Intake Breathing Lands $62M as Nasal Wellness Goes Mainstream

DTC brand Intake Breathing has raised $62 million from Camino Partners, the investment firm founded by Kind Snacks founder Daniel Lubetzky. The round, announced this week, is one of the largest commitments yet to a category most shoppers still know as the humble nose strip aisle.

What does the money buy?

Intake Breathing plans to spend the capital on two fronts. First, expansion into mass retail — a decisive shift for a brand built on direct-to-consumer sales. Second, growth of the company's internal operations as it scales toward that shelf presence.

The brand's stated ambition goes beyond distribution. Intake Breathing says it wants to reinvent the nose strip category itself, which the company characterizes as stagnant, for a broader base of consumers interested in health and longevity. That's a familiar playbook in modern consumer goods: take a functional product with dated branding, reposition it as a lifestyle essential, and sell it to shoppers who never considered the original.

Why nasal breathing, and why now?

The investment signals how far consumer wellness has stretched. The category now reaches beyond supplements and skin care into daily habits — including something as basic as how people breathe. That expansion is what makes a $62 million check plausible for a nose strip business.

Intake Breathing is not alone. Brands like Hostage Tape and ZzzTape have emerged in the last few years to serve the mouth-taping trend, in which consumers tape their mouths shut at night to promote nasal breathing and restful sleep. The source report, published by Modern Retail, frames these players as evidence of a real shift: airflow optimization and sleep quality are moving to the forefront of the wellness industry.

The mechanism behind the trend

Three forces are working together here. Consumers are treating functional products as lifestyle essentials rather than medical oddities. Investors with consumer-brand track records — Lubetzky built Kind Snacks into a mainstream staple before launching Camino Partners — are applying that playbook to new categories. And legacy categories like nose strips, which sit in drugstore aisles with little innovation, offer open space for DTC brands to enter and reposition.

What does this change for marketers?

For retail and brand teams, the takeaway is that "breathing" is now a merchandisable wellness vertical, not a niche curiosity. A DTC brand entering mass retail with $62 million behind it will test whether longevity-framed positioning can lift a mature, low-growth category. The performance of Intake Breathing's retail rollout — and of mouth-taping peers like Hostage Tape and ZzzTape — will show whether nasal wellness earns permanent shelf space or stays a short-cycle trend.