MANTLE

MANTLE is a Swedish skincare company founded in 2020 and headquartered in Stockholm [9]. It positions itself as "clean + clinical" skincare, developed and stress-tested in a laboratory in northern Sweden, and takes its name from the skin's acid mantle — a nod to the brand's stated focus on supporting a resilient skin barrier.

The company launched during the COVID-19 pandemic as the first Scandinavian skincare brand built around CBD, then broadened its formulations well beyond that single ingredient [8]. It remains active: its largest product launch to date, The Organ Essence, arrived in October 2025, and by that point the brand reported distribution across 197 retail doors worldwide [10].

MANTLE was started by Josefin Landgård, an entrepreneur from northern Sweden who had earlier led the subscription-beauty company Glossybox and co-founded Kry (known internationally as Livi), a digital healthcare provider [11]. According to the brand, Landgård grew up as a competitive skier struggling with dry skin in harsh Scandinavian winters, and later decided to combine her interests in skincare and technology.

The company's account of its own founding differs slightly across sources. MANTLE's about-us page presents Landgård as the founder and does not name a partner [2]; multiple editorial outlets, including BeautyMatter, Scandinavia Standard and Beauty Independent, consistently describe the brand as co-founded by Landgård and Stina Lönnkvist, a branding specialist who has been reported as the company's chief marketing officer [9].

By several accounts, the idea took shape after Landgård became interested in CBD while recovering from a stressful period, and noticed its growing presence in beauty during a business trip to New York. She and Lönnkvist launched MANTLE as a CBD-dedicated brand, with early emphasis on customer education to counter misconceptions about the ingredient.

The brand made its UK debut in 2022 [13]. In February 2024 it closed a £2.4 million (roughly $3 million) funding round led by the British venture firm Venrex, bringing total funding to about £6.9 million, and announced expansion into the United States, Germany and the Netherlands [9]. Trade coverage that year reported growth of more than 80 percent year on year for 2023.

In October 2025 MANTLE released The Organ Essence, described in trade press as its biggest launch to date, alongside reporting that its distribution had reached 197 doors internationally.

MANTLE is privately held and venture-backed rather than owned by a larger group. Its 2024 round was led by Venrex, and WWD has identified the Swedish retailer H&M as a major backer of the company [10].

The company describes its approach as merging Scandinavian minimalism with skincare innovation, aiming for what it calls high-performance yet "clean" formulas that strengthen the skin barrier with minimal irritation. The name MANTLE is presented as a tribute to the skin's acid mantle, the thin protective layer on the skin's surface.

The brand frames its outlook as barrier-first and deliberately anti-perfectionist. In a 2025 interview, Landgård summarised the positioning as "clean, clinical, and unapologetically innovative" and described the company's ethos as "life first, skin second," adding that "real skin has pores, texture, and variation" and that skin health "isn't about perfection, it's about resilience" [11]. MANTLE avoids anti-ageing language, referring to mature skin instead as "skin with experience," and says it does not retouch its models.

CBD, once the brand's defining feature, has since receded from its marketing; the current brand site emphasises clean and clinical skincare without foregrounding it [11].

MANTLE has built a multi-category range spanning skincare, body and hair care; trade coverage in 2025 put its catalogue at 38 products. Its serums anchor the line, with The Hydra Serum cited as a flagship and The Glow Serum described by the founder as a bestseller. Earlier signatures included The Magic Milk, a cleanser the brand marketed as a creamy cannabis-based makeup remover, and The Dream Mask, an overnight gel formulated with bakuchiol, hyaluronic acid, niacinamide and vitamin E.

The formulations draw on a wide set of active ingredients — among them jellyfish mucin, matcha, vitamin C, azelaic acid, sulphur, retinol, NAD+ and peptides — and the company describes its development approach as biomimetic, meaning it aims to mimic processes found in the body.

The clearest example is The Organ Essence, launched in October 2025. The brand says the product draws on antioxidant science used to preserve organs during transplant procedures. As Landgård explained it, such preservation "prevents the organs from oxidation when they are outside the body … you need these very strong antioxidants to protect the tissue, but also to keep it from degrading" [10].

On ethics, MANTLE states that most of its products are vegan, with a few named exceptions, and that the brand is cruelty-free [4]. It says its products contain no synthetic perfume, drawing scent instead from botanical ingredients and essential oils. The company also emphasises minimalist packaging, European sourcing of components and refillable mini formats.

MANTLE has been covered by trade and consumer press including WWD, Beauty Independent, BeautyMatter, Scandinavia Standard, TheIndustry.Beauty and Hello! Magazine, with coverage spanning its 2024 funding round, its planned US retail launch and the 2025 Organ Essence release. The brand uses the phrase "award-winning" in its own marketing, though specific award names were not identified among the sources reviewed.

MANTLE is an active brand. Its most recent major activity is the October 2025 launch of The Organ Essence, and by that time it reported distribution across 197 doors in markets including Sweden, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Denmark and the United States [10]. It is sold both through its own e-commerce site and through retailers such as Liberty and Selfridges in the UK and Le Bon Marché and Printemps in France.