What began with a pair of blue-light-blocking glasses has evolved into a broader wellness technology business with red light at its centre. Bon Charge co-founder Katie Mant speaks to Retail Beauty about building a category before consumers understood it, knowing when to rebrand and why the next phase of beauty tech will be won on evidence rather than hype.

When Katie and Andy Mant launched their business from Perth in 2017, the beauty technology landscape looked very different.

LED face masks had yet to become a regular fixture across beauty feeds and bathroom cabinets, wellness technology remained relatively niche, and the business that would eventually become Bon Charge was focused on a considerably narrower proposition: blue-light-blocking glasses.

Originally launched as BLUblox, the company was born from the founders’ own search for a solution to the amount of artificial light accompanying increasingly screen-heavy lifestyles.

“Andy and I were both fighting our own sleep problems, Andy especially, working long hours on screens late into the night,” Katie Mant tells Retail Beauty.

“When we went looking for blue-light glasses that actually blocked the right wavelengths and didn’t look like gaming goggles, they didn’t exist. So, we made them.”

What followed offers a case study in building a business around an emerging consumer behaviour — and then recognising when the category has moved beyond the proposition that first established it.

“The early years taught us that building a new category is really about education,” Mant says. “You can’t sell the solution until people understand the problem.”

Today, the proposition extends well beyond the blue-light glasses that launched the business. Bon Charge operates across red light therapy, PEMF and circadian lighting, positioning itself at the increasingly blurred intersection of beauty, recovery, performance and longevity.

That breadth also reflects the founders’ complementary perspectives. Andy Mant has become closely associated with the performance optimisation and biohacking side of the business, while Katie brings a stronger focus on women’s wellness and beauty — a combination that has helped Bon Charge broaden its relevance as wellness technology moves further into everyday consumer routines.

From niche technology to beauty routine

Red light therapy has become one of the most visible parts of the at-home beauty-device market, helped by the proliferation of LED masks and growing consumer interest in treatments that sit somewhere between skincare, beauty technology and professional aesthetics.

There is legitimate scientific research behind photobiomodulation, although the evidence should not be interpreted as meaning every device or every marketing claim is equally supported.

Clinical research has found benefits from particular LED protocols for aspects of skin appearance. A randomised controlled trial involving 137 women, for example, found both 660nm red light and 590nm amber light reduced periocular wrinkle volume following 10 sessions over four weeks. Earlier randomised research has also reported improvements in wrinkles using 660nm LEDs. (PubMed)

The important distinction for retailers is that wavelength, dose, treatment protocol and device specifications matter. Photobiomodulation is a defined light-based technology rather than a catch-all term for anything emitting red light; the US Food and Drug Administration describes PBM devices as delivering non-heating light energy and has specific regulatory guidance covering medical devices in the category. (US Food and Drug Administration)

For Bon Charge, that shift from curiosity to scrutiny is becoming commercially significant.

The company’s Global Wellness Tech Trend Report 2026, based on a survey of 7,000 adults across Australia, the US, UK and UAE, found 34 per cent of respondents reported using red light therapy, while 86 per cent of red-light users surveyed said they had started within the previous two years.

Beauty is playing a significant role in that uptake. According to the brand’s research, improving the appearance of dull or tired-looking skin was the most commonly cited primary motivation for using red light therapy, at 27 per cent. The report also found adults under 35 were leading adoption across the wellness technology categories it surveyed.

For Mant, however, the change in consumer behaviour is unmistakable.

“Consumers have shifted from ‘what does this claim’ to ‘what can this prove’,” she says. “They want efficacy and evidence, not just aspiration.”

The rebrand that unlocked the next stage

By 2022, the business had another problem: the name that helped establish it was beginning to restrict it.

BLUblox described a company built around blue-light management. By then, its portfolio had expanded into red light, infrared and other wellness technologies.

The founders made the decision to retire BLUblox and relaunch as Bon Charge.

“BLUblox captured where we started, but not where we’d transformed into,” Mant says.

“The name spoke only to blue light blocking, while the business had grown into something far broader. Bon Charge gave us room to reflect that fuller picture, red light at the core, and a mission bigger than any single product.”

For beauty founders, Mant believes there is a broader lesson in recognising when brand equity has started to become brand constraint.

“When your name starts explaining less than your product does, it’s a sign you’ve outgrown it,” she says.

Beauty tech’s credibility problem

The expansion of at-home beauty devices has created opportunity, but it has also made the category considerably more difficult to navigate.

