Native Deodorant Isn't Indie — Here's What to Use Instead

The Reveal: Native Is a P&G Brand

If you buy Native deodorant because you think you're supporting an independent company that cares about clean ingredients, you need to know something: Procter & Gamble has owned Native since November 2017. They paid $100 million in cash. The founder, Moiz Ali, took the money and left.

That $100 million figure isn't speculation. P&G confirmed the acquisition publicly. Ali confirmed it on his blog. It was, at the time, one of the largest acquisitions of a direct-to-consumer brand by a legacy CPG company. And it happened fast — Native was founded in 2015, launched its first product that same year, and was sold to the world's largest consumer goods company just two and a half years later.

Two and a half years. From apartment startup to $100 million P&G subsidiary. That timeline tells you something important: Native was not built to be an independent brand for the long term. It was built to prove a market, grow fast, and sell. The clean ingredients and the DTC subscription model and the minimalist branding — all of it was a proof of concept for a corporation that spends more on a single Super Bowl ad than most natural deodorant companies will generate in their entire existence.

Moiz Ali was honest about this. In interviews after the sale, he described the acquisition as the goal, not a deviation from the plan. He saw that consumers wanted aluminum-free deodorant, that the existing options were terrible, and that a well-executed DTC brand could be flipped to a major corporation in under three years. He was right. He made $100 million. And you're now buying from P&G.

For the full ownership timeline, acquisition details, and corporate structure, see our Native Deodorant ownership page.

What Changed Under P&G

The moment P&G's wire transfer cleared, Native stopped being a scrappy startup and became a line item on the P&G portfolio — the same portfolio that includes Tide, Gillette, Old Spice, Head & Shoulders, Febreze, and Gain. Here is what changed.

Mass retail distribution — everywhere, all at once

Before the acquisition, Native was DTC-only. You could buy it on their website and nowhere else. That was part of the appeal — it felt exclusive, like you'd discovered something before everyone else. Within a year of the P&G acquisition, Native was on shelves at Target, Walmart, CVS, Walgreens, Kroger, and virtually every major retailer in the country. P&G didn't earn those shelf placements through superior product quality. They called their existing retail contacts and placed another SKU. When P&G says "put this on your shelves," retailers comply. That's what $84 billion in annual revenue buys you.

Aggressive product line expansion

Native launched with one product: deodorant. Under P&G, the brand expanded into body wash, toothpaste, sunscreen, shampoo, conditioner, body lotion, and facial care. In under five years, Native went from a single-product startup to a full personal care line competing across half a dozen categories. That kind of expansion requires corporate infrastructure, corporate R&D budgets, and corporate manufacturing capacity. An independent founder making deodorant in their apartment doesn't launch six new product lines simultaneously. P&G does.

Marketing budgets that dwarf the competition

P&G is the largest advertiser in the world. In 2023, they spent over $8 billion on advertising globally. After the acquisition, Native's marketing budget went from whatever a two-year-old startup could scrape together on Facebook to whatever a P&G brand manager could justify in their annual budget. Influencer campaigns, retail endcap placements, podcast sponsorships, digital ads at scale — Native can now outspend every independent deodorant brand on Earth combined. This isn't competition on product quality. This is financial suppression. Independent brands that make objectively better products can't match P&G's media spend, so they remain invisible to most consumers.

The formula question

P&G has publicly stated that Native's deodorant formula hasn't changed significantly since the acquisition. We don't have evidence of a major reformulation. But here's the thing: P&G now controls the supply chain, the ingredient sourcing, the manufacturing process, and every cost decision. When there's an opportunity to swap a premium ingredient for a cheaper alternative that tests identically in consumer panels — a different fragrance supplier, a less expensive wax, a reformulated preservative system — the decision is made by a P&G product development team whose performance is measured in margin improvement, not ingredient purity. That pressure doesn't exist at founder-owned brands.

Why Independence Matters for Deodorant

You might wonder whether ownership really matters if the product is fine. Deodorant is deodorant, right? Actually, no. Deodorant is one of the product categories where brand independence matters most, and here's why.

You wear it on one of the most absorbent areas of your body, all day, every day. Deodorant isn't like dish soap that you rinse off your hands or a cleaning spray you use on countertops. You apply it directly to your armpits — thin-skinned, lymph-node-adjacent tissue — and it sits there absorbing into your body for 12 to 24 hours. Every ingredient in that formula has prolonged, direct contact with your skin. The stakes for ingredient quality are higher than almost any other personal care product.

Small formulation changes compound over decades. Most people use the same deodorant daily for years. A minor ingredient substitution — swapping a cold-pressed botanical oil for a cheaper refined alternative, or introducing a synthetic stabilizer to extend shelf life — might be imperceptible in a single application. Multiply it by 365 applications per year over 10 or 20 years and it's a different calculation entirely. Independent founders who use their own products on their own bodies tend to be much more conservative about formula changes than corporate product managers evaluated on quarterly cost targets.

The trust equation is different with deodorant. People who switch to natural deodorant are making a deliberate choice. They've decided that what goes on their body matters. They've accepted that natural deodorant costs more, works differently, and requires an adjustment period. They did that research and made that switch because they wanted to stop giving money to companies that fill products with questionable chemicals. When they discover that the "natural" brand they chose is owned by the same corporation that makes Febreze, Old Spice, and Gillette — products loaded with the exact ingredients they're trying to avoid — the trust violation cuts deep.

Independent brands have the freedom to refuse compromise. When Bethany McDaniel at Primally Pure chooses to use organic, grass-fed tallow from a named ranch, nobody above her is running a cost-benefit analysis asking whether cheaper tallow would test the same in consumer panels. When Rachel Budde at Fat and the Moon wildcrafts her own botanicals, there's no procurement team suggesting she switch to a bulk supplier. Independent founders answer to their own standards. P&G brand managers answer to quarterly earnings reports. Those are fundamentally different incentive structures, and they produce fundamentally different products over time.

A Note on Native's Actual Ingredients

To be clear: Native is better than Old Spice. It's better than Secret. If someone you know is switching from a conventional aluminum antiperspirant to Native, that's a step in the right direction. The formula doesn't contain aluminum, parabens, or sulfates.

But "better than Old Spice" is the lowest bar imaginable. The five brands below don't just clear it — they vault over it. Several use five ingredients or fewer. One has every single ingredient independently verified by EWG. One is made from tallow raised on the founder's family ranch. One is hand-crafted by a trained herbalist using wildcrafted botanicals.

Native is the gateway. These are the destination.