Today we’d like to introduce you to David Ince.
Hi David, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
Beard oils are something that I had been experimenting with for a while. The stuff you buy off the shelf just didn’t work for me. It left my beard feeling greasy and irritated. So, I decided to take matters into my own hands and create what I wanted myself: Man Beard Co.
My goal was to make an affordable product that works well, smells great, and looks great when it’s done! So, I sat down and started doing some research on the different carrier oils and then finally came up with a formula that really worked for me – light in your beard, dry feeling throughout the day while still keeping my beard hydrated and moisturized, healthy, but most importantly helping to alleviate the irritation that I was having. Fast forward a few months and some friends convinced me that I needed to start selling it and here we are, closing in on four years in business, and couldn’t be happier. While we aren’t the biggest brand out there we are certainly growing. I was able to turn an idea into a side hustle, into now my full-time job traveling all over the country telling folks about Man Beard Co.
We have an amazing team of 14 Local, National, and World Champion Beard Competitors who through their efforts have helped us raise money for some great charities that mean a lot to them and to me. We are also looking to host our very first Beard Competition next year as well as starting our own scholarship fund, the Man Beard Future Heroes Fund. Our goal is to help kids within the JROTC program who have the abilities but not the money get that chance to go to college and earn a commission.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It’s been a complete roller coaster ride. We’ve definitely had our ups and downs along the way. At the end of 2019, I ended up leaving the company that I was working for and after discussing it with the family decided it was time to go full-time in Man Beard Co. Fast forward three months, and we enter into a pandemic that would end up shutting down most of the country. So with nothing else, it was time to figure out how to get through it as best we can and come up with creative ways to keep the business going. From postal slowdowns, to supply chain disruptions, we have dealt with it all and figured out a way through it. Thankfully we were able to do that, and we owe that to our awesome team and customers.
The positives though is the amazing community that I have met through this company and through the competitive bearding community. Men, women, and even kids bend over backward to help out others in their community. Facial hair clubs like the Hairy Hooligans out of Corpus Christi, Louisiana and North Texas Beard MOBB, Central Texas Beard and Mustache Club, Wicked Whiskers Facial Hair Club up in Missouri, The Bearded Monkey Social Club in Kansas and so many more.
These groups of Bearded Men, Whiskerinas (women who create beards and compete), and Whisker Kids have raised probably over $50,000 in the last year for various charities and it’s amazing to watch and be a part of.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
The biggest thing that sets us apart from the other beard oil brands on the market is our scent profiles. We blend all of our own scents and create scents based on what we like. We wanted “manly” scents that elicited memories or feelings when you wore them. In our Woodshop for instance we wanted to remind people of working in their dad’s or grand-dad woodshop.
That’s one of the things that I’m most proud of when it comes to the brand. We really do work hard to make sure that those scents make us stand apart from the other brands.
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
That’s a tough question because success is so different to so many people. Success for me I guess, would be that we are able to continue to grow Man Beard and be able to support more of the charities that we support through the beard competitions and the sales from our beard competitors.
It’s all about giving back for us and bringing awareness to the various causes that we and my team find important. So, I guess that’s success for me.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: www.manbeardco.com
- Instagram: @manbeardco
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/manbeardco
