The First One Is Out the Door

If you have ever kept your arms pinned to your sides through a meeting, changed shirts at lunch, or bought the same shirt in a darker color because the light one gave you away, you already understand the why.

My name is Bryan Choi. I run Vintm Group LLC out of Chicago, and it is a one-person operation. I answer the emails, I pack the boxes, I wrote this post. The first order of 1UP Guard™ has shipped, and this is the introduction I owe you.

What it is

1UP Guard™ is an underarm sweat protection patch. A superabsorbent layer is island-placed on backing tape with a silicone-based adhesive, and it goes directly on your skin.

That distinction is a key design element. Putting the absorbent layer against the skin puts it where the sweat actually starts. The superabsorbent core holds up to twenty times its weight in moisture, it is designed to be worn up to eight hours in a single-day, and it comes in four sizes because underarms are not one shape.

Each patch is sealed in its own pouch, so they can live in a bag or a desk drawer until the day you need it.

Where it comes from

1UP Guard™ is assembled in the United States, using materials sourced from suppliers in the US and the EU.

This move upped the difficulty level by a lot. It narrowed my supplier list, it certainly cost more, and it stretched the timeline. I did it because this product sits directly against skin, and I wanted to know exactly what those materials are and where they came from.

What I am not going to pretend

I have developed products before, home appliances, but nothing that adheres to skin.

A great deal of thought went into the design and the materials. I also know what version one means. There are body shapes our four sizes will not fit as well as I want them to. There are sweat rates and long days that will outrun eight hours. Someone is going to find a failure mode I did not anticipate, and I would rather that someone be a real customer I can talk to than a hypothetical one in my imagination for another year while nothing shipped.

Getting it into your hands is how it gets better. There is no substitute for that.

The exchange

I am asking for patience, so let me put something behind the ask.

Try out our Discovery Kit. If it does not work for you, the kit price, minus shipping, will be refunded. Nothing to mail back. If you'd like, email me and you will get me, not a ticket number. Tell me what failed and I will listen and do my best to implement improvements.

What I envision for future iterations: more sizes, better performance, and a wider range of options - driven by what you report. When something changes, I will say what changed and why.

For everyone who has hidden it

Visible underarm sweat is a small thing that quietly reshapes how people dress, sit, raise their hand, take pictures, and feel about themselves. If you have organized your wardrobe, your posture, your routine around it, you are not being dramatic and you are not alone.

1UP Guard™ is my attempt to give you, and myself, one less thing to think about. It is not finished. It is made carefully, put in front of you early, and it will get better with your help.

Thank you for being here at the start.

Bryan Choi
Founder, Vintm Group LLC
www.1upguard.com | @1upguard