Native Deodorant

Learn marketing by copywork: recreate proven winning campaigns

Sam argues the best way to learn—like learning guitar by copying others' songs—is to study a list of the most successful ad campaigns (Trump, Biden, Native Deodorant) and recreate them step by step before making your own.

“And so what I would do is I would get a list of all the most successful campaigns. So like different ad campaigns that probably Trump or Biden used different ad campaigns that Native Deodorant used. And I would say, all right, you see this campaign? It worked really well. Recreate it.”

Steal thisTo learn marketing fast, copy proven winning campaigns move-by-move before attempting original work.

From a dining room table to a $100M Procter & Gamble exit in 2.5 years

Shaan sets up the episode: Moiz Ali built Native Deodorant as a one-man show from his brother's dining room table, raising almost no money because investors laughed him out of the room, then sold it to P&G for $100M just 2.5 years later.

“He was doing the packaging, he was doing the sales, the marketing, the customer service as a one-man show for a very, very long time. And over 2.5 years, he built this company raising very, very little money, mostly because investors were kind of just laughing him out of the room like, okay, you're starting a deodorant company? Like, what is that? And so he sold it 2.5 years later to Procter Gamble for $100 million.”

Find a product on your body 23 hours a day that you can't pronounce the ingredients of

Moiz's insight for Native came from flipping over an Axe stick and realizing he, an attorney, couldn't pronounce a single ingredient on a product that stays on his body nearly all day for decades. A pregnant sister worried about chemicals made it a real enough problem to solve.

“I flip over my deodorant and I can't pronounce a single ingredient on the back of that thing. Other than the word aluminum. And, you know, I've been seeing this problem for the last 4 years since I've been buying the deodorant from Duane Reade. And, you know, I'm an attorney. I'm not a dumb guy. I know how to read English, and I cannot pronounce a single one of these words.”

Steal thisLook for everyday products people keep on or in their body but can't read the label of — that's a wedge for a cleaner-ingredient brand.

Launched with one $12 sale on Product Hunt's page 2 and almost quit day one

Moiz launched Native 12 days after buying the domain with zero inventory, made by a mom-and-pop hobbyist. His Product Hunt launch landed on page 2, got a single sale, and he nearly killed the business — $12 a day, age 30.

“We get one sale and I'm like, okay, this business is over. Forget about like, I'm not going to do all this hard work to sell $12 of deodorant every day. I can open up a lemonade. Like, I'm 30 years old and I'm basically was having a revenue of $12 a day.”

A 3D-rendered product photo and a Product Hunt favor turned 1 sale into 51

With no physical product to photograph, Moiz used a 3D render of the deodorant bar and a bathroom hero image. A friend got him an exception to relaunch on Product Hunt's front page a second day in a row, producing 50 sales and validating the idea.

“So we got some guy to like 3D render the image of what a Native deodorant bar would look like. And like, that's the image that we have associated with Product Hunt. On our website, we have a hero image and the hero image is just a bathroom. It doesn't even have a photo of Native deodorant on it. Because no native deodorant exists at this point. But on that second day, we get like 50 sales”

Total launch budget: about $1,000

Moiz, self-described as the cheapest person in the world, started Native with roughly $1,000 of his own money — $500 to buy the first products and $500 on Google Ads, which initially returned only $100 in sales.

“Yeah, I'm the cheapest person in the world, so I probably spent like, um, a grand launching the business. So, uh, the first $500 was to buy products and the next $500 is to like buy Google Ads. And I'm buying Google Ads and I spend $500 and I get like $100 in, uh, of sales and I'm like, this is not working out well.”

A/B test a physical product by mailing formula variants and watching repeat-purchase rates

Native runs true A/B tests on a physical good: ship different baking-soda particle sizes to different customer cohorts, then compare reviews at 6 weeks and repeat-purchase rates at 12 weeks to decide which formula is objectively better.

“So we'll send, you know, the Shawns of one world baking soda that's milled to a certain particle size and Sams of the world, a baking soda that's milled to another particle size. And we'll, we'll monitor your reviews use 6 weeks after you purchase and your repeat purchase rates 12 weeks after you purchase and say, you know what, the Sams of the world are buying again more frequently than the Shauns of the world.”

