PROVO — This recession may have many businesses sweating more than usual, but a small Provo Web-based retailer is raking in the dough with its SweatBlock sweat buster.

Thanks to 15 minutes of fame on the Rachael Ray Show, literally.

Within minutes of being aired on Rachael Ray’s product review segment “The Human Lab” on Wednesday, online orders for SweatBlock started pouring in from Florida and South Carolina, said Marilyn Steffensen, co-founder of Syzygy Innovations LLC in Provo.

SweatBlock is essentially a cloth pad presoaked in a solution that is designed to eliminate underarm perspiration for up to one week.

By late Wednesday, the company’s one-day sales had skyrocketed up to $12,000, from a daily average of between $240 and $300, she said. By the end of the week, sales could jump to as much as $30,000, nearly 50 percent of the company’s revenues of $62,000 in 2008.

“We’ve been averaging $1,000 in sales every hour (Wednesday), and it hasn’t slowed down,” she said.

But initially, Steffensen wasn’t all that sure if the product was going to get a strong review on the Food Network TV host’s daytime talk show.

For one, SweatBlock was one of three sweatbuster products reviewed on the Rachael Ray Show. Steffensen’s competition included Kleinert’s fluid-resistant underwear and the Drionic underarm device, which claims to help underarms stay dry for up to six weeks.

All three products were tested for six weeks by three firefighters from Stamford, Conn., and the results weren’t divulged to SweatBlock until after the show aired, Steffensen said.

“We didn’t dare tell anyone we were going to be on the show because we had no idea if it was going to be a positive thing or not,” she said.

But to her relief, SweatBlock not only got a thumbs-up from John, a fireman from Engine 5 Rescue 1 in Connecticut, but also a positive endorsement from Dr. Keri Peterson, an internal medicine physician in New York.

John, 39, said he found the product easy to use and effective especially since his armpits start sweating as soon as the fire alarm rings and his adrenaline kicks in. “It can get pretty funky in the bunk room,” John said on Wednesday’s show.

Peterson, in Wednesday’s interview with Ray, described the product as an “intermediate step for people who aren’t getting effective results from over-the-counter anti-perspirants but before they have to go to a doctor for prescriptions.”

What started the ball rolling was the company’s UK-based distributor’s Web site, buyinconfidence.com, which caught the eye of one of the producers of Ray’s show.

“Using a Web-based business, the world is basically your oyster for anyone interested in buying your product,” Steffensen said.

SweatBlock is the brainchild of Steffensen’s husband, Scott, a neuroscientist at Brigham Young University’s Department of Psychology and The Neuroscience Center.

A sweaty guy, Steffensen said her husband began experimenting on himself various permutations of a sweat blocking formula that uses aluminum chloride — the main ingredient found in most anti-perspirants and anti-perspiration prescriptions.

In 1998, he came up with a formula that is strong enough to tackle hyperhidrosis, or abnormally heavy sweating, but that minimizes the side effects of rashes and skin irritation one may get from certain over-the-counter products and prescriptions, which may have a higher level of the aluminum-based compound. That formula became the basis for SweatBlock.

In 2003, the company launched a Web-based retail business and hauled in $619 in the first year. By 2008, revenues had jumped to $62,000, with repeat customers accounting for 70 percent of SweatBlock’s business.

Just four months ago, the company began supplying its first retail store, The Manic Cure, in Sydney, Australia, and is hoping to market its products through U.S. retailers and supermarket chains over the next few years.

Getting on the “Rachael Ray Show” is about as good as it gets as a marketing tool, she said.

Not only was SweatBlock featured on TV, the company’s Web site, sweatblock.com, is linked to the show’s Web site, rachaelray.com for at least a year, she said.

“People are still sweating in a recession, perhaps even more so,” Steffensen said. “People are not going to stop washing their bodies, and if the product is proven to work, they will continue to buy it.”

Case in point, the company raised the price of its product, an eight-week supply of SweatBlock, to $19.99 last May from $10. But sales continued to grow, she said.

“Our No. 1 demographic are people who suffer from hyperhidrosis, menopausal women, and post-partum women after having babies, because hormonal changes cause excessive sweating,” she said. “Teenagers are also a wonderful market because they’re so sweaty.”