It’s the uncommon merchandise that may be discovered on the cabinets of Tractor Supply and within the pages of Vogue. And now Bag Balm, a moisturizer initially made to heal chapped cows’ udders, is a trending magnificence product among the many Gen Z “skinfluencers” of TikTok.

The social media character Alix Earle swears by it as a treatment for dry pores and skin and dry lips. Others beneficial Bag Balm as an alternative choice to Vaseline for the pattern of “slugging,” or overlaying the complete face earlier than going to mattress to seal in moisture.

“I’ve turned so many pals on to it,” stated Madison Bailey, 28, a social media strategist for the sweetness trade who has posted concerning the wonders of Bag Balm.

Having realized about Bag Balm from her mom, Ms. Bailey retains an 8-ounce tin in her rest room and a 1-ounce mini tin in her purse. “You don’t want loads while you slug it in your face,” she stated, including that the price (round $11 for the 8-ounce dimension) makes it economical.

Bag Balm, a concoction comprising petroleum jelly and lanolin, has been made in a small city in Vermont for 125 years. Early on, the directions on the sq. inexperienced tin made plain its supposed use: “For sore teats and exhausting milkers, apply the Balm one hour earlier than the night time milking and instantly after the morning milking.” The label cautioned, “For veterinary use solely.”

In time, farm households discovered different functions for the salve, utilizing it to deal with every little thing from cuts and burns to chapped lips, saddle sores and the needle pricks on quilters’ fingers. Little by little, its potential to melt pores and skin made it right into a rural magnificence secret, one which was ultimately adopted by individuals who had by no means seen the within of a barn.

The actress Raquel Welch credited a regimen of Bag Balm earlier than bedtime for her ageless pores and skin. In 1999, the Canadian nation music star Shania Twain, then on the peak of her fame and a Revlon spokeswoman, mentioned Bag Balm in an interview with The London Telegraph, saying, “Once I’ve been flying loads and my pores and skin is actually dry, I’ll rub it over my face and on my hair and go away it there all day.” Gross sales spiked.

Now the Vermont-based firm behind Bag Balm is determining the best way to market itself to the digital world whereas staying true to its folksy heritage.

Bedsprings and Canine’ Paws

Bag Balm is made, because it has been for greater than a century, in Lyndonville, Vt., inhabitants 1,136. On this a part of the nation, often known as the Northeast Kingdom, winters are lengthy, chilly and snow-swept, and a cow’s pores and skin takes abuse.

In 1899, John L. Norris, a dairy farmer, purchased the rights to the method from a druggist in a close-by city, Wells River, and commenced promoting Bag Balm by way of his Dairy Affiliation Firm. Different merchandise marketed by Mr. Norris included horse hoof softener, cow teat dilator and a leather-based cleaner and conditioner, Tackmaster.

By the Sixties — when Mr. Norris’s son, John L. Norris Jr., was operating the corporate — advertisements for Bag Balm promoted its “use additionally within the house for cuts, chaps and burns.”

A Wall Avenue Journal article from Oct. 23, 1969, reported that folks have been discovering every kind of makes use of for the salve: a Marine in Vietnam used Bag Balm to lubricate a 105-millimeter howitzer; a dentist in Texas claimed it healed his psoriasis; a girl in Maine lady stated it silenced squeaky bedsprings.

As we speak, Bag Balm is used for bicycle chafe, sunburn, diaper rash, pimples, mattress sores and nail and cuticle care, amongst different issues. Canine house owners put it on their pup’s paws. In a latest fan letter to the corporate, a girl wrote that her 84-year-old father has lengthy used Bag Balm for automobile repairs. He calls it “the juice.”

“Our complete model ethos is simplicity and flexibility,” stated Libby Mum or dad, the 36-year-old president of Vermont’s Unique Bag Balm, as the corporate is now known as.

As Ms. Mum or dad defined whereas sitting inside a Mexican cafe in downtown Lyndonville that till just a few years in the past was the Bag Balm manufacturing facility, the Norris household offered the enterprise to private-equity buyers in 2014. Beneath new administration, the wording on the tin was modified to take away references to “sore teats” and to play up Bag Balm’s advantages to people.

The corporate additionally launched a lip moisturizer, cleaning soap and exfoliating physique wash, and commenced providing its ointment in a travel-friendly plastic tube along with the traditional inexperienced tin. In 2015, Walmart shops started promoting Bag Balm.

“Bag Balm is just not probably the most intuitive model identify,” Ms. Mum or dad stated. “We wanted to outline the product for folks.”

Bag Balm’s agricultural associations nonetheless flip some off, nevertheless.

“Some folks stated, ‘I exploit that on my canines, I’m not going put that on my face,’” stated Religion Allison, 23, describing the combined critiques she obtained after posting a video to TikTok during which she confirmed herself slugging with Bag Balm.

Different commenters have complained of the odor, which has been likened to turpentine. Ms. Allison, a legislation scholar in Michigan, made a response video during which she and her sister weighed in. “We thought it smelled like a health care provider’s workplace,” she stated.

Nonetheless, a lot concerning the ointment stays unchanged, together with how it’s made. Simply up the road from the outdated manufacturing facility website is the present plant — a squat, gray-vinyl-sided constructing, with a big reproduction of a inexperienced tin caught to the facade.

Making the Paste

Although the therapeutic powers of Bag Balm appear mysterious, the method of constructing it’s fairly easy.

Mark Perkins, the manufacturing supervisor, is one in every of seven workers who produce roughly 9,000 8-ounce tins a day. Mr. Perkins, 47, went to work for Bag Balm in 1997, he stated, as a result of his household’s small dairy farm couldn’t maintain his father and himself. Now his son, Logan, 19, lately joined him within the manufacturing facility.

Mr. Perkins stood earlier than a 55-gallon drum of lanolin, a wax secreted by the sebaceous gland of sheep. Lanolin is the soothing ingredient that units Bag Balm aside from plain petroleum jelly and helps give the product its distinctive odor. Contained in the barrel, the substance had the consistency and coloration of caramel. Employees shovel it out.

Lanolin and 4 different substances — petrolatum, paraffin, water and hydroxyquinoline sulfate, an antiseptic — are heated right into a liquid and combined collectively in metal vats. Two filler nozzles squirt the recent liquid into tins that transfer down a conveyor belt. Because the tins snake backwards and forwards alongside the manufacturing line, the liquid cools and hardens right into a thick, yellow, oleaginous paste.

Regardless of its rising reputation as a human facial cream, about 10 % of gross sales nonetheless comes from farmers like Mindy McGrew and her husband, Kyle, who run a holistic dairy farm close to Lincoln, Neb.

A primary-generation farmer, Mrs. McGrew, 45, stated she realized about Bag Balm from her mother-in-law, who grew up on a farm. She likes that it doesn’t include synthetic dyes or fragrances.

“It truly is a family staple for a lot of households,” stated Mrs. McGrew, who places Bag Balm on her cows’ udders in winter to guard from frostbite and on the tail space in summer time to appease fly bites. “Grandma had it at her home, then Mother had it at her home.”

That historical past of being handed down by way of the generations has made the model cautious about altering its enterprise technique, stated Ms. Mum or dad, the corporate president. Bag Balm is unlikely to develop to the size of, say, Burt’s Bees, which sells over 500 merchandise. It was solely two years in the past, after the slugging movies started going viral, that the model thought to create a TikTok account.

“Our longtime customers have been launched to us on the farm,” Ms. Mum or dad stated. “So to be in Vogue, they will assume, ‘This isn’t my Bag Balm.’”

She added, “We’ve one thing distinctive — why disrupt it?”