Two dudes skincare Photo: RNZ/ Two Dudes
Launched in November last year, 'Two Dudes' is a New Zealand brand that hopes to better the life of every 'dude' by making simple and premium men's skincare products.
The two dudes of the name are a pair of Kiwis named Tom Tappen and Mike McRae who joined forces to create something that also helps give back - each purchase donates to men's mental health charities.
Tom says their idea is that “by choosing Two Dudes products, guys will be able to make a genuine impact on men's health, and their own, just by going about their daily lives."
"We would love Two Dudes to become a leading men's wellness brand in New Zealand. We have started with skincare, but we would love to see what other aspects of a dude's daily life we can impact, and their wider hauora in general."
The process of developing the ‘Two Dudes’ brand has been a new one for the pair, Co-founder Mike McRae said they started by going to an audience of dudes and asking what they would want form their skincare,
“So we came up with the products with trial group of about 50 plus guys and we had the spectrum of me and we you know we had on one and we had like male models who already had like a five step skin care routine and then we had mates of ours or people that we knew that didn't even know you meant to wash off face wash.”
“It was this interesting insight right from the get-go that guys wanted to take better care of themselves but don't know where to buy it or were embarrassed to ask.”
“So that was kind of the first part of it and the second part was how can we actually make the best product possible for these dudes?”
“We've packed all of our products with as many natural ingredients as we can. We have ginseng and mamaku in the day cream, Pōhutakawa and hemp seed oil in the night cream, activated charcoal in the cleanser, all high quality products then just simple to use for these guys.”
“The insight we uncovered with these 50 plus dudes that we had this trial group with was that the over-masculine approach of skin care was just too much and almost didn't speak to the right audience. We needed something that was, you know, massively toned down and the kind of advertising or marketing where we didn't want to be.
“The brand where you just you see a social media post, or you see an ad and it's just this massively chiseled guy with a 6 pack and just impeccable flaws like how, how many guys do you walk down the street and they are actually like that? So we wanted to relate to the everyday kind of Kiwi bloke and hopefully we've done that ,that was massive for us.”
You can find Two Dudes here.
