Toronto entrepreneur Brian Lau is out to change the male beauty industry. Lau was inspired to start
Bread & Butter--a fragrance-free line of skin care sold online--by his dissatisfaction with the way male grooming products are made and advertised. As reported by the
National Post, Bread & Butter, which went live in December, is on target for the first
quarter and "looking toward a very good summer".
"What irritated me [in advertising] was how many of them are sold," the Toronto entrepreneur said. "Essentially, a lot of claims in the advertising or the packaging are misleading. They are all created to make the customer believe something that is not true." Ads such as those for Axe body spray, which feature people fawning over the wearer of the body spray as though it had aphrodisiac properties, are part of the problem. "Three to four years ago, men were being depicted as complete Neanderthals," he says. Or, by "the Axes of the world," as "ridiculously virile."
"After spending years in the beauty industry, including five at Unilever, which makes the Dove brand, Mr. Lau knew what he did not want to make -- products filled with perfume that dried out skin. He learned more about that after completing his MBA at Kellogg, and working for a holding company whose subsidiary did design and manufacturing for Aveda beauty products."
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National Post