Men Are Sharing Skincare Tips, but Former Kiehl’s President Says Many Get One Basic Thing Wrong

At Field + Supply, a makers market held October 9 to 11, 2025 at Hutton Brickyards in Kingston, New York, Chris Salgardo stood at his brand’s pop-up and listened to three men who had never met trade moisturizer advice. One said he applied his only at night. Another pushed the others to try it. Salgardo founded the men’s skincare brand Atwater and spent 12 years as president of Kiehl’s Since 1851. In more than three decades of selling to men, he had not watched that conversation happen. The men were using product names, Skin Armor and Heavy Armor, rather than describing a bottle by its color.

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Nine out of ten men get their skin type wrong

The assumption inside the category is that men know what their skin does. Salgardo tests this in market research sessions by asking the room directly. “Nine out of 10 will say they’re oily, and they’re not,” he says. His explanation is that men sweat more and read that as oil, which sends them toward mattifying formulas their skin does not need. The consequence is commercial rather than cosmetic. A first-time buyer who picks the wrong moisturizer decides skincare was a waste of money and does not return. Atwater’s entire product structure was designed around preventing that single mistake at the point of purchase.

Three moisturizers instead of one hero product

Standard investor advice for a new beauty brand is to launch with one or two hero items and build from there. Salgardo refused. Atwater sells three facial moisturizers at $37 each, split by skin type: Oil Regulator for oily skin, Skin Armor for normal to combination, and Heavy Armor for dry. An online quiz routes shoppers to one of the three before they buy. “If you’re doing skincare, how can you?” he says of the single-product approach. “Everyone’s skin is different.” The quiz exists because the brand assumes the customer will self-diagnose incorrectly if left alone with a shelf.

The category is growing at twice the beauty average

Future Market Insights puts the global men’s skincare market at $19.2 billion in 2025 and projects $52.1 billion by 2036, a compound annual growth rate of 10.5%. McKinsey & Co. projects roughly 5% annual growth for global beauty overall through 2030. Men’s skincare is expanding at about double that pace, which is why the aisle keeps filling with new entrants. Atwater has projected 2026 revenue between $2 million and $5 million and roughly 200 physical doors. Against a market measured in tens of billions, that is a small operation betting that specificity beats scale in a crowded field.

Neiman Marcus closes a 39-year loop

Atwater launched in August 2022 at 22 Nordstrom doors. It is now launching at Neiman Marcus, which for Salgardo returns him to where he started. He began at a Chanel makeup counter in 1986, then worked at I. Magnin in Beverly Hills, next door to the Neiman Marcus flagship. He later handled the Neiman Marcus account as a coordinator and then an account executive. As the first regional at Bobbi Brown, he watched Neiman Marcus become that brand’s top account. Atwater’s other retail partners include Saks, Bloomingdale’s and Bluemercury. Online remains the largest share of the brand’s sales.

Men will follow a routine if someone builds it

Salgardo draws a line between how the two halves of the market arrive at a counter. “When a woman comes up to you, she has some knowledge of what routines look like, but with him, you really have to teach him,” he says. His instruction to staff is to keep asking even when a man says he already knows. The payoff, in his account, is that once a man accepts a sequence of steps he stays with it. That makes facial skincare the replenishment engine of the business, since a routine purchased once is a purchase repeated on a schedule.

There is a hard ceiling on what men will pay

Price is the other constraint Salgardo designs around, and he treats it as fixed rather than movable. “Getting them to spend more than $20 on a shave cream is always going to be a hustle,” he says. He allows that a man will pay up for an advanced serum, but puts the wall at the $50 mark and above. “Products that go over $50, $70, $90 will always be a stretch, and I think that’s going to stay with us.” The range reflects it: $20 Clean Impact body bars, beard oil from $18, a $42 mineral sunscreen at SPF 50 and above, and sets at $112 to $133.

Nearly a fifth of buyers are women

Women account for 18% of Atwater’s customers, and Salgardo says the brand has not marketed to them. The number shaped at least one product decision. Skin Armor SX, a water-based personal lubricant, was positioned as unisex at a retail partner’s suggestion rather than by the brand’s own plan. Another item traces back further. AutoNail Lacquer, a 15-free polish, began with a 16-year-old Salgardo watching David Lee Roth at his first Van Halen concert. “I wore black polish at Kiehl’s all the time,” he says. “I used to just wear Chanel’s, so I made my own.” It is being cut to a single dark shade.

What is in development, and what customers ask for

Salgardo describes the goal as building “the ultimate grooming brand for men,” and the pipeline runs past facial care. A bronzer is finished and scheduled for next year. Style Armor, a vegan hair product meant to work as both a leave-in moisturizer and a medium-hold styler, is in development. The larger priority is anti-aging, a term the industry has argued over for years. Salgardo keeps it because of what he hears from buyers. “There’s been a lot of controversy about the term ‘anti-aging,’ but that is how he thinks about it,” he says. “He’s really concerned with his eye bags.”

The founder story as a competitive moat

Atwater is self-funded and Salgardo is still putting his own money in, alongside $3 million raised from angel investors in his personal and professional network. That network also solved a supply problem, since large manufacturers often turn away brands whose order minimums are too small to be worth running. His 18 years at Kiehl’s and his oversight of Giorgio Armani Beauty and Shu Uemura at L’Oreal, which he left at the end of 2018, opened those doors. He argues that most new men’s brands lack a founder anyone can name. “It’s really hard to copy Atwater because you can’t ChatGPT my background.”