Kinfield

Nichole Powell did not arrive in beauty by the usual route. A political-science graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she started in tech marketing at Intuit, took a swing at her own lifestyle venture called Who Goes Wear that didn't land, and regrouped in business development at a fashion startup before the idea for an outdoor-care brand finally clicked. That detour through marketing and a failed first company shaped a founder who understood both storytelling and how hard small consumer brands are to sustain.

The insight that became the brand was disarmingly ordinary. Reflecting on a childhood of Minnesota camping trips, she realized the bug spray and sunscreen she still reached for as an adult were the same greasy, chemical-heavy formulas she'd always disliked, and that nobody had bothered to make outdoor essentials that felt good to wear. "Outdoor skincare" became the wedge, a category framing that set repellents and sun care apart from generic drugstore cans.

The execution leaned hard on third-party credentials, vegan formulas carrying Leaping Bunny and MADE SAFE certifications, signaling clean credibility in a space dominated by harsh actives. The catalog stayed tight and purpose-built: the Cloud Cover and Sunglow sunscreens, insect repellents and after-sun care, designed for recreation rather than the bathroom shelf. Retail through clean-beauty specialists and a turn on Shark Tank, where Tony Xu and Barbara Corcoran put in two hundred fifty thousand dollars for a ten-percent stake, lifted its profile and helped sales climb from roughly forty-five thousand dollars in year one into the millions.

The ending is sobering. In early 2026 Powell wound the company down, citing a business environment that had grown too punishing over the prior couple of years and no viable path forward, closing out a roughly seven-year run as a recognizable name in clean outdoor care, a reminder that certifications and a tidy niche are no guarantee of survival.

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