The Woohoo Story
For those in a hurry - the short version
Woohoo Natural Deodorants are the best thing that will ever happen to your armpits. They're the healthy, toxin-free alternative to anti-perspirant deodorants that will keep you BO free all day long.
Our deodorants are natural, vegan and made in Newcastle NSW by husband and wife team Aaron and Phoebe (yep - that's us in the picture) and our small-but-legendary team.
Once you're hooked on our deodorants, you'll want to explore our award-winning skincare range which specialises in care for problem skin. We've also got goodness covered for your body and hair.
We've been creating unique Australian skincare and deodorants for over 16 years now and we're super proud to have received 17,000 verified reviews (and counting) from happy customers.
The long version
We (Aaron and Phoebe - husband and wife from Newcastle NSW) are self-confessed mix-a-holics. We’ll mix or blend whatever it is we can get our hands on.
Smoothies (usually green). Doughs (homemade bread is the best). Mix tapes (children of the 80’s). Mixed nuts (unsalted). Mixed socks (no prizes for most organised household here). And nearly becoming a champion cocktail mixer (more on this below).
Mixing was our secret obsession. Add a generous dash of passion for health and wellness, and out popped our very first natural skincare brand, Happy Skincare, in 2010 (organic, natural, vegan skincare).
So there we were, living the health-obsessed mix-a-holic’s dream. But not quite.
There was this smell coming from somewhere.... Ewwww... was that Aaron? ;) Let's go back a few years to make sure we tell this story right!
Aaron had always struggled with using deodorants as they caused irritation - usually uncomfortable redness and itchiness. There was only one brand that he could use but it was far from natural.
Being the health-obsessed fellow he was, of course he ditched it and went searching for a natural deodorant.
Aaron’s experience was the same as most people looking for natural deodorants. They performed very poorly with all the usual complaints. They were wet and sticky, didn’t work long enough and didn’t smell that great.
In the end he had to go au naturale and be constantly self-conscious about smelling of B.O.
So the years passed and Aaron found himself as the owner and director and cosmetic formulator of an amazing skincare company 😜 and the search for a non-irritating deodorant was still going on.
Aaron thought he was onto a winner we found out about deodorant pastes that used bicarb soda. They were really good at beating the stink so he tried every one he could find. But they all had the same disappointing result after a few days….
Red, irritated armpits with an itch that would drive you mad.
Aaron knew that he wouldn’t be alone. Surely there were other people out there who desperately wanted to go for a natural deodorant but were kept being let down by what was available.
It was time for to do something about it and we created our own deodorant paste, but not without a few (ahem many) epic failures first.
The problem with bicarb soda in natural deodorants
Bicarb is brilliant at neutralising odour, which is why so many natural deodorants are built on it. The catch is what happens next. Once bicarb meets sweat it pushes the skin's surface towards alkaline, and skin is naturally slightly acidic. How happily skin puts up with that varies enormously from one person to the next, which is the whole reason bicarb divides people.
So the first thing Aaron tried was balancing out the pH (that's the acid/alkaline balance). He needed to add something acidic. Citric acid was all we could think of as it was a powder but what a mess! Think of sticky brown shea butter soufflé and you will have what we created. It was awful, back to the blank ideas board.
What the mess eventually taught him was that he had been chasing the wrong thing. There was nothing in the jar to balance. A pH is something that happens in water, and a deodorant paste has none, so the paste has no pH of its own at all.
The alkaline shift he was trying to cancel out does not happen in the jar. It happens later, on the skin, the moment sweat arrives. So Aaron went the other way. Instead of changing what bicarb does, he would look after the skin it was sitting on.
Zinc oxide turned out to be the hero, helping protect the skin's natural barrier, with shea butter to keep things soft, and only as much bicarb as it took to beat the smell.
Finding that amount was the slow part. Fewer than ten versions went into the original paste, which doesn't sound like many until you know that each one needed two or three weeks of real wear before his skin would say whether it had worked. Nine months, one very patient test subject, and boy are we proud.
Aaron put it in a jar and called it the Woohoo! All Natural Deodorant Paste. And he was never smelly again.
It may look like a just a jar of deodorant but what’s inside is a result of 36+ years of deodorant frustration and 5 years of self-obsessed learning.
A few surprising things about the Woohoo! All Natural Deodorant Paste
- It’s waterless. You might find that sometimes there are little tiny grains of shea butter that need to be rubbed between your fingers to melt before applying.
- It works on feet. If you like the sockless look then Woohoo can save everybody some embarrassment. Go easy on the amount though, because it can make your feet slippery.
- It can be used under the band of your bra if it causes chafing. Our deodorant sticks are even better at it, if you have one of those.
- One jar lasts ages. Usually 5-6 months if you’re using it once a day.
Shop the Woohoo! All Natural Deodorant Paste here (we’ve got sample sizes too!).
Epilogue: Aaron’s not really as smelly as this story makes him sound! He does have a normal amount of manly body odour, but we did exaggerate his body odour just a little for the sake of a good story :) We didn’t have to exaggerate how sensitive he is though … the Woohoo! is the only all natural deodorant he can wear and it does the all-important job of keeping him smell free all day long, day after day, with no irritation. We think it can do the same for you too :)