective ways to change the look of the keratin. We all know that using chemical exfoliation is a great way to take off the dead skin and prep for a high efficacy serum. The same is true for your nails. You can fit this in while having your morning coffee on a commute at a stoplight. There is a desire to do something because it makes us feel like we are taking care of ourselves and we show we care.”