It is the rare object that we find on the shelves of Supply of tractors and in the pages of Vogue. And now Bag balma moisturizer originally designed to treat chapped cow udders, is a trending beauty product among TikTok’s Gen Z “skinfluencers.”
Social media personality Alix Earle swears by it as a remedy for dry skin and dry lips. Others have recommended Bag Balm as an alternative to Vaseline to counter the trend of “slugging” or covering the entire face before going to bed to seal in moisture.
“I attracted so many friends,” said Madison Bailey28-year-old social media strategist for the beauty industry who has posted about the wonders of Bag Balm.
Having learned about Bag Balm from her mother, Ms. Bailey keeps an 8-ounce can in her bathroom and a 1-ounce mini can in her purse. “You don’t need much when you’re smacking it in your face,” she said, adding that the cost (about $11 for the 8-ounce size) makes it economical.
Bag Balm, a concoction including petroleum jelly and lanolin, has been made in a small Vermont town for 125 years. From the start, the instructions on the green square box clearly stated its intended use: “For sore teats and hard milkers, apply the balm one hour before evening milking and immediately after morning milking.” The label warned: “For veterinary use only.”
Over time, farming families found other applications for the ointment, using it to treat everything from cuts and burns to chapped lips, saddle sores, and needle pricks on quilters’ fingers. Little by little, its ability to soften the skin made it a rural beauty secret, adopted by people who had never seen the inside of a barn.
The actress Raquel Welch Credited a Bag Balm Diet before bed for her ageless skin. In 1999, Canadian country music star Shania Twain, then at the height of her fame and spokesperson for Revlon, mentioned Bag Balm in an interview with the London Telegraph, saying: “When I fly a lot and my skin is really dry, I rub it on my face and hair and leave it there all day. » Sales soared.
Today, the Vermont-based company behind Bag Balm is figuring out how to market itself in the digital world while staying true to its folk heritage.
Box springs and dog paws
Bag Balm is manufactured, as it has been for over a century, in Lyndonville, Vermont, population 1,136. In this part of the country, known as the Northeast Kingdom, winters are long, cold and snowy, and cowhide takes a beating.
In 1899, John L. Norris, a dairy farmer, purchased the rights to the formula from a pharmacist in a nearby town, Wells River, and began selling Bag Balm through his Dairy Association company. Other products marketed by Mr Norris included a horse hoof softener, a cow teat dilator and a leather cleaner and conditioner, Tackmaster.
In the 1960s, when Mr. Norris’s son, John L. Norris Jr.ran the company – advertisements for Bag Balm promoted its “also use at home for cuts, chapped and burns.”
A Wall Street Journal article from October 23, 1969 reported that people were finding all sorts of uses for the balm: a Marine in Vietnam used Bag Balm to lubricate a 105-millimeter howitzer; a Texas dentist claimed it cured his psoriasis; one Maine woman said it silenced squeaky box springs.
Today, Bag Balm is used, among other things, against cycling irritations, sunburn, diaper rash, pimples, bedsores and the care of nails and cuticles. Dog owners put it on their puppy’s paws. In a recent fan letter to the company, a woman wrote that her 84-year-old father had long used Bag Balm for auto repairs. He calls it “the juice.”
“Our brand philosophy is simplicity and versatility,” said Libby Parent, 36-year-old president of Vermont’s Original Bag Balm, as the company is now called.
As Ms. Parent explained while sitting in a Mexican cafe in downtown Lyndonville, which until a few years ago was the Bag Balm factory, the Norris family sold the business to private equity investors in 2014. Under new management, the text on the box read: Modified to remove references to “sore teats” and to highlight the benefits of Bag Balm for humans.
The company also introduced a lip moisturizer, soap, and exfoliating body wash, and began offering its salve in a travel-friendly plastic tube in addition to the classic green box. In 2015, Walmart stores began selling Bag Balm.
“Bag Balm is not the most intuitive brand name,” Ms. Parent said. “We had to define the product for people.”
However, agricultural associations in Bag Balm still deactivate some of them.
“Some people said, ‘I use this on my dogs, I’m not going to put this on my face,'” said Faith Allison, 23, describing the mixed reviews she received after post a video on TikTok in which she was shown hitting with Bag Balm.
Other commenters complained about the smell, which has been compared to that of turpentine. Ms. Allison, a law student in Michigan, made a response video in which she and her sister gave their opinions. “We thought it smelled like a doctor’s office,” she said.
Nonetheless, many things about the ointment remain unchanged, including how it is made. Just up the street from the old factory is the current factory – a squat building with gray vinyl walls, with a large replica of a green tin can plastered across the facade.
Make the dough
Although the healing powers of Bag Balm seem mysterious, the manufacturing process is quite simple.
Mark Perkins, the production manager, is one of seven employees who produce about 9,000 8-ounce cans a day. Mr. Perkins, 47, went to work for Bag Balm in 1997, he said, because his family’s small dairy farm could not support his father and himself. His son, Logan, 19, recently joined him at the factory.
Mr. Perkins stood in front of a 55-gallon drum of lanolin, a wax secreted by the sebaceous gland of sheep. Lanolin is the soothing element that sets Bag Balm apart from regular Vaseline and helps give the product its distinctive smell. Inside the barrel, the substance had the consistency and color of caramel. The workers shovel it.
Lanolin and four other ingredients – petroleum jelly, paraffin, water and hydroxyquinoline sulfate, an antiseptic – are heated in a liquid and mixed in steel vats. Two filling nozzles project the hot liquid into cans which descend on a conveyor belt. As the cans snake down the production line, the liquid cools and hardens into a thick, yellow, oil-like paste.
Despite its growing popularity as a human face cream, about 10 percent of sales still come from farmers like Mindy McGrew and her husband, Kyle, who run a holistic business. dairy farm near Lincoln, Neb.
A first-generation farmer, Ms McGrew, 45, said she heard about Bag Balm from her mother-in-law, who grew up on a farm. She loves that it doesn’t contain artificial colors or fragrances.
“It’s really a staple for a lot of families,” said Ms. McGrew, who puts Bag Balm on her cows’ udders in winter to protect them from frostbite and on their tails in summer to soothe fly bites. . “Grandma had it at her house, and then mom had it at her house.”
That history passed down from generation to generation has made the brand cautious about changing its business strategy, said Ms. Parent, the company’s president. Bag Balm is unlikely to grow on the scale of, say, Burt’s Bees, which sells more than 500 products. Just two years ago, after slugging videos went viral, the brand I thought about creating a TikTok account.
“We were introduced to the farm by our long-time users,” Parent said. “So to be in Vogue, they might think, ‘That’s not my bag balm.’”
She added: “We have something unique – why disrupt it? »
