James Allan

Co-founder of Smelly Men. Brazilian jiu jitsu brown belt, SBG Rossendale.

Jiu jitsu is the reason Smelly Men exists. I've trained for seven years and I'm a brown belt at SBG Rossendale in Haslingden, Lancashire. I'm on the mats two or three times a week and help teach the kids' class.

It started with a bar of soap. A training partner gave me one to say thanks for helping him with his training. It was natural and handmade, and after a hard session it felt far better on my skin than any shower gel I'd used. It also made me notice how badly men were served by the personal care aisle: plastic bottles, ingredient lists hiding behind 'parfum', and a lot of shouting about ice storms.

So in 2024 Chara and I started Smelly Men, sourcing from UK makers we could actually visit and question. Both our suppliers are vegan businesses. Everything gets tested where it matters to me: after training, in the gym bag and on the drive home.

Before this I spent 30 years in advertising, which has left me allergic to overclaiming. Our soap won't stop you getting ringworm, and I'll never say it does. If you train, I've written an honest guide to what soap to use after BJJ, including what I do when there's no shower at the club.

Smelly Men is my line. Chara runs Smelly Women, which grew out of her own frustration with a cosmetics industry more interested in 'fixing' women than serving them. Our sons have their own brand too, Smelly Boys, including the Teen Spirit collection, aimed at teenagers dealing with the very specific horror of PE kit left in a bag since Tuesday.

Voiceover work is a sideline, which probably explains why I'm fussy about how the copy on this site sounds read out loud. If a line makes me wince, it doesn't go up.

I write here about ingredients, what 'natural' actually means on a label (not much, most of the time), training hygiene, and the unglamorous side of running a small UK personal care brand honestly. Away from the mats and the laptop I'm usually on a paddleboard in the Lake District, or fixing something on a car that didn't need fixing until I got involved.

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