You’re a former military veteran. How did you end up as the founder of a nipple cover business?
Honestly? Because the women in my life wouldn’t stop talking about how bad the current options were. My fiancé Meg, my mom, and my cousin Alexis, three totally different women, kept complaining about the same things: not being able to wear what they wanted, feeling distracted that the products they wore would let them down, spending money on pasties and petals and boob tape that kept letting them down. That bothered me. When something that simple is still broken, someone hasn’t been doing their job.
What was so wrong with what was already on the market?
Everything. Cheap materials. Thick edges. Adhesives that peeled, slipped, irritated skin or worse. It felt like these products were designed by people who had never asked a real woman what she needed. So, I did something obsessive: I read hundreds of one-star reviews across every brand I could find (Amazon, Ulta, Target) and printed the worst ones. I taped them to a wall in my office. That wall became my brief.
What did that “brief” say to you?
That these weren’t just cosmetic complaints. These were women being distracted from their lives - presentations, weddings, nights out- by something that should disappear and be forgotten about once it’s on. As a veteran, when something falls short, you don’t give it a pass. You own it, fix it, and raise the standard. That’s the mindset I brought into this.
How did you actually go about fixing it?
I went straight to the best factory I could find with photos of Meg, my mom, and Alexis. Not mood boards. Not demographics. Real women. I told them: “Make something so good they forget it’s even there.” Every prototype either passed or failed. There was no “almost.” If it didn’t perform perfectly, we started over.
So, what makes Bare & Basic™ different?
Food-grade silicone that moves like skin. Ultra-thin edges that disappear under clothing. A safety-tested bio-gel adhesive we developed that holds through workouts, weddings, and beach days, but stays gentle on sensitive skin, doesn’t cause irritation and is reusable 25+ times. We also obsessed over the packaging, because I really wanted the experience to feel as intentional and premium as the product itself.
When did you know you’d nailed it?
Aruba. My fiancée Meg wore them for over ten hours one day, swimming, tanning, saltwater, sand, and forgot they were on. Later that night I walked in while she was taking a shower and joked, “Babe… where are your nipples?” She laughed, peeled them off, and there were tiny shells stuck underneath. They hadn’t moved. More importantly, she hadn’t thought about them once.
Is that when Bare & Basic™ became more than a side project?
That was the moment it became a promise. Everything we make is worn first by the women we love most. If it’s not good enough for them, it never leaves the house.
What’s the bigger mission behind the brand?
I want every woman to be able to wear what she wants, live the life as she wants, and when she’s wearing our products to forget she’s wearing anything at all. All women deserve those moments where they can dance longer, laugh louder, present bolder, and live fully in the moment. That’s our rule. It always has been. And it always will be.