REAMIN

REAMIN is a German skin-protection brand for working hands. Its original product, a beeswax-based hand-protection cream, was developed in 1978 by WELLA AG in Darmstadt for hairdressers and went on sale the same year [6]. For more than three decades it was part of the Wella business, supplied to salons in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. In 2011 Wella sold the brand, which has since been run as a separate company, Reamin GmbH, based in Cologne.

The range is built around a single idea: a thin protective film of beeswax and lipids that the company calls the Triple-B-Membran. Over time REAMIN added an unperfumed version of the cream, a repair cream and a pharmacy range aimed at other occupations and households. The brand's current status is unknown: the most recent dated event in its own history is from 2017, and no later activity is publicly documented.

REAMIN did not begin with an individual founder. The cream was an in-house development at WELLA AG in Darmstadt, and it was designed for one specific group of workers. Hairdressers spend much of the day with wet hands and shampoo, and the company points out that hand eczema is one of the most common skin diseases. REAMIN was Wella's answer to that problem: a skin-protection product for the hairdressing trade rather than a general cosmetic hand cream.

According to the company, the product was well received from the start and was distributed to Wella's partner salons in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The brand's history page adds that hairdressers who did not otherwise use Wella products also began asking for "the hand-protection cream from Darmstadt", and that it became standard equipment in many salons.

The brand's early reputation rests largely on medical observation. In 1980, researchers from the dermatology department of the University Hospital Erlangen, while examining working conditions in hairdressing salons, noticed, according to the company, that the hairdressers who used REAMIN had particularly healthy skin. The company still publishes the university's letter on the subject.

A more formal test followed in 1994. Dermatologists B. Pilz and P. J. Frosch, working at the skin clinic of the Dortmund municipal hospitals and the chair of dermatology at the University of Witten/Herdecke, compared two skin-protection products with different textures [9]. One contained beeswax; the other was a protective foam. Both were tested against sodium lauryl sulfate, a common cleansing agent, and against two shampoos. Over nine days the substances were applied for 30 minutes at a time to the backs of healthy volunteers, and the researchers measured redness, the skin's moisture loss and blood flow. In the second week of the test the beeswax preparation performed significantly better than the foam [9]. REAMIN summarises the study by saying that its cream reduces the risk of skin damage by up to three times [6].

The decisive corporate change came in 2011, when Wella sold what the company calls its "traditional brand" REAMIN, which was to be continued as an independent business [6]. A relaunch followed in 2012, with the formula left unchanged and the cream sold once again through the trade that supplies hairdressing salons.

The years that followed brought a steady expansion of the range:

- 2013 — an unperfumed version of the hand-protection cream. - 2014 — a glove-compatibility report by the testing company ENERSOL, which examined the cream together with Ansell Micro Touch Nitra Tex gloves against the European standards for holes and tear strength (EN 455-1 and EN 455-2). The report found no negative effect on the gloves' function or condition. - 2015 — the REAMIN MEDICAL LINE, sold through pharmacies to people in other occupations and for use in the home. - 2016 — the REPAIR Hand Wellness Creme, intended to soothe and care for irritated skin. - 2017 — Dermatica Exclusiv Horst Spickermann GmbH took over nationwide distribution in Germany as a cooperation partner of Reamin [7].

From 1978 until 2011, REAMIN belonged to WELLA AG. When Wella sold the brand in 2011, the company's own history did not name the buyer; it says only that REAMIN would carry on as a company in its own right [6].

Today the brand is operated by Reamin GmbH, which gives Cologne as its registered seat and is entered in the commercial register of the Darmstadt district court; its managing director is Anette Lehmann [11]. The pharmacy range is presented separately on the same website, with EB Medical GmbH named as the contact for the MEDICAL LINE. The website does not explain the corporate relationship between the two companies. No parent company or sister brands are documented.

REAMIN describes its offer as a dermatological skin-protection concept for "working hands" in professional life, the household and the hairdressing trade. Its tagline, Hautschutz für arbeitende Hände ("skin protection for working hands"), sums up the focus: the brand makes protection and care creams for hands under heavy use, not general cosmetics.

