one ARMPIT at a time.
We chat with the owner of the natural anti-odorant roll on Jessi van Rensburg. Jessi is a 28 year old originally from East London and currently residing in St Francis Bay, Eastern Cape. Grew up in a low-income, but very entrepreneurial family and started building successful businesses online from the age of 18.
When did you begin with GONN & what inspired you to go for it? “I started working on gonn during lockdown in 2020, when I wanted to switch to natural deodorants and couldn’t find exactly what I was looking for. I started doing more research and found that there was a massive trend of people wanting to switch from toxic chemical deodorants to natural and that nobody in South Africa was “nailing” the formula in my opinion – nothing truly stopped the stink completely. So, I got to work to solve the problem, and we launched in June 2021 after trialing the product for 6 months to ensure that it was perfect”.
Challenges you faced when you were trying to get GONN off the ground and how did you tackle them? “Price-point and helping our customers understand why the product is priced the way that it is. When we launched, we knew that the public would automatically assume that this roll-on is just another deodorant".
"So, we’ve spent a lot of time and effort on our social media and website to make it very clear to our customers what makes us different and why there is so much value in our formula. Another challenge we are currently facing is that we want to be completely eco-friendly and although our bottle is 100% recyclable, we would to move away from plastic. Unfortunately in South Africa it is almost impossible to source eco packaging for this type of product, so we are looking at importing the eco packaging".
What makes your ROLL-ON stand out from those were in the market already? “Unlike normal deodorants that mask your odour and are full of toxic chemicals, or anti-perspirants that block your pores (which is so unhealthy), our revolutionary product is a 100% natural vegan anti-odorant that balances your microbiome under your armpits to kill the bad bacteria and prevent the smell from ever occurring in the first place”.
How has the product been received thus far? “The product has been so successful since day one, we are blown away. We sold out completely within 2 weeks of the launch and we honestly weren’t prepared for that”.
Lastly, share the buying process and prices range? "Currently we are stocked in a few pharmacies around South Africa and on a few online multi-vendor stores but people can always order directly from us on our website for R200 per bottle”.