Welly Bravery Badges

The entrepreneur behind Method cleaning products and more recently Olly vitamins is injecting another huge consumer category with good design: first aid.

Princess and superhero Band-Aids are great for the littles. But the adult market for adhesive bandages has largely lacked joy, until now. Welly founder Eric Ryan figured why not celebrate life's wounds as badges of honor? That flesh-toned camouflage never fooled anyone anyway.

Welly Bravery Badges

So he came up with a collection of colorful, design-centric adhesive bandages, as well as a full line of first-aid needs. A muted beige tin contains "Oops Equipment," scissors, tweezers and fingernail clippers for $9. The jauntily striped blue tin holds "Bumper Stickers" for knees and elbows, also $9. "Bravery Badges" come in multiple designs, including monsters and unicorns for kids for $7. A green tins contains "Dressings for Distress," cloth tape and nonstick pads for bigger boo-boos for $7. For those who want to be more discrete for, say, a facial lesion, Welly offers Face Saver transparent bandages for $9.

Welly Bumper Stickers for knees and elbows

The tins are a riff on that old-school Band-Aid tin you might remember from your grandmother's house, but cuter.

"We're hoping they have a big second life," Ryan said. "My kids store Pokemon cards and toys in them, and they're easy to recycle." 

Welly Dressings for Distresses

First aid, cleaning products, and vitamins, may seem to have little in common, but they actually fall in line. They're all large consumer categories that were previously boring (and damaging to the environment in the case of cleaning products). They are also all sold at Target. Partnering with the big box retailer played no small role in the success of Ryan's first two brands, and he's hoping the same for Welly, which launched exclusively with Target yesterday.

"I love finding these big consumer categories," Ryan said. "Method addressed lifestyle in the home and sustainability, and Olly was very much about how millennials integrate health into their lifestyle. First aid and bandages really haven’t changed much, and one brand has dominated for decades now."

Welly Kids Bravery Bandages

Like Method and Olly, Welly first-aid products will have shoppers double taking as they stroll down he previously bland adhesive bandage aisle, and that's exactly Ryan's intention.

"We obsess over the products to really differentiate the experience," he said. "We want to create that impulse that you want to buy the product before you even know what it is." Mission accomplished.