How it began
It started with a jar of balm for my mom.
I never set out to start a skincare company.
In the summer of 2023, my mom called me, frustrated. Her skin had been dry, tight, and irritated for years. She'd been to the dermatologist again and again and worked through a long line of prescription and medicated creams, and none of it gave her more than a few days before she was right back where she started.
I have a PhD in organic chemistry and spent about ten years doing rare disease drug development at the NIH before co-founding a biotech company. So when my mom mentioned her skin, I did the only thing I really know how to do. I approached it like a research problem.
I started reading everything I could find on which natural ingredients are actually good for skin, and I kept landing on the same answer: beef tallow. Rendered grass-fed beef fat has been used for centuries, and its fatty acid profile is remarkably close to the oils our own skin already makes. Your skin recognizes it. That was the whole idea.
I turned our kitchen into a little lab and started making small batches by hand, playing with ratios of tallow, jojoba oil, shea butter, beeswax, and honey until I got the feel and texture right. My wife initially thought I was crazy for putting beef tallow on my skin, but she started to see there was something to it, because my dry skin was responding to it. She started using it herself and was surprised how much better it worked than her expensive, big-name lotions.
A few weeks later we drove up to New York to visit my parents, and I brought my mom a jar. Honestly, I didn't think much of it. I handed it over and pretty much forgot about it.
Then three or four weeks later she called. She wanted to know if I had any more, because her skin looked and felt better than it had in years. She told me it was the first thing in a long time that had actually made a difference for her.
That was the first time I thought maybe there was something real here. I figured she might just be being nice. She's my mom. But then our friends were asking for jars. Then their friends did. It kept spreading on its own, slowly, one person at a time.
From Tallow Balm to a Full Skincare Line
Every Tallowbourn product gets built the same way that first balm did. Start with what the research actually supports. Use the fewest, cleanest ingredients that get the job done. Test it on ourselves and our own family before it ever reaches you.
After the balm came a lip balm I was determined to get right, the kind you don't have to reapply every five minutes. Then deodorant, because I'd tried what felt like every natural option on the shelf and none of them held up, so I made two that do, one extra strength and one for sensitive skin. And soap, which to this day I still make myself, by hand.
The Growth
At first, I had no idea what I was doing on the business side. I was working in biotech and had zero e-commerce experience. I set up the website and eventually listed on Amazon because that's where most people shop, and in the early days I was thrilled to get a single order a day. I used to say I couldn't go to bed until that one order came in.
Then one a day became ten, then more. I'd be up past midnight filling orders after work, still making every product by hand, until I had to admit I couldn't keep running a real company out of my kitchen. Finding the right manufacturers wasn't easy, since I have very high-quality standards and we were still a very small brand. Most manufacturers want six-figure first orders, which wasn't happening for someone making balm at the counter. After a long search I found two family-run, US-based manufacturers that take the same care in making the product as I did, with the added benefit of running in FDA-registered facilities.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, Amazon reached out and said they wanted to tell our story. That floored me. There are tens of thousands of sellers, and I was one guy and a kitchen. I visited their HQ2 in Arlington and got to share how it all started.
Our Mission
Today we ship several hundred orders across several e-commerce platforms instead of hoping for just one. We've got thousands of five-star reviews from people nationwide who were looking healthier options that actually works....Factory workers, new moms, athletes and grandparents to name a few.
What hasn't changed is the care and attention we put into every batch. Each formulation was tested on my own family before anyone else. Built on clean, simple ingredients and judged by whether they actually work, not by how they sound in an ad.
We don't promise miracles. We make honest skincare, stand behind it with a money-back guarantee, and ship it to you ASAP. If you've tried everything else and come up empty, you're exactly who we made this for.
Thanks for being here. It means more than you know.
-Dave
Founder, Tallowbourn
Natural skincare that actually works
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