The company presents itself as a specialist in skin-protection concepts for the hands, combining more than 30 years of research in protective and care cosmetics with the demands of the hairdressing trade. It says that research, development and production of all its products take place in Germany [4]. Looking ahead, REAMIN states that it intends to keep developing solutions for hairdressers and to contribute to better skin health in the trade.

The brand's own marketing goes further. REAMIN calls the cream the most popular and market-leading skin-care product for the hairdressing sector and says it has been recommended by dermatologists for close to 40 years. Neither claim is supported by independent figures.

The positioning splits into two lines on a shared website. The Coiffeur Line is aimed at hairdressers and sold through the salon-supply trade. The MEDICAL LINE is sold through pharmacies and selected institutes and targets anyone whose hands face wet work or harsh cleaning agents, from other trades to private households.

The core product remains the REAMIN Handschutzcreme, the hand-protection cream first sold in 1978. It comes in a tube and a dispenser bottle, alongside the unperfumed version added in 2013 and the REAMIN REPAIR Hand Wellness Creme. The company says the cream absorbs very quickly and is not greasy, so it can be applied as often as needed during the working day.

The perfumed cream's ingredient list starts with water, liquid paraffin and glyceryl stearate, followed by beeswax (listed as cera alba) and fatty acids. It also contains the preservatives methylparaben and propylparaben and several fragrance components. An independent product database lists a 75 ml REAMIN PROCOIFFEUR hand-protection cream with the same ingredient list [13]. Because of the beeswax, the cream is not vegan.

The pharmacy range takes a different approach. The MEDICAL LINE consists of REAMIN PROTECT for protection, REAMIN CLEAN for cleansing, and REAMIN REPAIR and INTENSIVE for care, designed to work together as protection, cleansing and care. According to the company, all MEDICAL LINE products are free of aluminium compounds, fragrance and colourants [3].

REAMIN has also issued a Save the Bees special edition of the Coiffeur Line cream in a 50 ml aluminium tube with a floral design. The company says that for every tube sold, a donation to the German organisation Netzwerk Blühende Landschaft creates one square metre of flower meadow for bees, bumblebees and butterflies [10]. The edition is undated.

Everything in the REAMIN range is explained through the Triple-B-Membran. According to the brand, the cream forms a film of beeswax and lipids on the skin within seconds of being applied [8]. The name stands for a two-way barrier effect created by beeswax (bidirektionale Barriere-Wirkung durch Bienenwachs).

The company describes the film as semi-occlusive, meaning it slows but does not fully block the passage of moisture, and likens it to the wax layer on a waxed outdoor coat. In one direction it is meant to keep allergens and harmful substances out; in the other, it is meant to stop the skin's outer layer from being washed out and from losing too much moisture. REAMIN notes that the protection's duration depends on the task and cannot honestly be given as a number of hours, since there is no standard method for measuring how long a protective film lasts on the skin.

The brand's practical advice follows from this mechanism. Users are told to apply a little cream often rather than a lot at once, because too much prevents the film from drying and forming properly and leaves the hands feeling damp. The company says the film's protection against detergents has been shown with a repetitive irritation test on people, a test model it describes as close to real workplace exposure.

The company points to several studies and expert reports. Besides the 1980 Erlangen letter and the 1994 Dortmund and Witten/Herdecke study, it cites:

- a user-acceptance study from the dermatology department of the University of Osnabrück, which the company says found that hairdressers preferred the cream for its absorption, skin feel and scent; - an assessment by the IVDK, a German network that monitors contact allergies, which the brand says confirmed the cream's allergological safety; - the 2014 ENERSOL glove-compatibility report.

On this basis REAMIN states that its hand-protection cream was the first skin-protection cream in Germany to receive the DGUV Test mark of the German statutory accident insurance institutions, and says the cream meets the requirements through proven protection against skin disease caused by wet work [2]. The year of the award is not stated.

REAMIN's current status is unknown. The latest dated event in the company's own history is the 2017 distribution agreement with Dermatica Exclusiv Horst Spickermann GmbH, and its website carries a 2019 copyright notice and refers to the cream as developed "over 40 years ago". No later launches, announcements or dated activity are publicly documented. Its products continue to be listed by online pharmacies, but without dates, so it cannot be established whether the brand is still being actively developed or simply remains on sale.