This is an episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, which features candid conversations about how today’s trends are shaping the future of the beauty and wellness industries. More from the series →
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Before the “aha” moment that led to the creation of JB Skrub, the brand she co-founded with “Modern Family” star Julie Bowen, Jill Biren worked in magazine publishing at Condé Nast for 16 years. But then, one day, she was packing her 9-year-old son up for camp and realized there wasn’t a personal care brand made for him. He was too old to bring baby soap to camp, and she didn’t want to send him with a synthetically fragranced men’s product. And so, an idea was born.
Bowen, also a boy mom, related to this struggle, and the two came together to work on a brand of body care products for tween boys. They chose to do so independently and spent eight years taking it from concept to reality, until finally launching in January of 2023 with five products: a body wash, a body spray, a face wash, a face lotion and toner pads. Recently, JB Skrub added hair care to the mix with the introduction of a shampoo.
On this week’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, Biren discusses the moment she realized she’d stumbled upon a white space in the market, JB Skrub’s unique motto for teaching boys good hygiene and the power of telling this rarely-spoken-to consumer that this product was, in fact, made for him.
Below are highlights from the episode, which have been lightly edited for clarity.
The brand’s origin story
“I was always concerned about the products [my son] used, … from what he would eat to the products he used on his body. He had sensitive skin, so I was very conscious [when] he was going to sleepaway camp for the first time. I was packing him up, and he was still using his baby skin-care products, the lotions and the body wash. And he said, ‘Mommy, I can’t take my baby body wash to camp.’ And I was like, ‘You’re right, you can’t.’ So I started looking for what’s next. Like, ‘What does a 9-year-old boy use that feels like it speaks to him?’ I scoured the aisles at Target. I was online on Amazon. I was going into Sephora and Ulta. … There wasn’t anything that really spoke to a tween boy. At the same time, … I’m that mom who needs a product that my son will feel good about, and I was there were other moms who felt the same way. At the same time, on the side, [I was] serving hot lunch at school and speaking to other mothers who have kids my age, and one of those is Julie Bowen. And so we were talking: ‘Hey, what are you using on your son?’ ‘Gosh, you know, he’s still using the baby products, and he’s not going to use the men’s products that tend to be heavily fragranced.’ … [I didn’t want him to use products that are] using synthetic fragrance and synthetic ingredients that could be harmful to the endocrine system — and this is going back eight plus years. The men’s market at this time was just starting to explode. ‘Clean’ was not as mainstream as it is today.”
“Pits, nuts and butts”
“Our first product that we thought of, in terms of, ‘What do we need?’ was the body wash. When they’re in the shower, what is the one product that we need them to use that’s going to be effective? At this age, … at the age of eight years old, the bathroom door is still open. So, you still know what’s going on. You still have some control of reminding them, ‘OK, now you need to wash your hair,’ and, ‘You need to make sure you get every part of your body.’ And as Julie [Bowen] likes to say, oftentimes, we have to remind boys, ‘Hey guys, there’s an order to bathing, and it’s pits, nuts, butts.’ They need to have that down in their heads and know that there really is a proper order to washing. When that bathroom door closes and they no longer want you in there, they need to have it down. So it’s forming those smart hygiene habits early with this younger generation. That’s why all the directions to all of our products are very simple and very straightforward, so that when they are in there, they can turn that bottle around and they’ll know exactly what to do.”
How to reach a unique demographic
“If there’s a sister in the household, the boy doesn’t want to use their sister’s skin care. … They simply have not been exposed to skin care or body care products that have been created for them. That’s the conversation we have sometimes directly with these kids is: ‘We created this for you.’ And the response is like, ‘This is for me?’ ‘Yes, these products are created for you.’ And once they hear that, once they understand that, that it’s specifically for their age, it begins.
[Recently, at a school holiday market boutique] I had these one-on-one conversations with these boys and girls, but specifically the boys, and there was a lot of, like, ‘Oh, wait, what do you do with the face pad? Show me. Teach me.’ They need more education than the girls. The girls speak amongst themselves, but the boys need that additional education, and oftentimes that comes from their mother. Or it comes from a dermatologist, if they’re having to go down that road. But then we’re also finding that peers [can be influential]. For example, our face pads are kept in [boys’] gym bags. So after baseball practice, one boy will take out a pad and use it on his T-zone, and then another boy will be like, ‘Hey, what’s that?’ These are the times we’re living in. They are educating themselves. It’s not [the same] as it is for the girls, but there is interest. We’ve also found that sometimes it takes multiple voices for a boy to understand how to start a skin-care regimen. So it might start with a mother, then they tune out their mothers, which most do. But then, when they hear it from a friend, a dermatologist or even from another mother, there is that ‘aha’ moment of, like, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s what I’m supposed to be doing.’
