Our Mission

At Grüner Wellness, our mission is to create luxurious, ethically sourced, and research-driven skincare and lifestyle products that elevate the discourse around men's wellness.

Who is Grüner?

Grüner Wellness was founded by husband and wife team Frank Bozzo and Alexandra Lavorato, during the COVID-19 lockdown. Together, we've lived on 2 continents, traveled to 20+ countries, started 3 businesses, written 2 books, and watched over 1,000 hours of Frasier.

 

Our Motivations

 We started Grüner for 4 reasons:

1. We love wellness - If there's a new skincare product, nutritional supplement, or mindfulness technique, odds are we've tried it. As frequent travelers, and world class busy people, we're always on the lookout for ways to add balance to our daily routines and improve our overall well being. We're also huge nerds who enjoy reading endless PubMed articles to ensure that our practices are backed up by good science. 
   
2. We saw a gap - We began to notice that, while most - if not all - wellness practices and products are unisex in nature, they were primarily being marketed toward a feminine audience. We realized that the few products that were marketed to men, were done so in ways that demeaned their customer's intelligence and advanced the harmful stereotype that men aren't supposed to care about their own wellness (more on this below). We also noticed that, across the board, there was a lack of transparency in most wellness products. It's often unclear what a product contains, why it contains those things, and, while many products make strong claims, we rarely saw scientific data on the product's efficacy. Most products hide behind proprietary formulations and mile long ingredient lists.
   
3. We knew we could do it better - We were perhaps a little arrogant, and most definitely a bit naive, but we had a sense that we could develop and market wellness products, primarily to a masculine audience, that were clean, research-backed, transparent, and luxurious -- with the long term mission of advancing the discourse on men's wellness writ large. We had successfully launched several businesses in the past, but this felt different. This was something we were truly passionate about.
   
4. We had time on our hands - They say necessity is the mother of invention, but we'd argue that boredom is a strong contender. While trapped in our home during the COVID-19 quarantine, we started to feel a strong need to create something new. We had been playing around with the formulation for what would become Grüner's first product: Evening Ritual Oil, and were ecstatic with the results. So, driven by a bit of cabin fever, we jumped in with both feet and launched our company.

Want to know more? Interested in joining our team? Drop us a line at hello@gruner.shop

  

 

Why did we call it Grüner?

Grüner means greener in German. Alex and I are both passionate about green living, and our aesthetic vision for the company was, from the beginning, rooted in the deep, verdant landscapes of the Austrian countryside.

But, for me, the name runs deeper than its literal translation, back to when I turned 21, in rural Vermont, and tried to get all my friends to participate in an overly complicated wine club that I had devised. The first, and sadly only, varietal that we discussed was a Grüner Veltliner. I can still remember sending out tasting notes on a group thread, to varying degrees of disinterest and strained nicety. (To be fair to my friends, they had to put up with this sort of thing a lot.)

Grüner is an homage to that aspiration. 

 

What is "Men's Wellness"?

Wellness is not a gendered concept.

So, why do we focus on men's wellness? Because society has historically dictated that, to be "manly" one must eschew concepts like self-care. As a result, the leading men's wellness brands sell pills for erectile dysfunction and hair loss, and are often marketed with a heavy dose of self-deprecation, instead of promoting genuine health and happiness through thoughtful investments in one's well-being.

Most marketing geared toward men seems to presuppose that we don't care about ourselves.. which has not been our experience. We resent companies that stick a generic product in a blue bottle and call it a 6-in-1 face, body, hair, toothpaste, car, and carpet wash. We make products for men that care about themselves.

To be clear, nothing we make, or will ever make, is only for men. Our intention is to make, and source, the best possible products for a masculine, but inclusive, audience.

Designed for Humans. Curated for Men.