Don't sweat it: Duke, UNC juniors create antiperspirant lotion startup

Sweaty hands have long been the silent killer of business handshakes and hand-holding, but two undergraduates have developed a product to solve this problem.

Carpe Lotion is an over-the-counter antiperspirant lotion company created by two college students: Duke junior Kasper Kubica and David Spratte, a junior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Kubica and Spratte developed the idea after meeting through the Robertson Scholars Program last year. The product began selling on Amazon two months ago and already boasts a 4.5-star rating among 37 customer reviews.

“We’ve sold 1,440 units in these two months for a gross revenue of $20,700. So it’s been a really strong launch,” Kubica said.

Junior Alex Antezana, who plays club tennis, said even a minimal amount of lotion keeps his hands sweat-free, allowing him to preserve racquet grips that would otherwise be ruined by excess sweat.

Although the lotion has been used by athletes and also individuals with medically diagnosed sweating, the product is not specifically advertised as an athletic or medical item. Its target audience, Kubica explained, is everyday users who want a simple solution for sweaty hands. According to a customer survey, 75 percent of customers use Carpe Lotion for situations such as dates, social gatherings and meetings.

“We have people that are taking pills or receiving botox treatment on their hands [to stop sweating], who still come to us and tell us that they love our product and they use it on a daily basis,” Spratte said. “It doesn’t necessarily solve their problem, but they love it because it helps a lot during the day to reduce that sweating for four or five hours.”

Spratte said the inspiration for Carpe Lotion came to him his senior year of high school during Mass service, when he noticed everyone wiping their hands on chairs and on their pants to avoid the awkwardness of holding a sweaty hand. Kubica, a member of the entrepreneurship-themed selected living group The Cube, was the ideal partner for Spratte, a pre-med student with no prior business experience. The two partnered with UNC junior Chris Jenks, a chemistry major, and tested more than 50 prototypes to perfect their final product.

The two founders credit Carpe Lotion’s success to their ability to work together. Spratte declared himself the team’s ultimate optimist, while also giving credit to Kubica for being the “best devil’s advocate that [anyone] will meet.”

“I’ve never found someone that I’ve worked as well with as David. That’s the reason why I think Carpe has been so successful, because we have really incredible synergy,” Kubica said.

Although Carpe Lotion has sold well since launch, the company has faced its fair share of challenges since its inception. One of the biggest was getting people to respect the idea of an antiperspirant hand lotion, Spratte said. Both students previously participated in startup competitions where Carpe Lotion received last place. Even friends and family were not initially supportive of the concept.

Despite the naysayers, Spratte said sweaty hands are a serious issue, adding that the community of people with chronically sweaty hands has been ignored for too long.

“People think that underarm sweating is the only sweating we need to control. But you don’t catch game-winning passes or seal deals with your underarms, you use your hands,” Kubica said.