With food there’s a whole range of food choices available, from whole unprocessed foods to highly processed with synthetic ingredients, and the world of skincare products is similar.
After using a homemade deodorant on a surfing trip in Java, Australian husband and wife team Melanie McVean and Chris Caley thought, “if there’s a natural product with clean, simple ingredients, that delivers the outcome I’m looking for, why use a product with synthetic ingredients at all?”. And with that No Pong was born.
“Deodorant is something most people use daily and you put it in a sensitive area of your body, so we wanted to make one from simple, natural ingredients that is also effective” says Melanie. Ingredients include coconut oil, baking soda, corn starch, beeswax and 100% pure essential oils.
“The idea of No Pong came from a surfing trip in Java. I was making deodorant and other products for the home already, and had been using them for a while, and Chris ran out of his roll-on deodorant while we were away. He decided to try my homemade deodorant and was using it, kind of in secret, and I noticed he had been wearing the same t-shirt for 3 days and so I made a comment about it” says Melanie. “He was so proud to let me know that he’d been using my deodorant and that he didn’t smell! He made me smell his armpits! That’s when we knew we were on to something and we needed to share it with others.
What did the first homemade version of No Pong look like?
The first versions of No Pong looked totally different to the way they look today. The early testing versions were actually a bit of a goopy mess. They were effective, but they couldn’t really be transported easily. We had to do a lot of work on texture and consistency to develop them into the first version that had an actual No Pong label on it. These were all hand-mixed batches, filled and labelled by hand on our kitchen bench, long before there was any production line in the picture.
In those first few months, we did a lot of work on texture, consistency and temperature stability to make sure the No Pong is not only super effective, but also feels amazing to apply.
Something that has not changed since those first homemade versions was that even in those early days, we realised that without customers, we don’t have a business. Every homemade order we shipped, we would include a handwritten note from us thanking each customer for their order, as we were so grateful that complete strangers had chosen us.
We still send handwritten messages to customers, although obviously not in every order! However, from this we have developed a range of other initiatives, and ways for us to show our gratitude and appreciation to our amazing customers, whether that’s via our “random acts of kindness” program, to personalised engraved tins for customers that make us laugh (or cry!).
What were the biggest challenges in turning a kitchen experiment into a commercial product?
When we first started, there were just the two of us, and we were literally hand-making in the kitchen late at night, and then waking up in the morning to pack orders before we went to our day jobs.
As a business scales up, your systems need to change and this always requires deep thinking. For example, the system we used to make and ship our first 10x tins of No Pong, was different to the system that we needed to make and ship 100x tins No Pong. It’s totally different again for 1,000x tins.
As you can imagine, we’ve rotated out a lot of systems as we’ve grown! We’re still learning every day, and we love it!
How did you decide on the name No Pong?
We’re straight shooters, and we designed No Pong to do exactly what it says on the tin!
What misconceptions do people have about natural deodorants?
In the years leading up to No Pong, I actually had some conceptions about natural deodorants, and at the time I thought they were right. I’d tried crystal deodorants, and various other formulations, and they just honestly didn’t work.
That’s why I was actually quite sceptical when Melanie was making her early versions of No Pong, because I just really did not think it would work. When I first tried her early formula in that tropical jungle for the first time, I honestly couldn’t believe it. It was at that point that we thought we’ve got to make this into something.
Sustainability was part of No Pong’s identity from the beginning — why was that important?
Our goal is to leave things the way we found them, or if possible better.
We’re both surfers and outdoor-loving people. Even last month, we were visiting surf spots overseas with plastic riddled all over the beaches and dirty nappies literally on the shore where we were paddling out. Most of the brand names on all of that plastic are still recognisable as well (obviously, not on the nappies!).
From day one, we resolved to ensure that all of our packaging was completely plastic-free because we just did not want to contribute to this in any shape or form. As a business, we also understand that we have a much larger potential impact than an individual person, just due to the sheer scale that we need to do things at.
We have lots of delivery trucks coming and going, definitely more than the average person, so at one end we’re certified carbon neutral as an organisation. On the other end, there are lots of little things that we also do to try to reduce our impact. For example, at our warehouse, we recycle empty cardboard cartons with a machine that turns them into hex wrap, so we use that for packaging filler instead of foam beads. We also use paper tape on all of our packaging. Again, it’s just a small little thing that most people wouldn’t notice, but it’s important to us.
What has been the most rewarding customer story you have received?
We’ve heard so many rewarding customer stories over the years: people who have found confidence after years of thinking it wasn’t possible.
People who literally email us to say No Pong has changed their lives, but there is one category of a customer story that really stands out, and we’re not going to lie, it can be a bit of a tear jerker! Because of the way No Pong is applied by hand, we’ve had a number of customers over the years get in touch to say that they’ve early detected a lump in their armpit (and in one case, a rare form of melanoma that would have otherwise gone undetected), and have gone on to successfully receive treatment.
We never dreamed we would get this kind of feedback when we first started, and it’s definitely an unexpected side effect of our overall philosophy of “being in touch with our bodies”.
