Some brands start in labs. Others start in boardrooms. Flewd started in a New York City kitchen, with Ziploc bags, late nights, and a founder who was completely burnt out and couldn’t find anything that actually worked.
Before Flewd reached more than 350,000 customers, Michael Lupo was behind the scenes at some of the biggest beauty brands, learning how to build and market products. What he couldn’t find was something that actually helped him feel better. So he went deep, spending months studying the science of stress, absorption, and how the body really responds under pressure.
The first version of Flewd wasn’t polished. It was a homemade formula sent out in Ziploc bags to friends and family, all focused on one thing: whether they could actually feel a shift.
What started as a personal experiment has since grown into a category of its own, blending real formulation science with a more approachable take on stress. Ahead, Michael shares how it all came together and what’s next.
In Conversation with Michael Lupo
He Went From Ziploc Bags in His Kitchen to 350,000 Customers. Inside Flewd You spent years inside major beauty brands before launching Flewd. What did you see behind the scenes that shaped how you approached building your own product? I started my career at L’Oréal as a brand marketing consultant. At that time, what was unique about L’Oreal at that time was that the brand and product development teams were one singular team. It wasn’t a company where the people who created the formulas were entirely separate from the people marketing the formulas, so I learned both sides. It was an incredible training ground for learning how to translate real product science into clear messaging and visual storytelling. I also learned a lot about product marketing claims, and the rules around highlighting different ingredients on labels and what is marketable.
And after L’Oreal, I continued to work at proof-driven brands helping to meet unmet needs in the market. For example, Carol’s Daughter is an incredible example of a brand that paved the way for an entire category. We had to actually educate manufacturers on the formulas we wanted created that had never been done before.
So I learned a ton, an absolutely insane amount, about everything from manufacturing to marketing to formulating. But I also kept receiving common feedback that my ideas were just a bit too out there, too “unproven”. So when I had the opportunity to create something on my own, I finally had the chance to put everything I had learned about to work, in a way that was as extra as my real personality and unusual ideas. That’s where Flewd comes in, and why I think it’s so special. Our formulas really do help people dealing with real issues, many of the same issues that I experienced on my own while feeling incredibly burnt out from everyday life like insomnia, fatigue, aches and anxiety, but nothing about the brand is super clinical or boring – it’s fun and approachable and surprising.
Take us back to the Ziploc bag phase. What were those early formulas like and what were you trying to solve that you couldn’t find on the market? Well for years I had experienced burnout. I was pretty much always working, always running on empty, and feeling like that was the definition of success. If everyone around me who was also successful was super stressed out, I figured that was just what it took. I spent a ton of my own money on things like gummies, meditation apps, and drink mixes that really never helped me feel any better. Then once I finally left my last job, I had an actual panic attack situation. And that was what it took for me to have the idea for Flewd.
In the very early days, I spent months and months at the library reading science journals. I taught myself all about the science of stress, and the actual chemical reaction that happens in our bodies when we are attacked by stress signals on an everyday basis (which most of us are). I researched topics like absorption and even ancient hot springs, which is what first led me to the idea for a stress solution rooted in the bath. Ultimately, this led me to learnings about magnesium, a star ingredient most of us do not have enough of us, and the idea for a bath soak that could deliver on three key principles to allow the formula to actually absorb into the body: the molecule must be small enough to pass through the skin barrier, it must be water-soluble, and there needs to be enough soak time for absorption to happen.
I developed Flewd’s first formula – ache erasing – and put it into a Ziploc bag. I asked friends and family members to be testers. I sent them the ziploc bags without telling them what they were supposed to feel or what is was really intended for. In the least weird way, I would sit on the phone with them during their bath until I would hear over and over again what I wanted to hear, which was that often within 8-10 minutes they felt a total wave of calm. We actually do all of our initial testing this way still!
You spent years decoding scientific research on stress. What were the biggest misconceptions you uncovered about how we treat stress today? I think the idea that any brand can have just one magic “stress” product, and have that product work for the majority of people is flawed. That would mean we all experience stress in the same way, and we don’t. It’s like saying that one skin serum, or one shampoo, would work for all of us, and we know that’s not true. Stress is a massive umbrella that shows up differently for each of us, and so there should be personalization within the category.
