Fortune Small Business
May 2001; By Art Chung

Stop Making Scents

Wake up and smell the…well, nothing. BodyMint, a pill that promises
to erase all sorts of funky odors, from feet to armpits, has arrived.
Claire Tanoue and Rona Yim, two Honolulu attorneys, came up with
the idea for an “internal deodorant” in 1997, but it took three years
of research and nine failed recipes before their product hit the shelves
in Hawaii. In 2001 their product invaded the mainland, popping up in
two trendy high-end stores, Henri Bendel and Fred Segal Essentials.
A spot on CNN in February may have been the big breakthrough—since
then, they have averaged 1,000 orders a day on their Websites, and
fielded distribution requests from South Africa to Canada. This year
revenues are on track to top $1 million.

So how does BodyMint work?
Its creators won’t say much (former lawyers, remember?) except that
its active ingredient is chlorophyllin, a chlorophyll derivative. An unscientific
experiment by this reporter found that after a few days my “morning breath”
became noticeably less stale, and a stiff workout at the gym did not result
in the usual gamey odor. Now if only there was a mint that would
clean up after me.