The Math Behind Fair Pricing: BPM vs Native vs Schmidt's
One of BPM's founding pillars is making natural products, priced fairly and transparently. BPM's tube packaging was chosen specifically to support that: precise, thin dispensing wastes almost nothing. Here is what that actually costs per use, in real Canadian dollars, not marketing math.
A pea sized dab covers one underarm, so a full daily application, both underarms, uses two dabs. A 76 gram BPM tube holds about 304 pea sized dabs, which works out to about 152 full daily applications, or roughly 5 months of daily use.
| Product | Regular price (CAD) | Full daily applications | Cost per use |
|---|---|---|---|
| BPM tube, 76 g | $23.99 | 152 | $0.16 |
| Schmidt's stick, 75 g | $11.08 (avg) | ~75* | $0.15 |
| Native stick, 75 g | $18.32 (avg) | ~75* | $0.24 |
Measured this way, BPM costs about 35 percent less per use than Native, and is essentially on par with Schmidt's, running about 7 percent higher per use. We are not going to round that away. What the tube still does better, measurably, is use less product to get there: about half a gram per full application versus about a gram for a stick swipe. That is the entire reason a $23.99 tube, at a higher price per gram than either competitor, still lasts about 5 months of daily use, twice as long as a stick's roughly 2.5 months.
On a monthly basis, that works out to about $4.73 for BPM, $4.43 for Schmidt's, and $7.33 for Native. BPM and Schmidt's land within about 30 cents of each other a month. Native costs noticeably more either way you measure it.
I am genuinely proud of where we are priced right now. We are a small batch, handmade product, and we are already on par per application with brands that have decades of manufacturing scale behind them.
- Corey Goss, Founder, BPM Natural Deodorant
There is context worth putting next to that near tie with Schmidt's. Schmidt's is a large, established brand running high volume manufacturing. BPM is made in small batches, by hand. Landing within 7 percent of an established competitor's cost per use, before BPM has any of the manufacturing scale that competitor has, is where we are starting from, not where we plan to stay. We expect that gap to close, and possibly reverse, as our own production scales up.
Prices are the average regular, non sale price found at three Canadian retailers per brand (Walmart Canada, Well.ca, and Healthy Planet Canada), specifically excluding rollback and flash sale prices so the comparison reflects what customers actually pay most of the year, not a one day discount. Schmidt's application count comes from Schmidt's own stated 3 month stick life. *Native publishes no duration or application count anywhere we could find; 75 is our assumption for comparison only, and Native's own 2 to 3 swipe instructions suggest its stick likely delivers fewer applications, not more.
"Fair and transparent pricing means showing customers the real math, even the part where we are not the cheapest option on the shelf," says Corey Goss, Founder and President of BPM Natural Deodorant. "I am genuinely proud of where we are priced right now. We are a small batch, handmade product, and we are already on par per application with brands that have decades of manufacturing scale behind them. We still have a lot of optimizing left to do on our end, and as we scale, I expect our prices to come down, not up."