You went from making soaks in your kitchen to reaching over 350,000 customers. What was the hardest phase of that transition that people don’t see? I’m happy to say that Flewd is successful. We increase our sales and customer base every year, with real reviews from people who feel genuinely supported by what we’re doing. We are a super small team of 4 people and a couple of freelancers and agency partners, and we were a bootstrapped baby from the beginning. But one of the realities of being a small, independent brand in a sea of massive beauty companies is that we can be deprioritized by operational partners. We’ve had to fight tooth and nail for every good deal. But over the last five years, even as others have raised prices given inflation, we’ve stayed totally committed to maintaining our best-in-class formulas and our affordable pricing. We just work really hard everyday to stay focused, listen closely to our Flewdiverse, and grow in the right way. I’m still in the weed every day, and I’m not sure I ever want to get out of them because I love them. I’m focused on longevity and sustainability over fast, accelerated growth.
Flewd is positioned as a transdermal stress solution. For someone who’s never heard that term before, what’s actually happening in the body during a soak? There are so many ways that an ingredient can be absorbed by the body. And during the many years that I worked in haircare and skincare, I learned about all of them. Transdermal absorption is one of those ways. It simply means that the body can absorb nutrients through the skin, aka transdermally. Transdermal absorption is more effective than oral absorption by a lot, therefore a better way for the body to actually absorb missing minerals and vitamins faster and in greater quantities. But, the skin is a super great barrier, not just any molecules can get by. So in order to get past that barrier, molecules have to meet certain criteria. They need to be teeny teeny tiny, water soluble, and the correct molecular weight. Before Flewd, no other brand on the market met all of these scientific criteria to actually make a bath soak that can absorb transdermally. After soaking in a warm bath for 15 minutes, the skin is basically ready to soak up all of the nutrients in a Flewd formula like a super sponge. And after the body has been flooded by stress hormones like Cortisol and Adrenaline, nutrients like magnesium help the body rebalance and produce more of the good positive hormones like Serotonin and Norepinephrine rather than being stuck in a fight or flight.
Magnesium is everywhere right now, but not all forms are created equal. Can you break down the difference between bioavailable magnesium chloride and what most people are used to seeing? The most common magnesium variants that are used in self-care wellness products are pretty big in molecular size so our bodies identify them as “false” versions of the mineral, making them a top priority to be flushed out of our systems once we take them. So we can ingest as much as we want, but if the magnesium doesn’t stay in our bodies to be drawn on as needed, we won’t feel better. Magnesium Chloride, the type we use in Flewd, is especially unique since it has one of the smallest molecular sizes AND it is one of the most bioavailable meaning our body holds onto it for up to 5 days instead of flushing it out of our system in the first 24 hours or less.
Beyond magnesium, how did you decide which nootropics, vitamins, and amino acids to include and what role do they play in targeting stress symptoms? As part of our foundational and ongoing research we’ve combined over 200 studies that identify the most common symptoms that stress causes for us – anxiety, insomnia, overwhelm, fatigue, migraines, etc – and created a master list of each stress issue we want to help people put on notice. From there we dive into more of our foundational process of consulting hundreds of studies on that specific stress symptom, the specific hormones the body releases, and the unique physiological processes our bodies go through. Those then guide us the best ingredients to formulate with – the ones best suited for that unique stress symptom. For example, we first worked with Nootropics in our Sads Smashing soaks since it’s about helping with our moods when stress makes us feel down and overwhelmed. Nootropics are naturally occurring ingredients that help boost our mood.
Out of all the formulas, which one do you personally reach for the most? I have 2 go-to soaks – Sads Smashing for when I’m feeling down and Fatigue Defeating for when I’m feeling totally burned and exhausted. I sometimes combine the two using an unscented version of one soak and the scented version of the other. I’m super fortunate to have a jumbo tub where it makes sense to drop two whole pouches in at once instead of just a single soak. But I didn’t invent this, it actually came from one of our earliest Flewdies back in 2020 who was mixing 2 formulas into her bath by only using half each at a time.
If someone is completely new to Flewd, where should they start and why that formula? The thing about Flewd is that there really is no one-size-fits-all soak. That’s actually the beauty of our brand in comparison to every else available. So my first recommendation is to simply identify how you have been feeling lately.
But the #1 stress symptom is feeling fatigued, feeling tired all the time no matter how much sleep or how much rest. It’s actually in the top 3 things people complain about when they go to see their doctor. So, I’d recommend the Fatigue Defeating soak as the best starting point for somebody who is shopping with us for their first time! The star ingredients here are magnesium + tryptophan powerhouse ingredients that help our bodies naturally create two essential hormones that fight burnout – Melatonin and Serotonin.
You’ve hinted at expanding beyond bath soaks. Are there particular formats or categories within stress care you’re especially excited to explore next? I keep a huge list of ideas in my phone. What I will tell you is that Flewd is not a bath brand, Flewd is the pioneer of stresscare. So yes, we’re definitely exploring. And I’m super excited for what may come next in the tub and out of it! But whatever we do, we will test it and make sure that it meets our standards aka it has to actually help people catch their calm.
