Shaun O’Hollaren and Riley Egan, the founders of Strip Makeup, want to wipe the slate clean on cleansing. The pair — originally brought together by the entertainment industry (O’Hollaren, who acts as the company’s COO, was a talent manager; Egan, who is the firm’s CEO, was an actor) — share the belief that the products consumers are using to remove makeup and wash skin are dehydrating, disruptive to pH levels, and strip it of essential nutrients, including healthy oils, fats, and vitamins.

Yes, they’re two men in a market that largely targets women, but the partners are happy to address the elephant in the room. “We were very, very thoughtful in the process, knowing that could be an issue,” O’Hollaren said. “Sometimes it takes an outsider to ask, ‘Why is that what you’ve accepted as regular?’” Egan added.

Still, at the beginning of the pandemic, when O’Hollaren, who transitioned from management to makeup years earlier with stints at The BrowGal, The Original MakeUp Eraser, and Sugarbear, approached his old buddy about starting a company centered on cleansers that remove makeup and impurities from skin and leave it in better condition afterward, Egan said, “that’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.” He was incredulous that such a product didn’t already exist.

But after a casual survey of the women in his life, Egan said, “I was shocked. For every 10 women I talked to, one or two had a cleanser they liked, another two or three were ambivalent, and five actively disliked the category.” It was clear that a need gap existed. Plus, as a former actor who had his makeup done many times, Egan was familiar with the ravages of cleansing. “It wrecked my skin.”

So, after nearly three years of product development, Strip Makeup was born with four skin care-forward cleansing products priced from $15 to $49: Premium Cotton Cleansing Wipes, Reusable Cleansing Wipes, Whipped Coconut Makeup Remover, and Caviar Jelly Makeup Remover. The products are sold through the brand’s website, as well as on Amazon, and in Urban Outfitters. The partners are eyeing expansion into Nordstrom in Q1.

As for who should use each cleanser, Egan said, “Because they work in the same way, users tend to choose by weight and feel rather than what skin care concern they hope to address.” However, the water-based Caviar Jelly Makeup Remover formula may appeal more to those with mature skin, while the (non-comedogenic) oil-based Whipped Coconut Makeup Remover formula may appeal more to those with normal to dry skin. That said, both cleansers were tested on all skin types and performed equally well. They are also unisex and indicated for makeup and non-makeup users alike.

In addition to the predictable hurdles a startup faces (funding, finding a lab that can execute a vision without compromises, etc.), O’Hollaren and Egan said that one of their biggest challenges has been battling the conventional wisdom to “not spend money on your cleanser since all the benefits go down the drain when you rinse it off.” Although they won’t disclose exactly how the cleansers are able to deposit ingredients like antioxidants, hyaluronic acid, collagen peptides, retinoic acid, vitamins, micronutrients, and fatty acids onto skin at the same time as they melt off makeup, extensive clinical trials have yielded overwhelmingly positive results. Some highlights: After two weeks of testing, 100% of test subjects agreed that their skin did not feel irritated; 97% saw an increased glow, and 73% experienced an increase in moisture.

Of how the sausage gets made, Egan said, “Sean [O’Hollaren] has a background in chemistry and he basically reverse engineered the whole process,” so that not only do the cleansers do no harm, they also add efficacy. For example, the Caviar Jelly Makeup Remover — entirely vegan despite its striking resemblance to the kind of caviar you might find on blinis topped with crème fraîche — features lipid- and nutrient-dense caviar bubbles designed with biphasic, microfluidic technology developed at Harvard, which burst, delivering powerful skin care actives like hyaluronic acid, collagen peptides, and vitamin C.

In the self-funded line’s first year, the company shipped over 120,000 units of product to customers in November/December alone. The Whipped Coconut Makeup Remover won the Allure Best of Clean Beauty Award. And in Q3, the company sold over 10,000 units of Caviar Cleanser, a 600% increase from the previous quarter. According to industry sourced Strip Makeup generates between $1 million and $5 million annually.

So, what does success look like for the founders of Strip Makeup? “Obviously we’d love to build this into a business that puts food on the table,” Egan said. “But at the end of the day, what keeps us going is changing how people look and feel about themselves in a positive way.”

Expect more innovations from the team, including an in-shower and an on-the-go product, to join the rest of the line early this year.