361 - Men have skin too and love good packaging design! W/ Freddie Sheridan from YCODE

First of all, before we get to the show notes, I wanted to say sorry to my amazing guest Freddie Sheridan! I thought I had published this episode a few months ago and was going through my recordings and saw that, in fact, it hadn’t been aired yet! You can time stamp the interview when we discuss the World Cup actually :) Secondly, you might notice the podcast got a small upgrade. Each episode will now have it’s own thumbnail and will have chapters so you can skip through to each chapter on Apple Podcasts On to the episode! Freddie Sheridan grew up in the family agency his parents started in the early 1980s, designing retail experiences for luxury beauty brands. He was eight years old with a wash bag bigger than most men carry today. Cleanser, moisturizer, eye cream, exfoliator. He looked around the school washroom and wondered why everyone else was so quick. YCODE started from a gap he kept seeing. Men’s skincare was flagged as one of the biggest growth markets in beauty, and men were not adopting it. Apathy. No education. And the products themselves were usually women’s formulas in masculine packaging. No one was designing them for men’s skin from scratch. Men’s skin is about 25% thicker, has roughly twice the oil, a lower pH, and a denser collagen structure on a different timetable. Freddie’s point is the same one packaging people already know: the right fuel for a Formula One car is not a generic one. Specific purpose gets better results faster. YCODE spent about five years in development before anything hit the market. The brand launched in October and November 2024 with one product, the Well Kept Advanced Eye Serum, because the eye area was men’s single biggest issue. In November 2025 they added the Hydrating Face Serum and the Mattifying Moisturiser. The packaging was developed on the same timeline, so it did not have to be rushed. The name is the Y chromosome, the thing that makes men biologically distinct, plus the code they study to design for it. The original outer box is a matchbox. Men were not used to skincare, but they were used to a matchbox. Nudge it from the bottom, the product reveals, no instructions required. Racing green and gold, because a vintage Porsche is more exciting to a lot of guys than a skincare aisle. The paper is from GF Smith, already in the color they wanted, FSC certified. Lettering is indented on the outside so the gold reads against the matte green, and slightly raised and gloss on the inside. A glue dot holds the tube centered and quiet in transit. Freddie will tell you it was too firm. That is the learning for the next batch. They rebranded early. The first identity was at 70 or 80 percent of what it could be, and they would rather fix it before the world got used to it. Dark green became a cleaner white. The logo was tightened. Stereotypes about what men want, dark colors, bro language, heavy fragrance, were the thing they were trying not to repeat. They kept the inner tray and the primary pack and only swapped the sleeve, so the first batch was not thrown away. Batch two catches the tray and the tube up. The tube itself is an old-school super glue tube, all aluminum, including the cap. Ordinary aluminum tubes still needed a plastic cap hard enough to thread onto metal, and that plastic could not be recycled. This one removes that problem. Opening it the first time is like shaving the first time. Someone has to show you. Hold the tube lightly, snap the lid, do not squeeze, or you lose product. There is no air in the tube on purpose. Fresher, and the customer gets a full fill. YCODE is available at ycode.co. Chapters (00:00) Welcome to People of Packaging (00:52) Freddie Sheridan joins (02:16) Why YCODE, and the name (04:30) Born into skincare (05:31) Women’s formulas in masculine packaging (06:29) Launched with the eye serum (07:11) Serum and moisturizer (09:02) Arriving at the original box (11:40) The matchbox men already know (12:55) Racing green, gold, and GF Smith (15:07) The glue dot that was too firm (16:48) Indented outside, raised inside (18:09) The early rebrand, without the waste (22:43) Do people judge your skin? (24:24) A routine that still gets you out the door (26:43) A super glue tube, all aluminum (28:22) How to open it the first time This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit encase.substack.com

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