Native Deodorant
Moises Ali had no experience in the deodorant industry when he decided to launch Native Deodorant. When he told people at a bar in San Francisco about his idea, a Pinterest employee asked incredulously, "What the hell are you doing starting a deodorant business?" Ali's response became the core of his philosophy: "I know nothing about deodorant today, but in six months I'll know everything there is to know about deodorant." This attitude of learning velocity over initial expertise would define his approach.
Ali deliberately cut corners on brand design to save money. He took the font from Harry's and the color palette from Casper, combining them into Native's visual identity. The entire website was built in just 3 days using WordPress and Woo Commerce—a free platform—rather than paying $3,000/month for Shopify. He manually packed deodorants in his apartment for the first six months to a year of operation, walking them to the post office near his San Francisco apartment. Ironically, a juice company called Native Juice Co. shared the same location and received constant calls meant for Native Deodorant.
The brand grew through word-of-mouth as it became ubiquitous in retail—Target, online marketplaces, and eventually everywhere. The organic growth was driven by customer referrals and product quality.
What worked spectacularly was the post-purchase pop-up mechanism. After customers clicked checkout, Native would show them an upsell offer for travel-size deodorant. This simple feature generated approximately $700,000 in monthly sales with $400,000 in net profit. This was only possible because Ali chose WordPress over Shopify—Shopify's platform limitations made such customization prohibitively difficult at the time. Ali also leveraged custom subscriptions and instantaneous page loading, all features that WordPress allowed but Shopify didn't.
Native grew from a bootstrapped kitchen-table operation to a company doing approximately $50 million in e-commerce revenue. Ali eventually sold the company to Procter & Gamble for $100 million. He spent a couple of years at P&G before leaving to invest in e-commerce and other businesses. He now co-hosts the Limited Supply podcast and invests alongside his brother in various ventures, from real estate to startups.
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