What Happened to 10 Seconds Shoe Disinfectant? (And What to Use Now)

By Paul G.
Published: August 28, 2026

If you went looking for 10 Seconds shoe disinfectant and hit a wall of sold-out listings, you're not imagining it. The cans are gone from the brand's own store, marked discontinued, and the leftovers floating around on Amazon and eBay are going for more than they used to.

Here's what actually happened, and what to use now.

Is 10 Seconds Shoe Disinfectant Discontinued?

Yes. The can you used to buy is not coming back.

Go to the company's store today and you'll find two listings, the spray and the Mag-Lock cage set, both marked "Sold out," both with DISCONTINUED stamped right in the product title. That's not a stocking hiccup or a supply delay. That's a product being retired on purpose.

What Replaced 10 Seconds Shoe Disinfectant?

The company renamed it. It's sold as Bacten now, and they announced it on their own Facebook page: "10 Seconds Brand Disinfectant + Deodorizer will become Bacten this summer."

Before you go running off to buy one, two things you should know.

It's sold out too. As of right now the new version is unavailable, same as the old one. So the obvious swap doesn't actually solve anything today. That's a big part of why so many people are searching the old name and hitting nothing but dead listings.

It's not the same stuff in a new can. Their product page says Bacten "builds on the trusted performance of the original 10 Seconds formula with a modern brand and ingredient update, now EPA-registered." Ingredient update. New registration. That's a reformulation, not a relabel.

So even if it comes back in stock, the thing you liked and the thing you'd be buying are not the same product.

Who Makes This Stuff

It belongs to Hickory Brands, a family-owned company in Hickory, North Carolina that has been around since 1923. They make shoe laces, and have for about 80 years. The disinfectant was one product in a much bigger lineup.

Disinfecting and Deodorizing Are Not the Same Job

This is the part that matters most, and it's why picking a replacement trips people up.

A disinfectant kills germs. That is a regulated claim. To say your product kills MRSA or E. coli or athlete's foot fungus, you have to register it with the EPA as a pesticide and prove it. 10 Seconds did that. Their registration number was printed right on the can, and their actives were ethanol plus two phenol compounds, which is heavy-duty surface chemistry.

A deodorizer does a different job. It goes after the smell.

And the smell is not really a germ problem in the way people think. Your feet have around 250,000 sweat glands each, per the National Library of Medicine. Sweat by itself has almost no odor. The stink shows up when bacteria on your skin break that sweat down. The shoe just holds onto it.

So you can disinfect a shoe on Sunday and have it smell again by Tuesday, because your feet put the bacteria right back in there Monday morning.

Worth knowing too: EPA disinfectant testing is done on hard, nonporous surfaces. Counters. Tables. The inside of a shoe is foam and fabric. Nobody in this category has published real data on shoe foam, including the products with kill claims on the label. That is not a knock on them. It is just the honest state of things.

What to Use Instead

Depends which job you need done. I split these up on purpose.

If you need actual disinfecting

This is for shared gear, rental skates, wrestling mats, or cleaning up after a fungal infection. You want something registered to make kill claims.

• Bacten. Same company, reformulated. Around $10 when it's in stock, which it isn't right now. Closest thing to the original, but as covered above, not the original.
• Lysol Disinfectant Spray. Cheap, everywhere, EPA registered. Fair warning, it was built for hard surfaces and it can be rough on shoe materials. I wrote about what Lysol actually does in a shoe and where it goes wrong.
• Clear Gear Sports Spray. Made for athletic equipment and team gear. Pricier, but it's built for exactly this.

If you just want your shoes to stop smelling

This is most people. If you were buying 10 Seconds because your sneakers reeked and not because you were worried about MRSA, you want a deodorizer, and you have better options.

• Lumi Outdoors Natural Shoe Deodorizer. Essential oil based. Smells nice. Good if you want the scented route.
• FunkAway. Aerosol, aimed at heavy gym and sports funk.
• Dr. Scholl's Odor-X. Drugstore standby, spray powder. Easy to find anywhere.
• Arm & Hammer sneaker balls. These absorb rather than stop anything, so treat them as a holdover, not a fix.
• Footology Shoe Spray. Scentless, alcohol based, built for shoe odor. It's what I use. More on it below.

If one of these fits your routine better, go with it. The one that works is the one you'll still be using in three weeks. For the longer list, here are the sneaker odor sprays worth buying.

The gadgets

UV and ozone shoe sanitizers keep coming up in searches. I'd skip them. They run $50 to $150, the claims are thin, and ozone in particular can be hard on the materials in your shoes. Save your money.

Should You Hunt Down the Old Cans?

You'll find them. Third-party sellers on Amazon and eBay still have stock, usually at a markup.

I wouldn't bother. Chasing a discontinued product is like keeping an old car running on parts nobody makes anymore. It works right up until it doesn't, and then you're back to square one with less money.

If you genuinely need the disinfectant, wait for Bacten to restock or grab one of the others. If you needed it for smell, the old cans were never the only answer anyway.

The Part No Shoe Spray Fixes

Here's the thing that took me way too long to figure out.

You can treat the shoe all you want. If you put untreated feet back into that shoe tomorrow morning, you're just running in circles. It's like drying off with a wet towel.

The bacteria live on your skin. The shoe is where they end up. Treat one side and you're doing half the work.

That's why I do both. Something on my feet in the morning before socks, something in my shoes when I take them off. Two steps, under a minute total. If you want the longer version, I broke down every method I've tried for shoe odor and the shoe deodorizers worth buying.

What I Use

Here is the shoe spray I use. It's built for one job. The smell.

It's scentless on purpose. I didn't want my shoes smelling like eucalyptus, I wanted them smelling like nothing. It goes on wet, the alcohol flashes off in a few seconds, and it dries clean.

You can see the shoe spray here or browse the whole shoe odor lineup.

One bottle lasts about a month depending on usage. Proprietary formulation, made in small batches in Charlotte, NC.

Whatever you use, the key is to be consistent.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is 10 Seconds shoe disinfectant discontinued?

Yes. Both the spray and the Mag-Lock cage set are marked discontinued and sold out on the company's own store. The old formula is not coming back.

What replaced 10 Seconds shoe disinfectant?

The company renamed it Bacten. It's a reformulation rather than a relabel, since their own page describes an ingredient update and a new EPA registration. As of this writing Bacten is also sold out.

Can I still buy the original 10 Seconds spray?

Some third-party sellers on Amazon and eBay still have old stock, usually at a markup. Once that's gone, it's gone. I wouldn't build a routine around it.

Does a shoe disinfectant get rid of foot odor?

It helps for a bit, but it doesn't solve it. Odor comes from bacteria on your skin breaking down sweat. Disinfecting the shoe deals with what's in there right now and does nothing about the feet going back in tomorrow. If odor is the problem, treat your feet and your shoes.

Can you put regular deodorant on your feet instead?

People try it, and it sort of works for a little while. Stick deodorant is built for armpits, not for the bottom of your feet, and it doesn't reach between your toes. I went through whether regular deodorant works on your feet in more detail.