How Far Can Body Care Go?

Roger Ein’s idea occurred to him in the shower, as they often do.

Ein, a consumer goods entrepreneur and interior designer in Los Angeles, was rinsing off with a lover, who he watched apply a luxurious facial moisturiser to the skin on his butt — the moment that inspired his bodycare brand Buttface, which officially launches on Tuesday morning. The line will be sold directly on Buttface.com and will advertise on Pornhub.

“He said, ‘They don’t make this stuff for the butt,’” Ein told The Business of Beauty. He is correct, sort of. One could argue that the swelling global body care market — estimated to be worth over $25 billion in 2026, according to market research firm Euromonitor International — caters more than enough to human skin from the chest down. But Buttface, and a number of new brands, hope that the standard can be raised by lowering its aim.

Buttface’s proposition, expressed in a three-step “Protocol” including an exfoliant and “BBL” moisturiser, incorporates ingredients typically found in facial skincare like ceramides and peptides but targeted for rear territory. Used as a routine, the products address inflammatory skin conditions like acne and keratosis pilaris and provide benefits like “lifting.”

If the brand name is audacious,its positioning is not. Recent body care launches have manifested destiny on so-called “facial-grade” ingredients below the neckline, with brands like Nécessaire and Soft Services minting retinols for the body and hand. Megababe, the purveyor of the modern anti-chafe stick, has expanded into a range of butt-specific products; their first, a glycolic acid “Le Tush” mask, came out in 2020, while the latest, a hemorrhoid cream called Butt Stuff, launched in fall 2024.

Katie Sturino, Megababe’s founder, said she launched into butt care after her customers wrote to her asking for a butt acne solution. When Le Tush launched, “People thought it was crazy,” she remembered. Then it started selling. The Bidet Bar, an intimate cleanser that launched last year, and Butt Stuff are now top sellers for the brand, with the latter arriving in a major retailer next month, Sturino added.

Sol de Janeiro, Sephora’s number one brand in the category, became a case study-level success for its caffeinated Bum Bum Cream, which encouraged users to celebrate their bodies while pursuing rear lifting and firming. Learning from its example, Sephora was bullish on the category as recently as last year.

For all its tailwinds, butt care faces unique challenges, like a rising political climate at odds with the subcategory’s inherent sex-positivity. The body care boom may too be headed for a natural bust, as economic uncertainty foments.

“People are going to be choosier with their personal care,” Sturino said. “When people look at body products, they’re going to want to see necessities.”

Beyond Body Care

Ein insists that, despite the brand’s origin story, he’s not trying to sexualise the beauty market.

But, well, doing so is inevitable. Other labels in the so-called “butt care” category are marketed, with varying levels of subtlety, toward people who have anal sex. While Buttface isn’t using that approach exactly, Ein explained how Meta’s conservative standards toward advertising inspired the brand to incorporate “adult tube sites” like Pornhub and Xtube, which are serviced by the CPM network Traffic Junky, into its marketing strategy. These sites have “really evolved in their marketing tools,” he said; Pornhub, for one, has Tiktok-like “Shorties” that will lend themselves to content of creators using Buttface, alongside banner ads.

The brand hopes to balance sex with sensibility by convincing consumers of its benefits, which is when it begins to mimic skincare brands; its $42 “BBL firming cream” is made with a sweet almond oil-derived peptide that comes with its own “immediate lift” claim.

“A lot of firming creams are centered around caffeine, which is more of a marketing ingredient, in my opinion,” Ein said. “We really wanted to find the future of skin technology.”

This is no offence to Sol de Janeiro, whose recent marketing efforts included a bikini-filled ad for their Bum Bum Cream that beamed into NYC subway cars throughout the winter. But enhancing efficacy and pushing innovation, even toward unlikely territories, is driving the category forward.

Sturino said she develops new formulas based on consumer needs, be it a glycolic acid butt acne mask or a design-friendly twist on Preparation H. (Her customers “were tired of a crusty old product that your grandpa has in his drawer,” she said.)

Ein is a product developer, who has helped design for cannabis brand Grassdoor and outdoor label Agile Sportswear. He took no outside investment, and estimates he sunk about $300,000 into Buttface. While some Asian markets have already begun to produce sheet masks for the area, the brand’s Taiwanese manufacturers of its hydrogel butt mask allegedly marveled at the size of the American rear, Ein said.

On social media, the demand for butt care may only sound like a joke. Redditors have traded tips for years on how to treat issues like hyperpigmentation or inflammation like acne specific to the region. “The skin there is delicate, but it doesn’t get the same attention as hands/faces so it often winds up breaking out,” wrote one user on r/SkincareAddiction in late April, in a comment with over a thousand upvotes. (They continued: “The Ordinary glycolic acid also seems to help my assne.”)

While the brand is sold online for now Ein hopes to engage wholesale retailers this year. “Once people start to form a new skincare habit,” he said, “the results are going to stand for themselves.”

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