We’ve all had one of those days. The alarm doesn’t sound, there’s no time to prepare for the day and you barely miss the bus. Later that afternoon, you open your gym bag and it smells like rotten vegetables. Maybe there wasn’t enough time to thoroughly clean out your bag, or perhaps there wasn’t enough room for your sneakers to air out. Sure, you can lessen the stench by dryer sheets, deodorant and frequent showers, but what about the contents you can’t put through the gentle cycle?

These issues were precisely what Mike Huebner and Cinda Boomershine had in mind when designing their odor-defeating products.

Huebner was on a ski team in college, and his mother sent him care packages with cedar shoe stuffers. They helped deter the sour smell of well-used ski boots. Training for his first triathlon in 2007, Huebner wanted to use those same shoe stuffers, but found out the product was being liquidated. He bought the remaining inventory and essentially revamped the product.

“It was great product that was horribly mis-marketed and never lived up to its full potential,” he says. “The product is good, but knew I could make it better. That’s why this year, the product you see is my product.”

Cedar chips neutralize the stink in your shoes without deteriorating ozone, like aerosols or other odor-eating products. Stuffitts also quickly absorb the moisture to prevent breeding grounds for bacteria.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has done ample research about germs found in gyms. Between the machines and the locker room, they found Athlete’s Foot, Human Papillomavirus (HPV), E.coli and Staph — just to name a few. Stuffitts are a step in the right direction towards prevention.

Huebner firmly believes in living and promoting an active lifestyle. He promotes a product built for athletes, like Stuffitts, because he truly believes it is a tool for a healthy living. They also significantly extend the life of your running shoes.

“You have this goofy little product that you stick in your shoe, but to me it means more than that,” he says. “It represents people going out, trying to be healthy and doing good things for themselves.”

Cinda Boomershine was constantly disappointed by the lack of sufficient gym bags. As an athlete, her list of requirements in a reliable bag was pretty long. That’s when she decided to do something about it.

“I am an athlete, and I use everything pretty hard and vigorously,” says Boomershine. “[The bag] couldn’t be tender and delicate. It needs to be rough and tumbled to kind of match me.”

In 2004, she designed her first prototype of the now cinda b Overnighter—which has all the qualities she was searching for. Not only do they have a great combination of fashionable design and sturdy fabrics, her totes out-perform the traditional gym bag. The Overnighter is extremely durable, water and stain resistant, functional, and best of all, machine washable. This way the post-workout stench doesn’t live in your bag or on your shoulder.

There’s something to be said about companies whose drive is to fulfill a certain product fantasy. That determination is exactly what inspires Huebner. As long as there is an active, healthy lifestyle, he’s going to follow it.

“I’m not in this to build a huge business,” he says. “My theory is, if someone has a better product, I want to know. I believe my business approach is different than the traditional one, because I really care about making the best product possible.”