Latest news with #handcare
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
'Nurses emailed us praising our hand cream — it was rocket fuel for us'
Jonny and Antonia Philp have already endured enough personal and business challenges to last a career since co-founding Nursem, their range of hand and bodycare products, in 2012. The husband and wife team have claimed universal credit and turned down a Dragons' Den offer, while Jonny has overcome a brain tumour. It has since left him to live by the mantra of 'look after yourself, your health and have fun'. From turning over around £50,000 in their early years, Nursem hit public awareness in 2019 and now anticipate sales of £2.7m this year, with aims of growing their word-of-mouth business tenfold. Read More: How Caroline's Circuits became a midlife fitness empire The company launched in response to a problem encountered by Jonny's wife Antonia as an NHS paediatric nurse, working on intensive care wards and washing her hands between 50 and 100 times daily. After six months, her hands started to crack and bleed with the demands of work. The Philps realised she wasn't the only one, with nearly 90% of the nursing community suffering similar issue, despite trying a raft of hand creams. 'Hand cream sounds like an incredibly simple solution, probably overly simple, but sometimes the best solutions are the simplest because people know how to adopt and use them properly,' says Jonny. Originally called Yes Nurse – 'It was like a Carry On film,' admits Jonny – he paid himself £500 for the first five years alongside Antonia's salary. 'Until children,' he adds. 'That's when things become a lot more real.' He describes the feeling of juggling jobcentre meetings as the co-founders 'tried to survive for six months until we could launch into Boots in time". 'I think the lady looked at me and thought, 'this guy's on another planet'," he adds. "This is not the usual person she would expect to be interviewing. But I'm enormously grateful because, without it, there's no way we could have paid for nursery in those first months.' Read More: 'Why we set up a sustainable mobile operator to save people money' Back at the day job, he says that emails from nurses a decade ago were like 'rocket fuel' for a fledgling business. 'Nurses would say that it's the first time in 25 years that their hands weren't painful at work. Messages like that were like a shot in the arm and kept us going," says Jonny. Newcastle-based Nursem recorded sales of £142,000 (a net loss of £18,000) in their first year before a rebrand and relaunch in 2019 and COVID saw the company grow from a run rate of £150,000 per annum to £2.5m in 18 months. In 2020, Nursem's Caring hand cream was featured on ITV's This Morning. A product was sold every 36 seconds for several weeks while Boots also experienced empty shelves for a period. The publicity saw increased awareness of the company's 'Nursem Promise' where, for every product sold, they donate a month's worth to an NHS nurse or midwife. In 2021, the duo also appeared on Dragons' Den and received offers from all five before later rejecting a stake. This all pales into significance to January 2016 when Jonny was told by a consultant that he had an acoustic neuroma, a brain tumour on the left-hand side of his head. The couple had only been married three months. 'I lived on £500 a month, had enough money to fill the car up and buy some groceries. I was quite happy,' he admits. Read More: Meet the company that finds 'must-haves' to make everyday life easier 'It made me realise that all the dreams you have about building a business were just dreams up until that point. I was going to have to stick my head above the parapet.' Every year, Jonny paused for reflection when undergoing an MRI scan. The tumour was later removed in 2022 and three months of recovery followed. 'It took us 18 months of graft to get us back on track,' he adds. Nursem, says Jonny, is still largely a kitchen table, remote-first business, which employs 13 staff. The business is now driving demand from chefs, florists, mechanics and hairdressers. 'It is the shift towards people who are looking for something that's incredibly effective and cracking on with the rest of the day,' adds Jonny. 'It's the same for nurses in that you can't sit around for 10 minutes waiting for your hand cream to dry when it's a busy day.' A specialist transplant liaison nurse, Antonia has now joined the business full-time but will still be a registered nurse. 'We've got three kids and ambitions to grow 10x, but this means we can look after each other and be more present,' adds Jonny. The Nursem Promise If we were going to move the brand into retail on a bigger scale, how do we keep our heart and soul in the nursing community? That's when we realised rather than selling it to nurses, we should be providing it for free to deliver the biggest impact. For some nurses it can be absolutely debilitating and painful while at work. Not all hospitals provide access to moisturisers for staff so we decided to try and tackle it ourselves as a brand. We hear every single day from healthcare professionals how much it helps them. How to be a start-up success It's very easy to get distracted and move into other categories. The way we see the future is to continue to look after hands and become incredibly well known for doing one thing well. My key advice to other budding start-ups would be that if you're going to invest your time and energy, make sure you're tackling something that is a genuine issue that people have and that it affects enough people as well. Obsess over whatever the solution is that you're looking to launch, whether it's a physical product or a service. Think about all the key hurdles to get past and be absolutely brutally honest with yourself and actually work back from that goal. It will make life 10 times easier. Read more: Meet the 'jokers from London' who sold 100,000 blocks of butter in first 10 weeks 'My sofa took six months to arrive — so I built a £20m business' 'I paid myself £4 an hour to get my Rollr deodorant off the ground'
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
'Nurses emailed us praising our hand cream — it was rocket fuel for us'
