Why Barrière thinks skin patches are the future of kids’ wellness

For generations, parents have sought alternatives to pills for children’s vitamins, and marketers have claimed to have just what the doctor ordered. Miles Laboratories introduced Flintstones Chewable Vitamins in 1968 (now Bayer owns the brand), and nearly three decades later, in 1997, Hero Nutritionals introduced a chewier chewable, a gummy-format vitamin, Yummi Bear.

Now Barrière, a 6-year-old wellness brand, has launched a children’s supplement line that forgoes the mouth altogether, with small stickers that transmit vitamins through the skin. The products recently rolled out in nearly half of Target’s ~2,000 locations, and on the retailer’s website. Along with a multivitamin, the new kids’ line includes patches for immunity and for sleep.

Barrière’s adult line has eight varieties of transdermal patches, and they’re already carried by Target, along with Hudson News, Bergdorf Goodman, and other retailers.

Cleo Davis-Urman, who co-founded the brand in 2020 originally to make protective yet stylish face masks early in the Covid-19 pandemic, told Retail Brew that chewable kids’ supplements have the advantage over pills because they “are more appealing and they taste good, but they are filled with things that parents don’t want their children to consume, specifically sugar.” Plus, she noted that kids are “allergic to a lot of things,” so even lower-sugar chewables could be a no-no for some kids if they contain gluten, soy, or dairy.

Along with featuring kid-friendly prints like dinosaurs, stars, and smiley faces, the stickers also have the advantage of being—pardon the tautology—stickers. Not only have stickers obsessed children for generations, but they also are widely used as rewards.

“What we saw as the opportunity with this product was: It’s the supplement and the reward,” Davis-Urman said. “What superhero do they like? What dinosaur do they like? It becomes a part of their routine that they look forward to and almost in some cases forget that it is a vitamin.”

Sticking to it: While doctors have expressed skepticism in publications including National Geographic and Self about the track record and efficacy of transdermal vitamin patches, Barrière counters detractors on its website by highlighting supportive research and its medical advisors.

Among the brand’s adult users, there’s anecdotal evidence that many believe the products are working: Once users have subscribed for regular delivery of a Barrière product for three months, the retention rate of those customers is 90%, according to the brand.

“So we are seeing very little to no drop off when someone gets over that initial hump,” Davis-Urman said, adding that such internal data not only helped convince Target to carry the products but also helped customers to stick with a vitamin habit.

Barrière’s customer retention data was “very impressive to not just Target, but it’s just impressive given what the industry standards show, which is significant drop-off and lack of adherence in the supplement space.”

Vitamin see: Barrière’s products are practically the polar opposite of those made by Starface, the hydrocolloid stickers whose primary function is not to penetrate the skin but rather to draw ickiness from pimples to eliminate them. Still, Starface helped pave the way for Barrière.

“Starface walked so we could run,” Davis-Urman said. “It is an entirely different product, but it started familiarizing people with the idea of wearing a product to achieve a wellness goal that wasn’t a tech wearable, and it made it very clear what a patch was.”

And, like teens everywhere whose faces are festooned with star stickers, Barrière users—at least those who wear the patches someplace visible—become walking billboards.

It’s “top-of-the-funnel marketing for us…because our customers become our ambassadors,” Davis-Urman said. “If a customer is wearing a patch and it looks like a tattoo and someone else doesn’t know what it is, they ask, ‘What’s that?’”

It may be a prosaic exchange among consumers, but for the brand, “that moment is a moment of acquisition,” Davis-Urman said. “They are learning about the product from someone they know and they trust.”