WHERE DID IT ALL BEGIN?

It started with a ripped hand and a stick of chapstick.

At a gym BBQ one weekend, Megan noticed a member aggressively rubbing chapstick into a deep hand tear after linking together too many toes-to-bar.

When asked what he was doing, he shrugged and said:

"It's the only thing small enough to carry with me."

Lightbulb.

At the time, Devin was running a CrossFit gym in a small town built around sweat, hard work, and a community of people chasing progress. Not long after Megan came along, what started as a shared love of training quickly turned into something more — we fell in love, and Megan soon became part of running the gym alongside Devin.

The gym community had a common problem: torn hands and shredded calluses. Athletes were taping them, ignoring them, or apparently… rubbing chapstick on them.

We figured there had to be a better solution.

As luck would have it (and sometimes success really is about being in the right place at the right time), a friend from high school happened to be working for a company producing natural cosmetics. He offered to help us do a small test run of a hand balm designed specifically for athletes.

The response was immediate.

Members of the gym finally had something that actually helped protect and repair their hands after brutal workouts.

RIPT Skin Systems was born.

Years later life took us in a different direction and the gym doors eventually closed, but RIPT kept going.

Today Devin works as a firefighter and also runs an arborist business with his brother-in-law, climbing trees and working outdoors every day. Megan runs the backend operations of both the arborist company and RIPT, keeping everything moving behind the scenes.

Fitness is still a huge part of our lives. Devin has become an avid climber — indoors, outdoors, and bouldering whenever possible — and we both still spend plenty of time weight training.

All activities that continue to remind us exactly why RIPT exists in the first place.

Somewhere along the way we also added two kids to the mix. Both have since become competitive gymnasts, which quickly taught us something important:

CrossFit isn't the only sport that destroys your hands.

Turns out athletes everywhere deal with the same problem.

RIPT has grown right alongside our family and the athletes around us — from CrossFit and climbing to gymnastics and beyond.

Where we stand.

At RIPT Skin Systems we know exactly where we stand.

We've built a brand that's a little edgy and doesn't take itself too seriously. After all, we make hardcore hand balms for people who rip their hands open on bars, rocks, ropes, and rings — how serious can you really be?

What we do take seriously is quality.

Good ingredients matter.
Products made for athletes should actually perform when it counts.

Our goal has always been simple: create products that work, and deliver them with a buying experience that's just cheeky enough to make you smile.

Thanks for being part of the RIPT community.