LED masks now sit across dramatically different price points and specifications, while terms such as “clinically proven”, “science-backed” and “medical grade” have become powerful marketing currency.

Mant argues the next stage of the market will require consumers — and the retailers curating products for them — to look beyond those descriptors.

“Ask for the specifics,” she says. “Credible brands publish their wavelengths and irradiance and can point to independent research.

“Be cautious of vague claims, missing numbers, and ‘clinically proven’ with nothing behind it. Third-party testing, transparency about what a device does and doesn’t do, and honesty about limitations are the real tells.”

It is an increasingly relevant distinction.

Scientific evidence supporting a particular wavelength or photobiomodulation protocol does not automatically substantiate the performance claims of every commercial device using similar technology. Device design, irradiance, dose, treatment time and intended use can all influence outcomes.

Bon Charge has responded to that credibility challenge by assembling a Scientific Advisory Board spanning medicine, metabolism, dentistry and wellness. Its current board includes Dr Rangan Chatterjee, metabolism researcher Dr Susanna Søberg and Dr Shabana Daya, a physician whose qualifications include a diploma in clinical dermatology.

Mant says that scrutiny is intentional.

“They guide our product innovation, validate our technology, and keep us honest about what the evidence supports and what it doesn’t.”

Building beyond beauty

Perhaps the more interesting development for retailers is that Bon Charge no longer sees red light as belonging exclusively to beauty.

The brand is positioning the technology across beauty, wellness and recovery — categories that were once merchandised and marketed relatively independently but increasingly overlap in the consumer’s routine.

That strategy has extended into sport. In February, Premier League club Fulham FC announced Bon Charge as its Official Red Light and Recovery Partner, integrating the brand’s technology into its recovery environment. (Fulham FC)

For Mant, that crossover reflects a wider change in how consumers think about wellness technology.

“Previously, the focus was solely around beauty and skin appearance,” she says. “Now, we are noticing a notable interest from a recovery perspective and this is only growing.”

The move also broadens the addressable consumer beyond the traditional beauty-device shopper.

Bon Charge’s 2026 research found men and younger adults were among the groups driving wellness-tech adoption, challenging assumptions about who is buying into a category that, at least at retail, can often be presented through a predominantly female beauty lens.

The founder lesson: scale exposes the cracks

As the business expanded internationally, Mant says some of its biggest lessons had relatively little to do with marketing.

“The biggest lesson was to earn one market before chasing many,” she says.

“What surprised us most was how much of international growth comes down to the unglamorous work — logistics and compliance are far harder than building the product, and every country has its own rules for wellness devices.”

Her advice for Australian beauty and wellness founders contemplating international expansion is similarly pragmatic.

“The two things I’d tell any founder to get genuinely sorted before you scale are your science and your supply chain because growth doesn’t fix your weak points, it magnifies them,” she says.

“Every gap we hadn’t closed came back to find us the moment volume picked up.”

There was another lesson: global expansion did not require disguising the brand’s Australian roots.

“Early on you assume you need to sound bigger, more polished and more ‘global’,” Mant says. “The opposite was true as being a credible, no-nonsense Australian founded brand has been one of our greatest assets.

“Lead with what makes you different, not what makes you blend in.”

Where beauty retail goes next

Bon Charge’s trajectory reflects a bigger shift underway across beauty retail.

The line separating skincare, devices, wellness and performance is becoming less distinct. At the same time, consumers have access to more scientific information — and considerably more marketing dressed up as science — than ever before.

That makes curation increasingly important.

For retailers, the opportunity may therefore be less about simply adding another LED mask to the assortment and more about helping consumers understand why devices differ, what specifications matter and what the available evidence can — and cannot — establish.

Mant believes the brands capable of answering those questions will have an advantage.

“This generation treats wellness as daily and preventative, not an occasional treat or a fix when something’s wrong,” she says.

“They blend beauty, health and performance into a single routine, and they research relentlessly. They’ll reward retailers who curate for credibility and take the time to educate, and they’ll walk away from anyone who overpromises.”

That principle is also shaping Bon Charge’s next chapter.

Rather than expanding indiscriminately across the rapidly growing wellness-device market, Mant says the company intends to concentrate on its core categories and deepen its investment in evidence.

“What’s next for us is really about depth over breadth,” she says. “Rather than chasing every new device or trend, we want to keep raising the bar on evidence.”

For a company that began by having to explain why its category existed at all, it marks a notable shift.

The challenge is no longer convincing consumers to pay attention to wellness technology.

It is convincing an increasingly informed consumer which technology deserves their trust.