I didn't set out to start a brand. I set out to solve a problem I couldn't buy my way out of.

I have the kind of skin that reacts to most deodorants and the kind of body that actually sweats. Every natural option I tried failed one of those two tests — it either burned my skin or quit by noon. The conventional options worked, but they worked by blocking my sweat glands with aluminum, which I didn't want. There was no third door. So I built one.

Eight years. Sixty-eight formulations.

This wasn't a weekend project with a white-label supplier. It was eight years of formulation work and 68 distinct formulas — most of which failed, which is the point. Each failure taught the next version something specific: this active irritates at this concentration, this combination loses performance under heat, this pH range works and that one doesn't.

I wasn't mixing a deodorant. I was engineering a system — and the difference matters. Mixing is combining ingredients that sound good. Engineering is testing what actually holds up when someone sweats through a long day, then redesigning when it doesn't.

Eliminate odor — don't mask it, don't block it

The principle the whole thing is built on: don't rely on fragrance to do the work, and don't block sweat with aluminum. Eliminate odor at the source — at the enzymatic and bacterial steps where smell actually forms.

That became BioShield™, the zinc-based system in MAX and SENSITIVE. It's not a botanical that smells nice and hopes for the best. It's a multi-active system designed for tolerance and performance at the same time — the two things I could never get in one product.

The proof I needed before I'd sell it

I wasn't going to ask anyone to trust a claim I couldn't back. So the formula went through a RIPT clinical study and came back with 0% irritation. Since then, the customer data has confirmed what the study suggested: an 87% repurchase rate and a return rate under 2%. People who try it keep buying it, and almost nobody sends it back. For a category built on disappointment, those are the numbers I care about most.

Zaffré exists because the product I needed didn't. Eight years later, it does — and it works whether your problem is skin that reacts, a body that sweats, or both.

— Ami, Founder