At the outset of the pandemic, Whitney Clarke’s intense handwashing—she frequently washed them tens of times per day—left her hands painful, red and raw, and besieged with eczema patches and chronic inflammation.
“On top of that, despite everyone’s warnings to take care of your hands early because it’s where age show’s up first, my hands looked like they were 75-year-old, 80-year-old man hands, not me,” says the 48-year-old marketing and communications professional who’s held positions at CVS, Stop & Shop, Athenahealth and AllStripes. “I have always taken care of my skin. I’ve got good genes, and I’ve worn sunscreen since I was 20 years old. So, this mismatch was really alarming.”
Clarke began slathering her hands with skincare products she used on her face. Although the products helped, depending on them for her hands was expensive and inefficient, and they were often too harsh for her hands’ thin skin. She estimates she spends $600 to $800 for the face products in her regular skincare regimen, and it consists of a minimum of four to six steps. She decided to create a simple, potent anti-aging regimen specifically for hands to protect and soothe them.
That streamlined regimen is at the core of Clarke’s new brand Habelo, which is starting with two products: $68 Activating Hand Serum and $80 Treatment-Boosting Gloves. The serum contains what the brand calls its HAB1 multi-peptide complex along with ingredients such as niacinamide, hyaluronic acid and ceramides. Made from viscose, polyester and silicone, the patent-pending gloves shield hands from ultraviolet radiation—Clarke says hands are the third-most exposed area on the body after the face and neck—and enhance the effects of serum applied underneath.
Clarke believes Habelo’s high-performance hand care positioning distinguishes it in the beauty industry that tends to relegate hand care to an ancillary category. “Brands have beautiful hand creams, but they’re still hand creams versus a performance product,” she says. “I wanted a multitasker that would do everything from addressing tone and texture to sunspots and elasticity. The skin on the hands is so thin that, when we lose collagen and elastin, there’s crepiness there that we don’t see in our faces typically for a long, long time.”
“Brands have beautiful hand creams, but they’re still hand creams versus a performance product.”
With guidance from Krupa Koestline, cosmetic chemist and founder of KKT Innovation Labs, Clarke built Habelo’s products from the ground up to deliver clinically verified results. In an eight-week study of them with 33 subjects across the six Fitzpatrick skin types and incorporating people with sensitive skin, 97% saw improvement in hydration and radiance, 68% saw improvement in plumpness, 61% saw improvement in overall skin health, 58% saw improvement in crepiness and 48% saw improvement in fine lines.
Similar to products below the neck generally, Clarke realizes that asking consumers to shell out more than they’re accustomed to for hand care products can be challenging. That’s a big reason why Habelo’s clinically verified results and demonstrating efficacy is crucial for the brand. Clarke has reached out to around 30 influencers to raise awareness about Habelo, and so far roughly half have posted about it. Influencers can clearly present the impact of Habelo’s products by applying its products on one hand and skipping them on the other. Search engine optimization is an essential element of the brand’s awareness strategy, too, as people are hunting for hand care solutions online.
Habelo’s target consumers, primarily women aged 35 to 55 years old invested in skincare, may be less inclined to balk at pricy products. “She’s really savvy about what she’s putting on her body. She’s probably spending money on in-office treatments, and this is part of extending that care to her hands,” says Clarke, highlighting a Nestle Skin Health white paper from 2018 with a survey from Wakefield Research that revealed 85% of women 40-plus have noticed signs of aging on their hands. A secondary target for Habelo is younger women with a keen interest in nails.
Habelo has stuffed its product pipeline with 20 products it could release over the next two to three years, including three it could release by December. The brand isn’t getting away from its focus on performance hand care, and it could jump into hand-oriented twists on common skincare products like exfoliators, masks and peels. It could offer different versions of its gloves for various purposes and with various ingredients as well.
“The mission is to revolutionize hand care, making it a daily beauty ritual leveraging science and innovation.”
Beyond products, Habelo will be introducing an artificial intelligence-powered digital tool that can keep track of the results of product usage from uploaded imagery and even possibly detect underlying medical conditions. Clarke muses, “Hands are fascinating, and they tell so much about us.”
Clarke poured over $150,000 into developing Habelo. She secured what she describes as a small amount of funding from friends and family for it. Retail is on Habelo’s roadmap. Clarke’s goal is to place it in independent boutiques, prestige beauty specialty retailers and nail salons. Already, the brand has commitments from 10 boutiques. Clarke has been pursuing stores she admires and enjoys shopping at like Woo, a skincare and cosmetic concept in Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina. Clarke worked at Woo as a student at Vanderbilt University.
Habelo is named for a combination of “habeo,” the Latin word for to hold or possess, and “belo,” the Portuguese word for beautiful. Although it’s entering a category that seems niche, Clarke detects evidence it’s expanding. The Business Research Co. projects the size of the hand cream and hand lotion market will go from $7.8 billion in 2023 to $13.3 billion in 2028, driven by an increase in handwashing. Brands like Skinny Confidential and Prequel have also launched gloves for sun protection.
“Everyone has two hands, and the anti-aging market is huge. You ask anybody, let me see your hands. They hide their hands. People have given up hope that they can do anything about their hands, but actually you can see results quickly in four weeks [with Habelo],” says Clarke. “The mission is to revolutionize hand care, making it a daily beauty ritual leveraging science and innovation, not just a hand cream. It’s active ingredients that really address damage.”
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