Four Years in the Making
It’s March 19th 2019 at 7:00 am in Northern California. I’ve already rocketed through two cans of Red Bull (an old habit perfected in medical school) in hopes of birthing an idea that will navigate Dr. Hoot’s from the realm of imagination to the physicial world itself. Three months, tops, I thought it would take to achieve. Given that the current year is 2023, I was completely naive to the time frame that would swallow the past four years with sketches, 3d printing, manufacturers, and formulation labs. All the vital components of Dr. Hoots that are akin to organs of the human body, ensuring that symbiosis and equilibrium are established in a system of fluidity.
The starting point for our company was creating a container out of a biodegradable material that would reduce our plastic foot print. Of course, the majority of manufacturers offered to provide plastic containers rather than paper. Presumably, this was because the machining and bulk supply for plastic deodorant containers was cheaper and already on hand at their immediate use. However, we were hell bent on using paper as it was environmentally tolerable in comparison to plastic and the consumer population appeared to moving towards more environmentally friendly products. Keep in mind, deodorant containers in 2019 weren’t really offered in paper containers (although I’m sure there were some). We wanted to either start or be apart of a small movement of creating more sustainable products and packaging.
Eventually, we were able to find a manufacturer overseas, whom we are grateful to work with then and currently. Taking on our project to produce eco-friendly, paper deodorant containers, the next course of action was providing our container design.
Behold, the radically different container (below) you see here today was the initial artwork created for Dr. Hoots. Sleek and wing shaped, a container that I felt was eye catching, and plain cool (of course, I’m completely non-biased). Unfortunately, as the Dr. Hoot's business continued to grow in its infancy, so did my ignorance of how unrealistic such a customized container would be to produce from paper. Well at least from a drawing, I thought.
And….Behold! I managed to painfully learn a new, software program, Autodesk 360, to produce (below) exact dimensions of the winged shaped container to pitch to the manufacturers. It even had a three dimensional video! This was solid I thought and a full proof way to get this design on the production line. “That’s pretty neat but we need a physical unit in hand to confirm if this is possible to produce…”said the manufacturer in response to my "full proof" design.
And…and….Behold! A 3d printed container (image below) of my Autodesk 360 design, voguing in front of the camera. I was also able to ad 3D printing as a skill to my CV since I was chained to 3d printing software for a few months to complete this. The process over all felt counterintuitive. Here I had the revolutionary technology to print 3D objects but at the same time the process felt archaic. I would catch myself having flashbacks of standing next to our brand new bubble ink jet printer when I was a kid. Thinking, wow! I just saw that article on the internet and now I’m going to be able to hold it in the real world. Though at the same time, I would think, jease it sure does take a while to print. This was the same ideation that I had with 3D printing. Very cool but very slow. Nonetheless after ten hours, the first container was completed. 8 months later, the finalized container was completed. 10 minutes after the manufacturer received the container, the idea was shut down. I’ll give the manufacturer credit, they communicated that they would be capable of producing the container. However, since it was a unique design, new machinery would have to be created for production costing a minimum of at least $50,000 dollars!
But was it $50,000 dollars, cool?
Cylinder containers it was! Now who’s going to pump life into these containers? This was the next part of our odyssey, locating a formulation lab to create and formulate our deodorant. Most importantly we were searching for a lab that would be able to incorporate the concept of utilizing the essential amino acid, L-methionine (read more here). As with manufacturers for containers, we went through numerous formulation labs. Likening to the Goldilocks Principle, we were trying to find the right balance between composition and scent of the deodorant formulation. Eventually after two years of trial and testing, we found a formulation lab that was “just right” to produce our initial product, Presidio Deodorant.
This ends the beginning of our story but the beginning of our journey. Thank you everyone for your support and subscribing! We’ll keep you updated along the way. Until then and always, Be The Owl, Fight The Skunk! With Dr. Hoot’s Deodorant.
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