Stop Making Scents
By: Art Chung
May 2001

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.

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