skunkies-in-the-news

A Stinky Problem Means A Big Opportunity

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 22:51:01 +0100

By Stacey Burling

Inquirer Staff Writer

It is soccer season, which means that millions of families are coping with early weekend games, fragile egos, and a smell so vile that words can barely do it justice - the smell of soccer cleats and shin guards cured in wet grass and sweat.

Some exude an odor remarkably like one of the most repulsively acrid, tenacious scents on earth: cat urine. Others, said one dad, are more like rotting vegetables.

Or worse.

"I called the exterminator," confessed Diane Price, of Upper Dublin, as she sat on the sidelines at the Al Perlini Soccer Tournament in Montgomery County this month. One of her three soccer-playing sons was on the field. "I thought there was a dead mouse in my garage, and it turned out to be the shoes."

A quest to find the source of this awful scent, and a solution for it, quickly devolved into a game of pass-the-buck: It's the growing popularity of synthetic shoes. No, it's the leather. It's the kids; some of them just smell. It's parents, who don't take care of the shoes or the kids.

Finally, two experts on sweat - George Preti, a chemist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, and James Leyden, an emeritus professor of dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania - shed some light. The source of the nasty smell in cat urine is volatile sulfur compounds. Bacteria that colonize some people's feet also produce sulfur compounds. What you think it smells like depends on your experiences, Leyden said, but it is "almost universally perceived as offensive."

Whether some shoes make the problem worse they couldn't say, but the bacteria thrive where it's wet.

This stinky-shoe situation is a great example of what Richard Lancioni, chair of Temple University's marketing department, calls "unrecognized need." Shoe manufacturers may put tons of research into producing lighter, faster shoes without worrying enough about what happens when their technology meets adolescent perspiration.

Voila. A chance to make money.

Some entrepreneurs, including a pair of New Jersey soccer moms and giant Procter & Gamble, have recently tackled the problem. Athletic stores say they're seeing more built-in antimicrobial treatments in shoes. Hockey and football uniforms are also big olfactory offenders. Some hockey bags now include fans to dry out the smelly equipment. Win detergent promises to remove embedded odor from clothing.

The most cynical among us may wonder if this isn't all a plot to make us buy more shoes and shin guards, although it's hard to imagine how making stuff we come to detest can be a good business strategy.

Not all that surprisingly, the real experts - the makers of Adidas and Nike boots, the most popular cleats at Perlini - did not respond to a request for information.

So we're left with advice from moms, soccer-equipment salesmen, and coaches. Some of this involves making better use of readily available and free resources: air and sun. Many a mom has a rule that the shoes can't enter the house. Some say they can take the edge off the smell with common household items such as baking soda, dryer sheets, and (we admit there may be a fortuitous conflict of interest here) newspapers, the old-fashioned paper kind.

Diane Mueller, a Warminster mother of four soccer players, said she's solved the problem. She tosses everything, including the shoes, into the washing machine with soap and bleach after a game.

Her appealing idea was typically met with stunned silence, then disapproval, from high school coaches and people who sell shoes.

"Don't do that," said Christopher Hayes, the "resident boot expert" at Angelo's Soccer Corner in Huntingdon Valley.

He thinks the growing popularity of cleats made of synthetic materials has made the problem worse. They don't sop up water like leather, so they're lighter in the rain. They also don't breathe like leather.

But Dori Bryson, who works at Soccer Locker in Voorhees and coaches four girls' travel teams, prefers the synthetics, especially the ones with antimicrobial liners. She says they dry faster. After a while, she said, leather "starts to rot."

The best approach, everyone agrees, is to air out the shoes every time they're worn. Open them up as much as possible. When they're wet, stuff newspapers inside to soak up moisture.

Coaches say kids' shoes have always smelled, but they think equipment care has declined. You can't leave this stuff locked up in a bag and expect it to smell civilized.

"If you are throwing wet cleats in a bag, they are going to get so disgusting it's unbelievable," Bryson said.

Voorhees soccer moms Jill Levin and Annemarie McCartney had their moment of inspiration last October while en route to a soccer tournament with a car full of kids. They asked their passengers to get something out of their bags. "Six kids opened their knapsacks," Levin remembered, "and the smell was so vile, I had to pull over."

She's a fan of Donny Deutch, the former advertising executive who hosts The Big Idea on TV. His message, she said, is to "take your worst problem and try to remedy it and try to make a business out of it."

After the bag incident, Levin told McCartney, "This is the problem."

They tried products already available and were unimpressed. Their low-tech solution is a sachet filled with "proprietary" powder meant to draw out moisture and deodorize. They called it Skunkies. They're available in some soccer stores, Levin said, and the pair are in discussions with national retailers.

"We're sending some over to the troops for their boots. We have camouflage ones," she said. "I have them in all my kids' bags, wrestling, lacrosse. . . . I actually just started putting them in my refrigerator."