Jonny and Antonia Philp have already endured enough personal and business challenges to last a career since co-founding Nursem, their range of hand and bodycare products, in 2012. The husband and wife team have claimed universal credit and turned down a Dragons' Den offer, while Jonny has overcome a brain tumour. It has since left him to live by the mantra of 'look after yourself, your health and have fun'. From turning over around £50,000 in their early years, Nursem hit public awareness in 2019 and now anticipate sales of £2.7m this year, with aims of growing their word-of-mouth business tenfold. Read More: How Caroline's Circuits became a midlife fitness empire The company launched in response to a problem encountered by Jonny's wife Antonia as an NHS paediatric nurse, working on intensive care wards and washing her hands between 50 and 100 times daily. After six months, her hands started to crack and bleed with the demands of work. The Philps realised she wasn't the only one, with nearly 90% of the nursing community suffering similar issue, despite trying a raft of hand creams. 'Hand cream sounds like an incredibly simple solution, probably overly simple, but sometimes the best solutions are the simplest because people know how to adopt and use them properly,' says Jonny. Originally called Yes Nurse – 'It was like a Carry On film,' admits Jonny – he paid himself £500 for the first five years alongside Antonia's salary. 'Until children,' he adds. 'That's when things become a lot more real.' He describes the feeling of juggling jobcentre meetings as the co-founders 'tried to survive for six months until we could launch into Boots in time". 'I think the lady looked at me and thought, 'this guy's on another planet'," he adds. "This is not the usual person she would expect to be interviewing. But I'm enormously grateful because, without it, there's no way we could have paid for nursery in those first months.' Read More: 'Why we set up a sustainable mobile operator to save people money' Back at the day job, he says that emails from nurses a decade ago were like 'rocket fuel' for a fledgling business. 'Nurses would say that it's the first time in 25 years that their hands weren't painful at work. Messages like that were like a shot in the arm and kept us going," says Jonny. Newcastle-based Nursem recorded sales of £142,000 (a net loss of £18,000) in their first year before a rebrand and relaunch in 2019 and COVID saw the company grow from a run rate of £150,000 per annum to £2.5m in 18 months. In 2020, Nursem's Caring hand cream was featured on ITV's This Morning. A product was sold every 36 seconds for several weeks while Boots also experienced empty shelves for a period. The publicity saw increased awareness of the company's 'Nursem Promise' where, for every product sold, they donate a month's worth to an NHS nurse or midwife. In 2021, the duo also appeared on Dragons' Den and received offers from all five before later rejecting a stake. This all pales into significance to January 2016 when Jonny was told by a consultant that he had an acoustic neuroma, a brain tumour on the left-hand side of his head. The couple had only been married three months. 'I lived on £500 a month, had enough money to fill the car up and buy some groceries. I was quite happy,' he admits. Read More: Meet the company that finds 'must-haves' to make everyday life easier 'It made me realise that all the dreams you have about building a business were just dreams up until that point. I was going to have to stick my head above the parapet.' Every year, Jonny paused for reflection when undergoing an MRI scan. The tumour was later removed in 2022 and three months of recovery followed. 'It took us 18 months of graft to get us back on track,' he adds. Nursem, says Jonny, is still largely a kitchen table, remote-first business, which employs 13 staff. The business is now driving demand from chefs, florists, mechanics and hairdressers. 'It is the shift towards people who are looking for something that's incredibly effective and cracking on with the rest of the day,' adds Jonny. 'It's the same for nurses in that you can't sit around for 10 minutes waiting for your hand cream to dry when it's a busy day.' A specialist transplant liaison nurse, Antonia has now joined the business full-time but will still be a registered nurse. 'We've got three kids and ambitions to grow 10x, but this means we can look after each other and be more present,' adds Jonny. The Nursem Promise If we were going to move the brand into retail on a bigger scale, how do we keep our heart and soul in the nursing community? That's when we realised rather than selling it to nurses, we should be providing it for free to deliver the biggest impact. For some nurses it can be absolutely debilitating and painful while at work. Not all hospitals provide access to moisturisers for staff so we decided to try and tackle it ourselves as a brand. We hear every single day from healthcare professionals how much it helps them. How to be a start-up success It's very easy to get distracted and move into other categories. The way we see the future is to continue to look after hands and become incredibly well known for doing one thing well. My key advice to other budding start-ups would be that if you're going to invest your time and energy, make sure you're tackling something that is a genuine issue that people have and that it affects enough people as well. Obsess over whatever the solution is that you're looking to launch, whether it's a physical product or a service. Think about all the key hurdles to get past and be absolutely brutally honest with yourself and actually work back from that goal. It will make life 10 times easier. Read more: Meet the 'jokers from London' who sold 100,000 blocks of butter in first 10 weeks 'My sofa took six months to arrive — so I built a £20m business' 'I paid myself £4 an hour to get my Rollr deodorant off the ground'Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
'Make sure there is enough mileage in your product' - Nursem co-founder
Nursem, a range of hand and bodycare products, was set up by husband-and-wife team Jonny and Antonia Philp in first created their hero hand cream after NHS paediatric nurse Antonia suffered terrible contact dermatitis from all of the handwashing on the discusses life as a start-up brand and how being on a TV slot helped sell a product every 36 seconds for weeks. Nursem also aims to deliver on its Nursem promise of being able to access free handcare for as many hospitals across the UK. In 2026, they hope to deliver its 1,000th Nursem in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Times
16-05-2025
- Health
- Times
10 best beauty buys for your hands
When was the last time you used anything more than a reluctant, pragmatic quick dab of cream to look after your hands? And then expect it to work on nails, cuticles, sun spots, cracked skin, crepey and wrinkled knuckles… I used to do the same thing, but there are products that are just as effective for your hands as there are for your face — and they are just as affordable. Eucerin Anti-Pigment Skin Tone Perfecting Body CreamBeiersdorf, the company that owns Eucerin and Nivea, has a patented ingredient proven to tackle sun spots, so if your hands are starting to show the signs of a misspent sunny youth, join the queue behind me and put this on your shopping list. Lightweight and easily