Steal thisTreat a consumable like software — ship formula variants to cohorts and let repeat-purchase rate, not the lab, pick the winner.

From $100K/month to $1M/month in six months on a single product

Native scaled revenue from roughly $100K a month in May 2016 to $250K in June (when the first employee joined) and $1M a month by November 2016 — a 10x in five months while Moiz was still doing customer service himself.

“So she comes on board, we do $250K in revenue that month. So we've basically doubled the business between May in June, and the customer service inquiries have gotten to be even more than she can— she and I can handle together.”

The three compounding levers behind Native's snowball: word of mouth, ads, repeat rate

Moiz attributes the 10x ramp to three compounding forces: growing word of mouth at higher revenue, more ad spend once unit economics were proven, and a higher repeat-purchase rate — the most important one — creating a snowball effect.

“There's 3 things. One, word of mouth is growing a ton. Like, you know, it's, it's small. It's hard to have word of mouth when you're doing $50K a month. It's a lot easier to have word of mouth when you're doing $250K, $500K a month. So that's growing a ton. Two, we're spending more on ads because we understand product market fit and we understand that we're profitable when we spend money on ads. So we're spending more money on ads. And then 3, we have a higher repeat purchase rate, uh, which was the most important thing.”

Steal thisFor a consumable D2C brand, obsess over repeat-purchase rate first — it compounds with word of mouth and ad spend into a snowball.

Price by working backwards from all-in cost, not the competitor's price

Native's $12 price came from cost-plus math, not a market survey: ~$6 to make, ~$3 to ship, ~$1.50 for box and insert, an all-in cost over $11. Moiz had no choice but to charge $12 to avoid losing money on every order, despite competitors selling at $3-4.

“Like, early on, the deodorant cost us about $6 to make. It cost us, uh, $3 and some change to ship. And then it cost us like another $1.50 for random expenses, like the box and like a, you know, a card in there and a bunch of other expenses. So we were looking at an all-in cost of like $11 and some change. And so I was like, look, uh, I can't lose money on every deodorant I make.”

Steal thisSet your price by stacking real all-in unit costs first; let the floor justify a premium rather than anchoring to the incumbent's shelf price.

'If the natural deodorant industry is $30M a year, we ARE the entire industry'

An investor passed on Native because the whole natural deodorant category was only ~$30M/year (essentially Tom's of Maine). Moiz's retort: Native was already doing $30M a year, so it WAS the entire category — and the small TAM was the opportunity, not the risk.

“And I was like, if the natural deodorant industry is $30 million a year, we're the entire natural deodorant industry. We're doing $30 million a year. At this point. And so I think from, from our perspective, we were like, look, there's a lot of external factors that say we should not be doing this.”

Sell the sizzle: an online-only brand's value is the channels the acquirer can unlock

Native sold only deodorant, only on its own site, only in the US. Moiz pitched acquirers on the upside they could add — selling into Target, expanding the product line, going to Canada — turning a narrow business into a story of unrealized distribution.

“And so one of the things that we sell is like the sizzle, right? We're like, look, if you, uh, you know how to sell in, you know, P&G, do you know how to sell into Target? If so, imagine how Native would do at Target. Do you know how to make other products with the word Native on them? Help us do that and we can make this a bigger business. Do you know how to sell in Canada? Great. This is going to be a bigger business.”

Steal thisPitch acquirers on the channels and SKUs THEY can unlock that you deliberately left untouched — sell the upside, not just the trailing numbers.

Native didn't own its own trademark until 5 days before the P&G sale

A trademark Native didn't own nearly sank the deal — P&G refused to buy until Native owned its mark. Moiz negotiated the purchase of his own trademark while negotiating the acquisition, closing on it November 3rd and selling the company November 8th.

“We simply didn't own our trademark. Yeah. Until 5 days before we sold the business. So we bought our trademark on like, we sold the business on like November 8th. On November 3rd, we purchased the trademark and that was the one thing that we still had to do in order to sell the business. Like P&G was like, we will not buy this business until you own your own trademark.”

Steal thisLock down your trademark early — an unowned mark can stall or kill an acquisition at the finish line.