She'll have to compete with Procter & Gamble, which decided to make a special sports product after learning how many families were using extra-strength Febreze on shoes and sports equipment. The product wasn't really designed for that challenge. P&G came up with X-Sweat Technology, a formula that seeks out and neutralizes sweat "malodors," said Chad Brizendine, assistant brand manager for the new Febreze Sport. Dick's started selling it this year and it will spread to other retailers in February.

Brizendine said sweat is definitely the problem, but some materials make it worse. "Some fabrics tend to grab on and hold onto odors more than others," he said.

P&G looked for "torture test" items, such as shoes "that mothers will hang out the windows when they're driving kids home from practice," he said. Some soccer shoes made the grade, but they weren't the worst. The real nose torturers were the shoes of barefoot runners, who run cross country without socks, and triathletes, who put shoes on without socks immediately after swimming.

The new spray "works completely," Brizendine promised.

P&G has a deal with the NFL to supply team locker rooms with Febreze this season. "We kind of knew," he said, "that that was the torture test of them all, disgusting football players."

Getting The Smell Out With Skunkies

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:37:17 +0100

Liz Keptner talks to the creators of "Skunkies". Video

'Skunkies' Put To Training Camp Test

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 17:59:37 +0100

PHILADELPHIA - It's a problem moms everywhere face: that pile of their kids' smelly, sweaty sports gear that just stinks up the house.

Two Voorhees, N.J., moms decided to do something about it.

Now, they've turned their stinky problem into growing business.

Jill Levin and Annemarie McCartney are the creators of "skunkies." It's a product they say kills the bacteria and gets the stink out.

Fox 29's John Anderson and Hugh Douglas are getting sweaty and smelly up at Eagles training camp this week, so they put "skunkies" to the test. Video

Skunkies Founders Anne Marie McCartney and Jill Levin Recently Appeared on Fox Business Happy Hour

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 17:59:51 +0100

On July 16, 2009, Skunkies founders Anne Marie McCartney and Jill Levin appeared on the Fox Business Happy Hour segment So You Think You're An Entrepreneur. The segment, entitled Make Your Feet Smell Sweet featured the founders describing and pitching Skunkies to a panel of business experts who gave the entrepreneurs their first consensus pass -meaning all three panelists believe the product and business model to be viable. Video

Voorhees Moms Launch Skunkies Deodorizers

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 18:00:08 +0100

By Molly Albertson, Special Sections Editor, Trend

Jill Levin and Anne Marie McCartney, both of Voorhees are busy moms. Between the two, they have seven children and they're always on the go. From soccer matches to field hockey practice, these moms spend a lot of their time at sporting events, as do their rising athletes.

    In fact, that's how these fast friends met, at a soccer game. Mc Cartney coached youth soccer with Levin's husband, Keith. That was seven years ago, and all this time both moms have complained about one thing - the nasty side effect of kids playing sports. There is always sports gear strewn in the car, the garage, and all over the home. But it's not the clutter that bothers them. "It stinks," said Levin with a laugh, "Sometimes it gets so bad it makes me nauseous."

    Both moms tried almost every product on the market before making their own. From sprays to powder, inserts to odorizers, nothing lasted long. These moms set out to solve their greatest problem, an inspiration they got from "The Big Idea" show with Donny Deutsch. "He's a role model of ours, and he says to take your worst problem and remedy it, so one day we decided to do it," Levin said. After doing research on nontoxic products and trying various batches, they discovered what they call the "secret formula."

    The moms invented Skunkies, their solution to odor and bacteria in shoes and bags. They are 3-by-5 inch, non-toxic, environmentally friendly inserts that kill bacteria and odor. Skunkies come in a variety of colors, themes, and in six scents.
"Other products just mask odor, but this kills bacteria, and it really works," she said.

    The women make their own product, for the most part. "We tried sewing them ourselves, and that was kind of sad," Levin said, to the backdrop of McCartney's laughs, "We got those handheld sewing machines and it was such a joke." Now the entrepreneurs leave the sewing to the local experts.

    Several coaches and athletes have taken notice of the inserts, Levin said. Karen Shelton, who coaches women's field hockey for the University of North Carolina, a fourtime national champion, gives them to her team and loves them.

    "Keith Primeau of the Flyers said. 'It's a novel idea. Who isn't looking for a deodorizer for kids athletic gear? It's very practical and reasonable,'" he said. "You can put them anywhere, a camp trunk, a golf club bag, the car, wherever," Levin said.

    Their vision is blossoming. It's the culmination of years of friendship and experience as sports moms. "Our friendship and partnership really complements each other. We're the antitheses of each other," Levin said. She is the sales side of the company and uses her finance background, while McCartney spearheads the production side. "I'm more of a talker," Levin said. "If you couldn't tell already, " McCartney said, both women laughing, in one of the few moments she chimed in during the interview.

    Skunkies are available in 10 stores, including the Soccer Locker in Voorhees and at Soccer Post in Deptford. For a full list of stores and more information, go to www.skunkies.net.