Dad Solves A 'Horrible Smell' Problem — Builds A $53M Business Now On Track For $100M A Year

Serial entrepreneur Scott Dancy capitalised on a business idea that came from his smelly apartment. Dancy, a father of two, was going through a divorce in 2017. Back then, he was living alone in New York and had to deal with a broken washing machine one day.

When a friend offered him tea tree oil with antibacterial properties, Dancy was surprised how the odour-elimination solution did its job. 'It got rid of the smells,' Dancy said. 'I was like, This is amazing - how do we market this?'

So, after years of running his own businesses, including staffing companies, an information security software firm, as well as investments in a sand and gravel pit, where he 'lost everything,' Dancy's encounter with the tea tree oil solution reignited his entrepreneurial spirit.

Dancy's Journey With Azuna

In a few years' time, Dancy launched Azuna in 2019 in partnership with his friend who introduced the solution. ' Other products just mask what the smell with fragrance. While we do have fragrance, the tea tree oil, basically in layman's terms, is effective against mold, mildew and bacteria - and that's the source of all your smells,' Dancy had explained.

With a hands-on approach, Dancy set out to build his business. ' No idea what I'm doing, literally writing the ad copy myself. For three years, I set an alarm every day for two hours to wake up to see if there were things I needed to respond to, whether it was customer service questions or Facebook comments,' he had stated.

He tracked orders, started collecting products from the warehouse, and shipped them all by his own. His odour-elimination product cost about $10 to make and sold for $20, but including labour costs, margins were 'rough.'

Despite challenges, Dancy's business brought in $12,000 in April 2020, at the height of the pandemic. However, sales surged to $105,000 next month with people wanting their homes to smell better during the global lockdown.

While Azuna got its own third-party logistics as operation had to keep up with rising demand, Dancy did not hire anyone until he took to business to $3 million in two years.

Hitting $50M Milestone In 2025

In recent years, Azuna's sales trajectory showed no sign of slowing down. Sales hit $53 million in 2025 and on track to surpass $100 million this year. The bootstrapped business also picked up investments along the way, which remains under $10 million to date.

However, fast growth is seldom without challenges. ' I'm not an operations person. I'm an entrepreneur. They just put up a job description for an executive assistant for me, and someone wrote in there, "Cleaning up after the Tasmanian devil." So that puts it in perspective. That's me,' Dancy stated.

Operational transition is vital when a business grows from half a million dollars to $3 million a month in a short span of four months. At that point, a business owner has to think beyond inventory to about business outlook for the next six months.

In all, Dancy plans to sell Azuna when the time is right. The business just began distribution in the Midwest-based grocery chain Fresh Thyme and is exploring collaborations with other popular retailers. One-and-a-half years down the line, he sees thse business generating $20 million in sales a month.

' My goal this year is we'll probably take on an institutional investment for the first time, but they have to have really good retail experience. Grüns [a gummy supplement brand] just sold for $1.2 billion, and they had similar revenues last year to what we'll have this year,' Dancy had mentioned.

' I'd like to eventually build a R&D company and a marketing company that shows what we did to bring in the money to then pay for the investments for others. I'd love to build a community of CPG brands out of Buffalo after I take a little bit of time off,' he said.

Regarding his advice to aspiring entrepreneurs, Dancy stated: 'Plan for the worst and be delusional a little bit.'