DELORES HURST, Reveille Radio Reporter:
Manmade, a male shower product created by LSU students Cody Reed and Donald Solomon is solely based on an idea; an idea by a very creative woman, Reed said.
CODY REED (University student): Actually came up with the idea with my mom a couple of weeks before she passed away in a hotel room actually and when she passed I couldn’t bring myself to do anything with it, so I stuck it on the shelf so to speak and a couple months after that I bought the idea up to Donald and he latched on to it; the rest is history.
HURST: They started the company independently and the idea was to bring alternatives for men because of lack of male products in stores. It was created in the beginning of May and since then has been blooming. They said,
REED: Out there on the market women have all the flowery.
DONALD SOLOMON (University student): Fruity.
REED: Yeah, fruity smells an often times men with their girlfriends get caught up having to use the girl’s products and no one wants to smell like that. You don’t feel very manly when you smell like that. We wanted to create something that’s different from colognes, different from body sprays, so we came up with the powder and they’re masculine smells as opposed to freesia and lavender; all the rest that’s out there.
SOLOMON: We tried to keep the names very masculine.
REED: Right, things like Ego and Blue-42, a football play.
HURST: With those product names also including Tiger blood and Hulk Musk; they’ve worked hard to market the product.
SOLOMON: Word of mouth is our main one.
REED: word of mouth is huge.
SOLOMON: Other than that there are fliers, social networks.
REED: That is big and going to local salons and trying to sell it there.
HURST: They also promoted at Fall Fest.
SOLOMON: That was a very interesting event, we convinced two of our friends to stand shirtless with our advertisements painted on them and tried to get people to look at them. We handed out brochures. We handed out fliers. We talked to certain interested clients and future clients; explained the product to them. I think it was an overall success.
HURST: As students, Solomon and Reed find it easy to balance school work and running the business. They’ve created their manmade online website and are hoping they corner the market.
I’m Delores Hurst with your Reveille Radio News.