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The co-owners of Estuary Essentials were inspired to start researching and making products mainly by the cost and suspect ingredients in Carl’s beard care products from store-bought brands. Carl has kept a beard for most of his adult life, and has become very familiar with beard care routines. He shopped around for the best products on the market, and he did find some pretty good ones. But something was still a bit off about what he was buying. The prices felt like they were higher than they should be, maybe because some guys will pay more for the hygiene level. Some of the ingredients in the products were questionable as well – for instance, a few brands put alcohol into their beard oil, which would obviously be drying rather than hydrating. We deep-dive into research on our ingredients, formulate our products, test our products on ourselves, and calculate prices based on the costs that go into the products. By and large, our prices match or even beat mainstream brands, and our products bring people back again and again.
Now that we have surpassed our first year of production, we thought it would be a great time to showcase the results of Carl’s beard from using only our own beard care products.
Carl’s Beard Care Journey in Photos
May 2024
This was about two months before we started making our own products.
July 2024
In July of 2024, we made our first experimental product: Beard Oil with the Harmony Atoll scent. Carl began using this as well as the subsequent matching Beard Butter and Bead Balm.
July 2025
A year after we began making our beard care products, Carl’s beard has nearly doubled in length with virtually no split ends, thinning, or scraggly parts.
Carl’s Beard Care Routine
The beard care routine may vary from person to person; Carl is sharing his routine as a baseline. Carl uses the Beard Oils, Beard Butters, and Beard Balms by Estuary Essentials. You can read about the ingredients in each product on their listing page, and you can also check out our Ingredient Philosophy page. Though Carl rotates through the different scents for each product, he always uses the same scent across the different products at any one time (he finds that blending the different scents isn’t as pleasant). After showering in the morning, Carl gently towel-dries his beard. After that he applies the beard oil and combs it in. He’ll let the beard oil set and soak in for 5 to 10 minutes, and then he’ll apply beard balm and comb the beard to shape it. As you can see here in the most recent photo, the beard balm does a great job controlling the direction of the beard hair without looking too waxy. In the evening before bed, Carl will reapply beard oil. After waiting for about 5 minutes, he’ll apply beard butter as an overnight leave-in conditioner.
A Testament to Making Products We Believe In
We stand strongly behind our products, and as we’ve said elsewhere: We won’t use any ingredients on you and your family that we wouldn’t use on ourselves and our family. We test our products on ourselves before we ask our close friends and family to test the products and give us feedback. We may go back to the drawing board a dozen times, but it’s always worth it to bring only the best products to market.