ClickStick seeks to reinvent deodorant

Gilad Arwatz GS and Carla Bahri GS are the founders of ClickStick, an electric deodorant designed to solve many of the problems associated with traditional deodorant, including easing application and eliminating stains and plastic waste.

Arwatz and Bahri are both graduate students in the mechanical and aerospace engineering department.

ClickStick’s refillable design makes it much more environmentally friendly than leading deodorants on the market, Arwatz said. He added that ClickStick can save 30 to 95 percent of the plastic used by traditional disposable deodorant sticks, noting that the use of standard deodorant amounts to the consumption of about 100 plastic bags per year.

Another feature of ClickStick, Arwatz explained, is that users can preset the amount of deodorant that is electronically dispensed to a level suggested by the accompanying mobile app, which takes into account your activity level and personal needs.

This component is especially important when it comes to certain deodorant types—such as clinical strength, a type of deodorant that adds aluminum to strengthen the antiperspirant component—when applying the right amount can have significant health consequences.

“Clinical strength has much more aluminum in it because it’s an antiperspirant ingredient, and some people claim that it can cause breast cancer and it’s not healthy,” Arwatz said. “People don’t know what’s the right amount to put when you need really a very tiny amount of deodorant for clinical strength, and people put too much, and we don’t know what the consequences are.”

He noted that, although the Food and Drug Administration actually prohibited using aluminum in aerosol sprays, it is still used in deodorant.

ClickStick also comes with personalization options, from custom strength and scent choices to a colored LED light of your choice in the cap and applicator, Bahri said.

Arwatz explained that he first came up with the idea for ClickStick after seeing how stagnant deodorant technology had been compared to that of other personal care products such as toothbrushes and razors, which now come in electric models.

“The deodorants we are using today are 50 years old; they’re exactly the same,” Arwatz said. “It always bothered me, the fact that you always get stains and you’re never satisfied, and I said, ‘This can be done much better.’”

Bahri explained that, when Arwatz approached her with the idea, she was intrigued by another application of the product: its single-touch button, which makes one-handed application possible and is especially helpful for users with disabilities. Noting that her father, who had Lou Geherig's Disease, also known as ALS, sometimes had a hard time using deodorant, she said that their product really resonated with what she had been looking for for her father.

Earlier user reviews of the product have been overall positive, Arwatz and Bahri noted.

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Tester Joe Tobin ’14 said that he liked using ClickStick, explaining that an easy-to-use dosage system and the convenience of one-handed application made it a pleasant experience for a user.

Arwatz and Bahri have been working on the product for just under two years and are on track to launch their Kickstarter campaign on Oct. 15.