Badger
Organic balms and mineral sunscreens made in a purpose-built plant in Gilsum, New Hampshire.
🏭 American Manufacturing
Our assessment
Company details
Where Badger products are made
Badger designed and built its own plant in 2011 in the small town where the founding family has lived since the 1970s. The company is explicit that this is unusual: many other skin care brands rely on outside manufacturers, and Badger does not.
In 2017 Badger became an FDA registered drug manufacturing facility specifically so it could make its mineral sunscreens in-house rather than farm them out. Sunscreen is regulated as an over-the-counter drug in the United States, so that is a real regulatory undertaking, not a label.
Formulating, filling and testing all happen on site, alongside the people who deal with customers. The company frames vertical integration as the reason it can answer questions about its own products.
The 1995 founding, family ownership, the Gilsum plant built in 2011, the FDA drug-manufacturing registration in 2017 and the “nearly all of our products” wording are all published by Badger on badgerbalm.com.
The story
Badger began in 1995 with a balm. The founding family had settled in Gilsum, New Hampshire in the 1970s, and the company grew out of that place rather than being located there for tax reasons — a distinction that becomes obvious when a business builds its own factory in a town of roughly eight hundred people.
The product line moved outward from balms into broader organic body care, blending plant extracts, oils, beeswax and minerals. The formulation philosophy has stayed narrow and legible: a short ingredient list that a customer can actually read, which is a constraint most of the category abandoned.
Two decisions define the company. In 2011 Badger designed and built its own manufacturing facility rather than contracting production out. In 2017 it registered that facility with the FDA as a drug manufacturing site so it could make its own mineral sunscreens. Both cost money that outsourcing would have saved.
Why they matter
Personal care is an industry of contract manufacturers. The overwhelming majority of skincare brands are marketing companies that specify a formula and buy finished goods from a third party — which is why so many products across different brands are chemically near-identical. Badger is the opposite arrangement, and says so plainly.
Mineral sunscreen is the sharpest example. Because sunscreen is regulated as an over-the-counter drug, making it in-house means accepting FDA registration and inspection of your own building. Most brands would rather let a contract manufacturer carry that. Badger took it on in 2017.
The company is also honest about the boundary of its claim. “Nearly all of our products” is a more useful sentence than “made in the USA” because it tells you there are exceptions. A manufacturer that qualifies its own claim is one whose unqualified claims are worth more.
Shop Badger products
Browse Badger balms and mineral sunscreens stocked on the Buy American Campaign store.
Frequently asked questions
Are Badger products made in the USA?
Nearly all of them are. Badger states on its own site that it makes nearly all of its products in its own facility in rural New Hampshire. Because the company qualifies the claim rather than making a blanket one, we label it American Manufacturing.
Where is Badger located?
Gilsum, New Hampshire, where the founding family has lived since the 1970s and where the company built its own manufacturing plant in 2011.
Does Badger make its own sunscreen?
Yes. In 2017 Badger became an FDA registered drug manufacturing facility specifically so it could make its mineral sunscreens in-house rather than use an outside manufacturer.
Is Badger family owned?
Yes — family owned and operated since 1995.