BLOK did not start with a skincare business plan. It started with my own problem skin, years of training, and a question that kept coming back: how do you keep skin clean and looked after when real life keeps putting it under pressure?
It started long before BLOK
I grew up with dry skin and eczema. Like a lot of people, that meant years of trying whatever might help: moisturisers, lip balms, emollients, prescribed steroid creams and, later, simpler oils and ingredients.
It gave me an interest in skin long before there was any thought of creating a brand.
Then life kept testing it
Years of kickboxing, MMA and jiu-jitsu meant sweat, friction, close contact, mats, gloves and shared training environments.
I later owned and operated gyms, running mixed-modality training and competitions, strength and conditioning for groups including gymnasts, and international fitness retreats involving hiking, canyoning, assault courses and long days outdoors.
Travel added another version of the same problem. Hot, humid countries. Cold mountains. Camping and hiking in the Rockies, where conditions could move from sunshine to rain, cold and snow in the same day.
Work brought different environments again. Time working on NHS hospital wards made hygiene and contamination impossible to ignore. Defence-related and uniformed work meant long shifts, outdoor conditions and carrying kit. Hospitality added repeated hand washing, cleaning and another physically demanding environment.
Different places. Similar pressure on the skin.
Clean skin is only part of the story
Martial arts also gave me first-hand awareness of skin infections within training communities, including seeing people hospitalised with serious staph infections.
The obvious reaction was to think more cleaning and stronger products must be better. My own experience suggested it was not that simple.
Repeated washing and harsh products could leave my already dry hands cracked, sore and sometimes bleeding. Looking after skin could not only be about trying to remove everything from it. The condition of the skin barrier mattered too.
That changed the question from simply “how do I clean my skin?” to “how do I keep it clean while also looking after the skin I am trying to protect?”
Becoming a dad changed the standard
Having children brought that interest much closer to home.
When dry, eczema-prone skin appeared again, this time on my young children, I became much more conscious of the soaps, shampoos, creams and emollients we used every day.
The goal was never to reject conventional skincare. I wanted to understand ingredients better and make simple products that felt considered enough for my family while still being useful for my own hard-working skin.
So the experimentation became more deliberate: simple soaps, moisturisers, oils and balms made in small batches at home. The first tallow I experimented with even came from the same butcher supplying my restaurants.
There was still no grand skincare company at that point. I was simply making useful things and learning what worked for us.
The experiences started to connect
A martial arts mat. A hospital ward. A mountain. A restaurant kitchen. A long journey. A treatment room.
They look unrelated, but they share something: they take skin away from the controlled environment of the bathroom shelf and put it into real life.
That became the thinking behind BLOK.
Training. Travel. Treatments.
Today we organise that thinking around three environments: Training, Travel and Treatments.
They are not product ranges. They are the situations that guide what we make and the problems we choose to think about.
Our product system is deliberately separate and simple: PROTECT. CLEAN. RECOVER.
01 PROTECT Skin Defence Spray is where that system begins. CLEAN and RECOVER are being developed to follow.
Built from experience, not around a trend
BLOK is not about being frightened of gyms, travel, shared spaces or the outdoors. Those are the places we want to be.
It is about looking after your skin well enough that it can come with you.
Most skincare is built around a bathroom shelf. BLOK is built around what happens when you leave it.
David Luck
Founder, BLOK