Curie:the side-hustledeodorant thatsold out in a day

Sarah Moret was a CPA who could not find an aluminum-free deodorant that actually worked, so she made her own with twelve thousand dollars of savings and named it after Marie Curie. She got two hours' notice to prep her Shark Tank pitch, walked out with a deal, and sold out within a day. Curie is now in roughly four thousand three hundred Walmart stores and over a thousand Target stores.

By Ruben Boonzaaijer
Reviewed by Maurizio Isendoorn · 6 min read

Sarah Moret did not set out to start a beauty brand. She was a CPA who had spent years in public accounting and venture capital, the kind of person who reads a balance sheet for fun, and she just wanted a deodorant that worked without aluminum. Every clean one she tried failed by lunchtime.

So she did the thing finance people are not supposed to do with their savings: she spent twelve thousand dollars of her own money learning to make one herself. She named it Curie, after Marie Curie, and started selling it on the side.

It was a side project, not a plan. It just happened to be a side project run by someone who knew exactly what a business needs to survive.

That turned out to be the difference. A lot of people make a product they like. Far fewer make one and also know, instinctively, how to price it, how to fund it, and how not to run out of cash before it works. Moret had spent her whole career on the second part.

She grew it like a CFO

Curie grew the disciplined way, the way someone who used to sit on the investor side of the table would grow it. No outside money at first, no burning cash to fake momentum, just a product that had to earn its own next batch. The numbers went up the honest way.

The early math

$12Kof her own savings to start, no outside capital

$125Kin sales the first year, by Moret's own account

$700Kthe following year, by her telling, still pre-television

Before she ever stood in front of a camera, Curie was already in more than three hundred stores, including Nordstrom, Anthropologie and SoulCycle. The brand was working. It just needed a bigger stage, and the biggest one in retail was about to call.

I started Curie as a bit of a side hustle. I wasn't seeking an idea, it really just came to me. It wasn't my goal or plan to start a company.

Sarah Moret, Founder & CEO

Two hours to pitch the sharks

When Shark Tank came, Moret got about two hours' notice to prepare the pitch of her life. She walked out of it with a deal: three hundred thousand dollars for ten percent equity plus a four percent advisory stake, from Mark Cuban and Barbara Corcoran. Cuban later dropped out, Corcoran stayed in, and the clean-beauty brand had a shark in its corner.

When the episode aired

24his all it took to sell out of deodorant completely

5,000people on the waitlist for the next batch

1M+deodorants sold in 2024 alone

The episode aired in 2022, and within a day Curie had thousands of orders and nothing left to ship, with a five-thousand-person waitlist behind it. The finance brain that built it quietly came in handy again here, because selling out on national television only helps if you can fund and fulfil what comes next. Curie could.

The climb

From a few hundred boutique doors to the big-box aisle, with Walmart the largest channel.

300

1,001

~4,300

boutiques, pre-Shark TankTarget, 2025Walmart

Source: Curie's reported retail footprint. 300+ boutique doors before Shark Tank, a 1,001-store Target rollout in early 2025, and roughly 4,300 Walmart stores, its single largest channel, for more than 5,000 doors in total.

From a side hustle to 5,000-plus shelves

A deodorant made on the side by a CPA now sits in the same aisle as the companies she used to audit.

In early 2025 Curie landed in more than a thousand Target stores, and the bulk of its footprint came from a rollout into roughly four thousand three hundred Walmart stores, its single largest channel, for more than five thousand doors in all, while still selling direct on Shopify and shipping more than a million deodorants a year. It expanded into body wash bars and new scents without losing the thing it started as: a clean product that actually works, made by someone who understood the business as well as the formula.

The hero product

The deodorant that started it

Curie's aluminum-free Clean Deodorant, the product Sarah Moret first made in search of one that simply worked. It is the stick that sold out on national television, built a five-thousand-person waitlist, and carried a side hustle into more than five thousand stores, led by a roughly 4,300-store Walmart rollout.

The 15,000 bottles she couldn't sell

The clean arc skips the year it almost did not survive. Early in 2020 Curie had signed a deal to put spray deodorant in a major fitness chain, then the pandemic closed every one of those locations and left the brand holding about fifteen thousand bottles with nowhere to go, just as deodorant sales fell off a cliff because no one staying home cared how they smelled. A finance founder's instinct is not to panic but to repurpose, so Moret pushed a clean hand sanitizer she had been developing into early production and sold more than a hundred thousand bottles in three months, the move that carried Curie from $125K to $700K in revenue that year. The retail break that came later was just as unplanned: a Walmart buyer found Curie on Instagram and reached out through the contact form on its own site, by the company's account. The 4,300-store rollout that defines the brand now started with a cold inbound, not a pitch.

Curie, in five moments

The arc

2018
Sarah Moret, a CPA frustrated by aluminum-free deodorants that did not work, makes her own with $12,000 of savings and names it after Marie Curie.
2019-2020
By Moret's own account Curie does about $125K in year one and $700K the next, landing in 300+ stores including Nordstrom and Anthropologie, all before any television.
2022
With about two hours to prepare, she wins a $300K Shark Tank deal, $300K for 10% equity plus a 4% advisory stake, from Mark Cuban and Barbara Corcoran, then sells out within a day with a 5,000-person waitlist.
2024
Curie sells more than a million deodorants and expands into body wash bars and new scents.
2025-2026
The deodorant lands in over a thousand Target stores, then rolls out to roughly 4,300 Walmart stores, its largest channel, for more than 5,000 doors nationwide, still selling direct on Shopify.

Most founder stories sell the luck, the two-hour Shark Tank notice, the Instagram buyer who appeared out of nowhere. Curie's quietly argues the opposite. The lucky breaks all landed on a brand that was ready to catch them, because the person behind it had spent a career learning that a company dies of running out of cash long before it dies of a bad idea. Anyone can sell out on television. Far fewer can fund the restock, repurpose fifteen thousand stranded bottles into a hundred thousand sold, and still be solvent when the big buyer finally calls. The deodorant was the product. The discipline was the moat.

Featured by Ringly

Part of Spotlight, Ringly's series on brands building something durable on Shopify. Ringly is the AI phone team for Shopify brands, so the customers a brand like Curie sold out to keep getting answered even when the call volume does not sleep.

Reported by Ruben Boonzaaijer from public sources and trade press, including Boston University, BeautyMatter, Glossy, The Quality Edit, Retail Dive (the Walmart rollout) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (the pandemic pivot and Instagram-to-Walmart discovery). Early-revenue figures are by Moret's own account; the quoted line is verbatim from her published interviews. Curie was offered a review before publication.

The Spotlight series

Stories of brands built to last on Shopify

We profile the operators behind the brands we admire, how they started, what they got right, and what made them durable. Reported like a feature, not a pitch.