As a lifelong eczema sufferer, Tower 28 founder Amy Liu frequently heard from doctors the same advice, when it came to treating eczema flare-ups: take a bleach bath.
“The smell of it, everything about bleach is kind of scary. It’s also really inconvenient,” said Liu. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a bathtub anymore.”
Bleach baths are an established treatment for eczema, and involve soaking in a bathtub of bleach diluted with warm water. But as a beauty brand founder, Liu saw an opportunity to offer a product that could offer the benefits of a bleach soak in more convenient packaging: The result is the SOS Rescue + Relief Body Wash, Tower 28’s first foray into the burgeoning body-care market.
While there are clinical brands that offer sodium hypochlorite body washes to treat inflammatory skin conditions like eczema, Liu said they lacked the sensorial appeal found in consumer-facing brands.
“It left my skin dry. It wasn’t a beauty product,” said Liu of the options on the market. “I just felt like I could fix those things, meaning I could make it cosmetically elegant and convenient.”
The Tower 28 SOS Rescue + Relief Body Wash made its debut as a Sephora app preview on Monday. It opens to a full online launch on Tuesday and hits stores on February 20. The $22 body wash blends sodium hypochlorite, the main chemical component in commercial bleach, with ingredients offering hydration and moisture, like cactus flower extract.
Like the brand’s SOS Rescue Face, which aims to treat facial redness and irritation with hypochlorous acid, the new body wash carries seals of approval from the National Eczema Association, National Rosacea Society and National Psoriasis Foundation.
“[The body wash] is, like, peak Tower 28. Because it is efficacious, it is convenient,” said Liu. “It is what we’re trying to do at our heart, as a mission: to make really great, clean, safe-for-sensitive-skin, high-performance products that are also fun and cool.”
Body care has become a growing category in prestige retailers like Sephora, with brands like Herbivore and Rare Beauty expanding into the sector in recent years. According to market analyst Circana, U.S. sales of prestige body care grew faster than facial skin care in the third quarter of 2025.
But many recent body launches have taken cues from the facial skin-care market by focusing on beautifying or anti-aging ingredients like retinol. Liu said she recognizes she is going after a potentially narrower market by putting her body wash’s focus on treating conditions like eczema and psoriasis.
“The concept that we’re going with right now is going to be like, ‘Not your basic bleach,’ a kind of double entendre. But with the idea being that this is not for everyone. This is for the person who needs this,” she said. “And the people who need it honestly are not just people who have eczema, but also people who have bacterial issues, and that could be sweat, after working out or if you suffer from body acne.”
Liu said Sephora, which helped launch the brand online in 2019 and in brick-and-mortar in 2020, has been supportive of the product’s more medical-adjacent emphasis.
“Hats off to Sephora. I think they are aware that we’re not sure with this one,” said Liu. “And yet, they’re like, ‘Just because something isn’t for everyone, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t deserve a place. ”
Tower 28 has been expanding its footprint this year. The California-based brand launched in the U.K. and the Middle East over the summer, both via Sephora. Liu said consumers have been asking for body-care products from the brand, which is known for its cream blushes and lengthening mascara. But while the body-wash launch offers a natural segue to other body-care products like lotions or creams, Liu is hesitant to say if Tower 28 will dive further into the sector, given the costs of making a product marketed as suitable for sensitive skin.
“In order for us to launch something, we spend, I would say, at least $100,000-$150,000 per launch, just on the testing. Like, never mind getting pretty pictures of it,” she said. “I think there are a lot of great body lotions out there, but there’s not one sodium hypochlorite body wash.”
