BeautyTalks with Florian Wilhelm, Founder of kluuf

What was the inspiration behind launching your product/brand?

To create an inclusive skincare brand at the intersection of quality and sustainability, which makes beauty products more accessible to men.

How does your brand differ from other industry brands in the same category? What gives you the competitive edge?

kluuf is unique in combining green (vegan) ingredients with high-tech ingredients, for effective formulations rooted in sustainability. Furthermore kluuf advocates for simple skincare routines with a select few products for natural beauty.

““kluuf is unique in combining green (vegan) ingredients with high-tech ingredients, for effective formulations rooted in sustainability.”

What are your brand values?

Sustainability, simplicity, and social responsibility.

Walk us through your development process — from ideation to the product we see on the shelf.

In development of our products, we collaborated with experienced scientists as well as dermatologists for effective products with great skin compatibility. This takes time and patience. kluuf’s after shave for example took 13 iterations until we finally had the winning formulation. The process took over 12 months and was rewarded with the PETA Beauty Vegan Award.

What are your hero ingredients?

We love Panthenol in our body lotion, because it treats the skin during the cold winter and the warm summer. The peptide mix in our after shave is a real game changer, similar to Niacinamide (which can also be found in our face cream, where we pair it with hyaluronic acid and glycerin). Finally, the active charcoal in our cleanser is great to exfoliate the skin whilst also being a visual highlight!

Other than your company, what is something you are passionate about?

I am deeply passionate about giving back to society, which was also a key driver in founding kluuf. I believe that skincare is a (beautiful) luxury, which can be a vehicle - not only to treat ourselves - but also to give back to people who were not as fortunate as we and didn’t have the same opportunities. That’s why friends and I have started the NGO ‘HIT - Help In Time’ which develops and manages educational projects in townships in Africa.

What is one major lesson you learned about running a business?

Running your own business is essentially navigating uncertainty as best as you can. No day is like the other, so a strong support network of people from different backgrounds is extremely helpful to succeed.

What are some challenges you have overcome with your brand?

The biggest challenge that kluuf is working on everyday is to break ancient gender stereotypes, to show that skincare and masculinity are not opposing forces, but that it is okay for men to care for their skin. Irrespective of sexual orientation, ethnicity and age, taking care of your skin is something to enjoy and to be proud of.

 

What would you say is your most effective marketing channel? Has it changed over time?

Funnily enough, our most important marketing channel to generate awareness and authority for our young brand is traditional (and digital) print. This is something we had to learn the hard way, but recent studies show that (European) consumers still heavily rely on beauty recommendations / features in print, even more than social media influencers.

Give us the backstory of your brand’s name. 

kluuf is a fictional name derived from the South African ‘kloof’ which loosely translates to gap. Given that that kluuf supports social development projects in Africa and that we are trying to close the gap in male skincare, we found kluuf very fitting for our brand.

What do you think is the most prominent concern in the beauty industry? 

I can only talk about the small indie perspective, from where it seems to me that beauty is (finally) becoming more pro-body and genuinely more sustainable. Consumer want to use beauty products to feel good and not because they are told to look a certain way. At the same time they want to use beauty products without having to worry about where the ingredients are coming from and whether they are safe to use.