Meet Nate Warden, the Face Behind poth
Sean & Val sat down with Nate Warden, founder of poth, a gay-owned, Brooklyn-based skincare company.
S&V: Tell us about yourself.
Nate: Where to begin? I'm Nate, born and raised in Cincinnati. This is my second time living in New York. I previously lived in Manhattan for five or six years in my late 20s before leaving to take a bit of a break. I moved back two years ago and live happily in Brooklyn with my boyfriend and my dog (a rescue Doberman who just turned 6).
S&V: What inspired you to create poth?
Nate: There were really three things that all converged that led me to start the brand. In 2021, I took a job in the e-commerce space. Over the next four or five years I learned a ton, leading me to a place where I felt like I had learned all of the skills to start my own brand and run it myself. The second was this growing desire to work for myself. And as I was looking for the kind of brand that I might want to own and operate myself, I turned to my own experience as a skin care consumer. In my own life, I had noticed this stark contrast between the minimalist but effective skincare routine my own dermatologist had recommended to me years ago versus the complex and fad-driven ecosystem in the beauty industry. I wanted to start a brand that would go against the status quo.
S&V: What does self-care mean to you?
Nate: This is a really interesting question that I probably would not have thought to include in the interview. Some of the self-care rituals that commonly come up, I find quite tedious. I think this is another reason that led me to want to start a brand like poth that was really focused on stripping down the overwhelming task of skin care into truly just the essentials. For me, self-care is really more about making sure that your intentions and your actions are aligned. You can apply that at the micro level to your day-to-day choices or at the macro level to how you're living your life.
S&V: As an LGBTQ+ founder, what does it mean to build something that's yours?
Nate: I mentioned that one of the reasons for starting my own brand was a desire to work for myself. We don't need to get too deep here, but I do think there's a lot to be said for the experience of being a queer person or growing up in a world that wasn't welcoming. I reached a point in my early to mid-30s where I was just no longer interested in trying to be something I wasn't in order to make my career more successful.
S&V: How did you approach developing the product line?
Nate: At poth, we say "simple skin care, beautifully made." Skincare isn't one size fits all. I think it's great that there's a large market of options for consumers to choose from, but the reality is most people have the same everyday concerns about youthful-looking skin. The reality is there are only a handful of active ingredients that are proven to be effective with continued use. This is core to how we develop products at poth. I only want to sell simple products that have been elevated in a couple ways, and I only want to focus on active ingredients that have been super well researched and proven effective, preferably in medical journals (not small brand-funded studies designed to produce marketing claims).
S&V: What do you hope people experience when they use poth?
Nate: What I hear from customers all the time is that they love the look and feel of the brand and that the quality of the products is really great. I think as long as those two things remain true, we are on the right track.
S&V: What excites you most about where poth is heading?
Nate: For the last two years, it has really been a labor of love. We're still a small business and we're not quite profitable yet, but my hope is that by the end of the year we cross that line so that the business can start to grow more. Just in the last few months, we've really started to pick up the momentum, and I think it's very exciting.
You can now purchase clear gel spf 50 & depuffing coffee bean + green tea eye cream on the Sean & Val store, and be sure to check out poth’s full product lineup.
