Unlearning Excess: Why I Built Gntl

There's a moment in every product developer's journey when the entire landscape of an industry crystallizes into a singular, uncomfortable truth. For me, that moment arrived not in a boardroom or during a product launch, but in the quiet intimacy of my own bathroom, surrounded by the archaeological evidence of beauty's endless consumption.

The Backstage of Beauty

My career has been a journey through the intricate machinery of beauty. At multinationals and indie start-ups, I learned the art of strategic product development. With celebrity and influencer beauty lines, I explored the intersection of celebrity, authenticity, and consumer desire. Countless products in Sephora, Ulta, and Target became my curriculum, each launch a complex negotiation between innovation and market expectation.

But something was fundamentally broken.

The Economics of Excess

Every shelf, every beauty store became a monument to manufactured complexity. Skincare transformed from a ritual of care to an exercise in perpetual consumption. We weren't developing solutions; we were engineering dependencies.

Imagine the environmental calculus: millions of half-used products. Endless packaging. Complicated routines that promised transformation but delivered only momentary hope. The beauty industry doesn't sell products. It sells the persistent illusion of becoming.

A Radical Reimagining

Gntl emerged from a simple, profound question: What if less is not just more—but everything?

Our singular product, Skin Wash, is a philosophical statement disguised as a cleanser. It's not about creating another option in an endless marketplace. It's about dismantling the very logic of options.

The Experiential Luxury of Simplicity

Luxury is not about complexity. It's about intentionality. About creating space—both physical and psychological—for genuine care.

When I designed Gntl, I wasn't just developing a product. I was performing a kind of cultural resistance. Each ingredient, each design choice became an argument against the industry's fundamental premise: that more products equal better care.

The Subtle Politics of Care

Every time someone uses our Skin Wash, they're making a choice. A choice to resist the constant bombardment of marketing. A choice to trust their body's inherent intelligence. A choice to create space instead of filling it.

All You Need is Less is not a marketing slogan. It's an invitation to a different way of existing.

Naming the Unnameable

Why "Gntl"? Because gentleness is not weakness. It's the most sophisticated form of strength. A deliberate softening. A resistance to the aggressive, solution-driven narratives of contemporary skincare.

In removing the vowels, we create a kind of linguistic minimalism. An invitation to pause. To reconsider. To breathe.

This is more than a product. This is a movement.

Welcome to the future of care.

— Sydney Dake

Founder, Gntl