What your pits smell like is a big deal for us and making sure we don’t embarrass you with stinky BO is a pretty high priority. Well, the highest. Overseeing this mammoth task is Jocelyn who’s been busy behind the scenes working on bringing out some very snazzy new scents.

Keep reading for the low-down from Jocelyn on how this all happens and for some hints about what new scents are coming soon 🌿 🌸 🍎

Before we get started, can you introduce yourself?

Hi everyone! I’m Jocelyn and I joined Wild at the end of June in the Head of Operations Role.

Developing a new scent sounds really fun. Where do you begin when there are so many scents to choose from?

We begin with the customer and will only bring out scents our customers are asking for and we know they’ll be excited about. The scent of your Wild is a huge part of the customer experience and a special part of what we do. We always wanted Wild to be more than a functional deodorant but also a product you can have fun with trying out different scents.

I spent time during my first two weeks at Wild speaking to customers over the phone. The exercise was to understand where our customers wanted Wild to go and part of this involved some great chats about what scents they wanted to see next.

From there, getting a scent from the long list into a customer's case takes a while - so a big part of my job is planning ahead! It’s strange - but the winners of this round’s long list won’t hit the website until autumn. And so, I have to use my imagination to think about the customer in autumn. What scents will they want then? What will they be doing? What will they be wearing? What will the weather be like? This time around, I really tried to envision what scents could elicit a more cosy, wrapped up feel, and what scents could be decadent and fun for customers to wear during the party season. Being able to match your scent to the seasons is a huge advantage of being subscribed to Wild as you can try out loads of scents depending on your mood.

I remember the long-list of scents being very long. Where did you go from there?

After the inspiration stage, things start getting more operational and there can be a few challenges to navigate! I start by taking our scent brief to our fragrance house. They’re the scent experts and we’ll discuss our brief in depth with them. All our scents come from essential oils which are added to our deodorant base. Some of the ideas we come up which can be hard to achieve naturally and so they have to get the cut!

By the end of this call, there’s a shortlist of 5 or 6 scents and the fragrance house will go away and mix up the essential oils into what is called a ‘liquid sample’. Once we get these back, there’s a lot of smelling and we’ll pick our favourites. These are then sent off to be made into deodorant stick samples which are very similar to what the customer will eventually receive.

There’s then even more smelling and decisions have to be made about the strength of the scent. This is a pretty iterative process and samples will go back and forth between us and the fragrance house with stronger and weaker versions until we find the perfect strength. Lots of this happened during lockdown so there were also some funny moments like meeting up with the team in the park to sniff deodorant samples over a very early morning coffee. It must have looked quite bizarre!

The scents are locked in and the sticks go through a lot of health and safety testing to ensure they comply with cosmetics safety regulations. This takes a couple of months to complete and once the deodorant comes back with no concerns, we can take them to production. Finally, we can put the deodorant up on the website for customers to buy.

You must be a bit of scent expert yourself now. What would be your dream Wild scent?

This is a really hard question for me to pick because I’m obsessed with all different fragrances. One day I’ll really want a Mint and Eucalyptus scent and the next day I might want a Watermelon scent. That’s one of the really fun things about being a Wild customer - you can try out loads of different scents rather than sticking to the scents of a conventional deodorant. You definitely should watch this space for some fun scents coming out in the future. All I’ll say is there’s one that would be perfect to wear this Halloween...

To check out what scents you're currently set to receive on the Wild subscription, log in here.