Intake Breathing raises 62 million to widen product use

As of 2 November 2026, direct-to-consumer brand Intake Breathing announced a 62 million dollar investment from Camino Partners, the firm founded by Kind Snacks founder Daniel Lubetzky. The company says it has grown at a triple-digit rate over the past three years and has sold more than 100 million pairs of breathing tabs since launching in 2023. Its patented nasal dilator kit uses two independent nasal strips alongside a magnetic relief band. The interesting part for anyone building a product concept is not the funding size but the category argument behind it: 74 per cent of Intake's customers, according to Camino, were not buying in the legacy category before.

What the product actually is

Strip-based nasal dilation is not a new idea. What Intake changed is the form factor and the framing. Instead of a medical-looking device sold in the cold-and-flu aisle, the product is designed to be worn visibly and treated as a daily habit, closer to a patch than to a remedy. Chief executive Alex Hauck said about 90 per cent of the brand's ads simply show the product on people going about their day.

That is a product concept decision rather than a marketing one. A product designed to be seen in public removes the social cost of use, which is often the real barrier for anything worn on the body. The brand's nose strips appeared on the runway of designer Jane Wade at New York Fashion Week, an unusual placement that reinforces the same idea.

Why the category framing matters more than the price

Intake is not competing on price against other nasal strips. It is competing for a place in a daily routine, alongside sleep aids, recovery tools and breathing exercises. That reframing changes who the buyer is: someone optimising sleep and training, not someone treating congestion. Camino's president Elle Lanning compared the strategy to Kind moving the health bar out of the dietary supplement section and positioning it as food.

New consumers are the signal

The 74 per cent figure is the most useful number in the announcement. If three in four buyers were not previously in the category, the product is not taking share from incumbents, it is creating demand. For a brand planning a product concept, that ratio is a better indicator of headroom than category growth rates, because it shows the ceiling is set by habit formation rather than by competitor strength.

Distribution decides whether the concept holds

A concept built on daily habit needs to be where daily routines happen. Camino said part of the plan is to help the brand be strategic about retail partnerships and to move the category outside the drugstore cold-and-flu aisle. That is a distribution argument: shelf position determines whether a shopper encounters the product as a remedy or as a habit, and the two framings support very different price points.

What to copy and what to question

The first thing worth copying is the visible-use test. Before investing in a new product concept, ask whether using it in public carries a social cost. If it does, the product needs a form factor fix before it needs a media budget. Intake's design work happened before its advertising, not after.

The second is the new-buyer ratio. Measuring what share of buyers are new to the category is cheap and tells you whether you are expanding demand or fighting for share. A brand that cannot answer this question is guessing about its own ceiling.

Question the claim, not the concept

The part to question is the evidence base. Breathing and sleep benefits are easy to assert and hard to prove, and the category has attracted adjacent entrants such as Hostage Tape and ZzzTape. A product concept that leans on a claimed physiological benefit needs substantiation that survives scrutiny, because returns and reviews will surface the gap faster than any regulator. The product page is where that promise is tested at scale.

The market trend here is broader than one brand. Wellness spending is moving from supplements and skin care into daily habits, which means more categories will be reframed by form factor rather than by ingredient. For retailers, that is a merchandising question: which aisle does a habit product belong in, and does the answer match where the shopper looks.

Two numbers to track

The first number is the new-to-category share, reviewed every quarter with the same definition. It tells you whether growth is coming from habit formation or from switching, and those two trajectories imply very different investment plans. The second is the share of complaints tied to the claimed benefit rather than to fit, which is the earliest warning that the product concept is promising more than it delivers.

Read together, they keep a fast-growing product honest. A high new-buyer share with rising benefit complaints suggests the concept is outrunning the evidence. A low new-buyer share with clean complaints suggests the opposite problem: the product works but is stuck inside its original category, and the fix is distribution rather than development.

FAQ

• Why does the new-to-category share matter more than growth?

  Because it shows where the ceiling is. If most buyers were not in the category before, growth comes from habit formation rather than from taking share, which means the limit is how many people can be converted, not how strong the incumbent is.

• What is the visible-use test?

  Ask whether using the product in public carries a social cost. If it does, fix the form factor before spending on media. Intake designed a product people would wear outside, then built advertising around exactly that scene.

• Why does shelf position matter for a product concept?

  Because it frames what the shopper thinks the product is for. The cold-and-flu aisle signals a remedy and supports a low price. A sleep or recovery shelf signals a habit and supports a higher one. The same product can support either, but not both at once.

• What is the biggest risk in this kind of concept?

  Claims that outrun the evidence. Breathing and sleep benefits are easy to assert and hard to prove, and returns plus reviews will expose the gap quickly. Substantiation is a commercial requirement, not a legal afterthought.

Sources

• Modern Retail: Intake Breathing nabs 62 million dollars, joining the nasal wellness trend
• Modern Retail: Cotopaxi adopts a drop strategy to build buzz ahead of BFCM
• Modern Retail: Why returns are becoming a bigger focus for TikTok Shop and DoorDash
• Modern Retail: How brands are juggling new marketplaces this holiday season