Taking It Below the Chin

A woman who has built a sophisticated facial routine—with peptides, retinols, ceramides and multi-weight hyaluronic acid—has had no real equivalent for the 95% of her skin below the chin, beauty industry veteran Kathy Widmer told Happi in a recent online interview.

“We have closed that gap,” she said.

The “we” includes fellow industry executive Barry Bruno. Together they co-founded Dewsy, a body skin care start-up that recently closed a $4 million fundraising round.

Widmer spent two decades with Johnson & Johnson, and nearly a year as a group president, North America and Latin America at Kenvue (the J&J spinoff which has been acquired by Kimberly-Clark). Bruno’s experience includes roles at Church & Dwight, where he was US president, as well as time at J&J.

Dewsy, which debuted last month on Dewsy.com, Amazon, TikTok Shop and Walmart.com, plans to shake up a staid category.

“Legacy body care has been running on a thirty-year-old playbook: a familiar scent, a familiar feel, a familiar price. Innovation has been incremental at best. The modern skincare consumer has outgrown it,” Bruno told Happi.

The duo spent 18 months working with multiple formulators and ingredient houses until it identified the combination of aesthetics and performance for a core customer: the woman who has “spent over a decade investing in serums, retinols and peptides for her face and she feels her body care is not keeping up,” noted officials.

The idea behind Dewsy is to address body skin, which is thicker than facial skin and far more surface area, “and most actives never make it past the stratum corneum,” Widmer said.

According to Widmer, the science to close that gap already existed in adjacent categories.

“Mini Molecule Technology engineers ingredients to a size that can actually be channeled through the layers of the epidermis. So, the science is not just in the formula. It is in whether the formula can get where it needs to go,” she noted.

In plain language, the technology uses sound waves to break key ingredients into ultra-small molecules to reach the layers of the epidermis where hydration and barrier repair “actually happen,” officials said.

“Our job was to assemble, refine and deliver it at a price she could actually live with. Mini-Molecule Technology is what made that possible,” she said.

The technology is proprietary.

Dewsy’s Down Deep Body Lotion a multi-weight hyaluronic acid complex that Widmer described as the same caliber of science “one would expect from your facial serum—but formulated for body skin and priced under $30,” Widmer said.

The largest bottle of the lotion (16 oz) is currently priced at $29.99. Both an unscented and scented option are available.

Dewsy also offers Down Deep HA Body Serum, a format not typically found in body care. Both products can be used together.

“On the face, many women use a serum and a moisturizer because she knows they do different jobs. The serum is the concentrated actives. The moisturizer locks it all in. We built Down Deep HA Body Serum because that architecture should not stop at your jawline,” said Widmer.

Dewsy’s masstige pricing is by design, according to Bruno “because body care is twice a day on a large surface area and has to be sustainable to work.”

The idea is to create “a real body routine, not a habit of squeezing lotion out of a bottle and hoping for the best,” asserted Widmer.