I built this for my dad.

My dad has been a carpenter for thirty-seven years.

Growing up, I knew his hands before I knew his face. The cracks at the base of his thumbs. The hairline split on the side of his index finger that never quite closed. The yellow callus on the heel of his palm.

He never made a fuss about it. Most men in trades don't. You don't go to your GP for cracked hands — you grip the chisel harder, wipe the blood on your overalls, keep working.

But I'd notice things. The way he'd pull his hand back when my mum tried to hold it at the dinner table. The way he hesitated before shaking the hand of someone he'd just met. The way he'd run his hands under cold water at the kitchen sink at midnight, just to numb them.

By the time I was thirty, he'd spent hundreds of pounds on hand creams that didn't last past Wednesday. Vaseline. Bag Balm. The whole pharmacy aisle, twice. None of them was built for hands like his.

So I started reading.

Eighteen months of formulation work, a lot of failed batches, and conversations with people who actually understood skin. Most of the hand-care category is engineered for office workers with mild dryness — that's where the £3 billion sits. Nothing was built for the kind of structural damage trade hands take.

HARD REPAIR is what came out. Petrolatum-rich base, fragrance-free, with the actives that do the repair work — Allantoin, Panthenol, Glycerin. No formaldehyde donors. Designed to absorb clean overnight, so by morning he could grip a chisel without slipping. No film. No greasy residue. No compromise.

I gave him the first jar without saying much. He's not the kind of man who gushes about anything.

Two weeks later he asked me to send him three more.

That was four years ago. Today, GRAFTHIDE jars sit on workshop benches, gym shelves, climbing chalk bags, and bedside tables across the UK. The customers who come back — and there are a lot of them — eventually write the same kind of message my dad sent me:

"My hands don't hurt anymore. Send another jar."

It started for one man.

It's for the rest of you now.

— David Founder, GRAFTHIDE