After spending much of its first year quietly establishing its assortment and technology, gen Z men’s personal care marketplace Hale is ready to introduce itself to a bigger audience.

Backed by Bonobos founder Andy Dunn and founded by Sam Burke, former chief of staff at Pie, the social networking app Dunn launched in 2020, Hale aims to take the guesswork out of men’s personal care by providing a guided experience built around 24 hair and skin archetypes that detail their characteristics, ingredients to seek out or avoid and a recommended routine. Customers must complete hair and skin assessments to be matched on the platform, and for each routine, the website generally narrows the assortment to two or three products.

Hale’s core assortment contains about 60 emerging brands across skincare, haircare, body care, beard care, oral care and fragrance, including Highland Hair, Jack Henry, Noun Naturals, Mudita Earth, Brightside Style, Apostle, Nulastin and Huron. Shoppers can use Hale’s product scanner feature that pulls from a database of tens of thousands of products, allowing them to research ingredients and browse reviews from other sites. After completing a personal assessment, Hale determines whether a product is suited to a shopper’s individual hair or skin profile.

Burke, who studied biomedical and mechanical engineering before joining Pie, began forming the concept by surveying men to understand their purchasing behavior. “The men’s care market is in better shape than it’s ever been, real brands, real ingredients, real money flooding into the space but it got harder to shop, not easier,” he says. “Nobody’s teaching guys how any of it works. We built Hale because that’s the only thing the category still doesn’t have. There’s never been a space like this before, actually built for men.”

An early supporter, Dunn sees men’s personal care today as similar to men’s apparel when he started Bonobos roughly two decades ago, with changing cultural attitudes and spending habits creating an opening for a new kind of company. He believes Hale’s multi-brand model gives it substantially more runway than a standalone grooming brand as men increase personal care spending. Roughly $100,000 of Hale’s approximately $300,000 friends-and-family round came from Dunn personally and Red Swan Ventures, the early-stage investment firm he co-founded with former Bonobos chief of staff Dave Eisenberg that’s backed Harry’s, Hinge, Warby Parker and SeatGeek.

“When you’re building a multi-brand marketplace or retailer, you can build Etsy or Wayfair or Faire. You can just be much bigger if you crack it,” says Dunn. “If we can go capture even a third of the annual spend for the target customer or even half at some point…I think we can build a billion-dollar to $2 billion revenue business here, but the product’s going to iterate. It takes time to have something click in…but I believe in Sam to figure it out.”

Hale is hardly alone in recognizing the men’s personal care opportunity and developing a digital destination for it, though. Launched last year, The 2nd carries a curated assortment of men’s skincare, haircare and grooming brands. British e-tailer Kleonne is similarly positioned around simplifying men’s routines and recommending products.

The online newcomers are chasing an expanding opportunity driven primarily by younger men. The global men’s personal care market reached an estimated $44.72 billion in 2025 and is expected to nearly hit $49 billion this year, according to Fortune Business Insights. The firm projects the market will advance by a compound annual growth rate of 9.24% to reach $99.09 billion by 2034. Mintel found 68% of American gen Z men used facial skincare in 2024, up from 42% in 2022, and 42% of men ages 18 to 34 purchased premium facial moisturizers over mass alternatives. Their growing engagement with beauty has coincided with the rise of “looksmaxxing,” a social media trend centered on maximizing physical appearance through everything from skincare and grooming to fitness. 

Burke describes Hale’s core shopper as a 25- to 34-year-old man who is actively stepping up his routine but hasn’t yet become versed in beauty lingo. The average order value for early users on Hale has climbed from about $47 to $78 with site updates, and 18% to 20% of customers over the last two months have been returning shoppers. While Hale also gathers information from users through tools like its chatbot, search history and product scanner, customers completing its assessment are five times more likely to add a product to cart than visitors landing directly on its homepage. 

Hale has assembled a medical advisory board that includes toxicologist Augustine K. Agyekum, who previously helped develop Beautycounter’s product safety standards and serves as an adviser to Dieux. The board informs Hale’s product vetting, ingredient standards and personalization technology. The decision to add medical oversight came directly from consumer research, which showed that men need greater validation before trying unfamiliar products and brands.

“The two biggest drivers for men when they were purchasing products were, does it work for people like me? And what does the data say?” explains Burke. “If you can answer those two questions for men, the purchase becomes way more justifiable on their end.”

Hale plans to develop its own standards for men’s personal care next year. Burke envisions it in two tiers: “Hale Accepted,” which will cover documentation around clinical testing, compliance and regulation, and a more stringent “Hale Verified” designation that encompasses independent review of product claims by its medical board.

To generate broader awareness, Hale will turn to the people teaching men how to groom online. Targeted for rollout in late September or October, it will launch its own affiliate platform where creators, barbers, dermatologists, clinicians and stylists have digital storefronts featuring products and routines they recommend to their audiences.. Affiliates are expected to earn 15% commission on purchases made on Hale.

Burke’s ambitions for Hale extend offline to branded brick-and-mortar stores, and he views the next 12 to 18 months as a period to further refine the technology and amass the community necessary to support a physical retail rollout. “I want to be in all the major cities that are around the U.S. with a physical presence where a guy can walk by, walk in, see other guys here, go walk the shelves and explore and actually find products that work for them,” he says. “That’s what I want to build.”