skin. One entrepreneur making a name for herself in this space is Cleo Davis-Urman, the co-founder of Barrière, a wellness brand making transdermal vitamin patches designed to be worn on the skin. The patches deliver vitamins and nutrients directly into the bloodstream through absorption. Davis-Urman was previously the director of special projects at Saks Fifth Avenue but she left to start Barrière in 2020. Her co-founder Alexa Adams also left a career in corporate fashion.  They were compelled to start the business by their shared belief in the profound impact of integrating wellness-oriented lifestyle routines and self-care. The brand’s first stock-keeping unit was several styles of aesthetically designed face masks, the accessory of the year for 2020 to 2022.  The idea for Barrière’s hero product, transdermal vitamin patches, came when Davis-Urman went to the doctor for a routine blood panel and discovered she was dangerously low in key nutrients like iron and B12.  To boost her levels, Davis-Urman was asked to go to the hospital regularly to get transfusions. She noticed that medical facilities often offered vitamins to patients transdermally, through a patch, and was confused that this simple method of administration wasn’t available more broadly.   This is when the proverbial lightbulb lit up in the founder’s mind. In coordination with a facility registered with the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), Davis-Urman and Adams set about creating a series of efficacious and aesthetic transdermal vitamin patches for the mind, skin and body. The latest ‘cool kid’ of the wellness industry The $6.6 trillion wellness industry has led to the rise of health-focused products like superfoods to supplements, but what about less obvious wellness products, like transdermal vitamin patches? Urman observed that consumers today are looking for ways to be as healthy as possible that don’t feel cumbersome or hard to integrate into their busy lives.  “Now that most of us are back to a pre-pandemic routine of going to the office, travel, events, and more, it is essential that we offer customers products, like Barrière patches, that can travel with us and support our daily lives along the way,” Davis-Urman explained.  As a new-to-market product, Davis-Urman admitted that promoting Barrière’s vitamin patches comes with its own unique set of challenges.  “Educating the customer, and the world really, about the benefits of this innovative product has been the hardest part so far. Every day we are faced with skepticism and criticism but the more we refine our messaging and get the product out in the market, the easier it gets. One day we hope that everyone will be wearing their vitamins and that Barrière will be a trusted wellness partner for the young, the mature, and everyone in between,” the co-founder commented.  Barrière’s bounding brick-and-mortar expansion  While the brand started out with a strictly direct-to-consumer presence, Davis-Urman and Adams have steadily worked on building the brand’s virtual and physical retail presence.  Today, Barrière products can be found online via retailers such as Anthropologie and Free People and at a variety of Saks Off Fifth locations nationwide and boutique storefronts and hospitality locations across the US.  Additionally, as of November 15, Barrière is available in 200-plus Walgreens doors across the US.  Davis-Urman stated the brand plans to continue to grow its partnership with Walgreens into 2025, with another 2400 doors scheduled to open in June of next year. “With that said,” Davis-Urman commented, “this introduction into Walgreens marks our first large-scale pharmacy retail presence nationwide. As we move into 2025, we plan to continue to cement our online and in-person retail footprint to both more niche and mass market consumer bases, with goals to land in favorite big box stores and high-traffic online shopping platforms in the near future. “As we move forward as a brand, we hope to continue to provide proactive wellness solutions for our customers that also feel easy to adopt into their everyday lives. “Our biggest goal is to bring more people into the Barrière community, helping them adopt proactive transdermal vitamin patch applications and realizing that self-expression and wellness practices can go hand and hand,” Davis-Urman concluded.