StartUp Lab Story: That Smile Company

By Alex Kinsella

That Smile Company is looking for a way to reduce the waste from daily dental care

When it comes to reducing the waste from everyday activities, "think global, act local" can be a powerful way to make an impact. Looking for a way to reduce the waste from daily dental care is the core of StartUp Lab venture That Smile Company. The venture is building a waste-free alternative to toothpaste packaging.

Founded by Wilfrid Laurier University students Hanna Roglic, Spencer Lynn, Aditya Dhanasekharan, and Rohit Dabke, That Smile Company is currently working to bring its vision to reality.

Lynn said that toothpaste is the start of their vision. That Smile Company is looking at the full spectrum of oral care products.

"We're trying to innovate toothpaste packaging to make it more accessible, environmentally friendly, and safe in the sense of cleanliness. We're focusing on encapsulating the dentist recommended amount of toothpaste in a single-use compostable, squeezable capsule," Lynn said.

We all know that four out of five dentists recommend brushing your teeth twice daily. Doing that means experiencing the frustration of trying to squeeze out the last drop of toothpaste before throwing the tube in the trash. Those tubes can't be recycled because they're made from a composite of plastic and aluminium.

"Some brands are coming out with new plastic tubes to make them a little bit more recyclable. But, again, if you're creating new plastic anywhere, it's not great," Lynn said.

Bringing their venture to StartUp Lab was a logical next step for the founders since That Smile Company had its start with the team working together on a first-year business project. Roglic said the founders met in the famed BU121 course, where students create a business plan for a new business idea.

"The idea was a shower 'Aha!' moment. We all care about sustainability and we were thinking of different ways that we can create an innovative solution to something that we - use in our everyday lives," Roglic said.

One of those everyday interactions was using toothpaste in traditional tubes. Roglic said no group member could remember when they recycled a tube and realized it was a potential business idea.

Addressing market challenges

Taking a business idea from concept to product is challenging, especially when entering a consumer packaged goods industry like health and beauty. A 2019 report from Fortune Business Insights said that the U.S toothpaste market was worth $17.75 billion and is expected to reach $21.99 billion by 2027.

The That Smile Company team is well versed in the challenges and has been working to address them. One of the main challenges for the team is consumer education. The first recorded use of a recipe for a toothpaste-like mixture to brush teeth goes back to 4 BCE, and toothpaste in a tube has been a store shelf staple since the 1890s.

"Everyone's familiar with your traditional toothpaste. You squeeze the toothpaste out, put on your brush, and brush your teeth. There are a lot of new players trying to change that toothpaste experience with crushable tablets or powders. That causes barriers to entry for people that want to change their toothpaste," Lynn said.

That Smile Company is working to avoid consumer hesitancy by creating a toothpaste similar to what consumers are used to but in a waste-free package. They are working with a biotech team to develop their proprietary encapsulation technology for dental health care products.

Roglic said that industries like health and beauty need disruption to help create a more sustainable world. Products like the waste-free toothpaste That Smile Company is working on have the potential to start changing consumer behaviour for the better.

"If we can at least even get people to think about these things, then, we've done our job," Roglic said.

Why That Smile Company chose StartUp Lab

That Smile Company's journey continued at Laurier after they were chosen as the winning team at the BDO New Venture Competition in 2019. After beating out 175 other teams and winning the competition, That Smile Company was approached by the Laurier chapter of Enactus. Enactus is a global organization that works to help young entrepreneurs build businesses that focus on sustainability.

After spending time with Enactus, Lynn said they were ready to take the venture to the next level—which required mentorship from experts who have successfully built businesses. That is when they applied and were accepted into StartUp Lab.

"There's a huge team of mentors with an extremely diverse set of skills and experiences. They saw our progress, but more importantly, the potential and where needed some help. We've learned a ton and pivoted quite a bit as well," Lynn said.

StartUp Lab mentors bring many experiences—marketing, business development, law, product management, and more—to their ventures. Lynn said having a mentor for almost every discipline has been invaluable.

"We have legal questions, there's someone there to help us out with that. We don't know how to pursue different market research strategies, there's marketing people. There's a real wealth of knowledge that we can tap into.," Lynn said.

Beyond mentorship, Lynn said that another valuable part of being a venture in StartUp Lab is the help they've received to formalize their processes. Ventures enter StartUp Lab and many different points in their journeys. Defining and standardizing business processes is critical to those ventures early in their development. 

"We found that we were focusing on some things that maybe weren't of top importance or relevance at that time. But at StartUp Lab, they helped us figure out a formal structure to the way we should go about doing things. It helps to have someone with proven experience helping you walk through it," Lynn said.

Being a StartUp Lab venture also means being part of a community of entrepreneurs. Roglic said being able to meet with other founders going through the same challenges has been critical to their progress.

"Having a group of like minded people who want to get their ventures going has been amazing. It's always great to have a ton of people to bounce ideas off of. It's like having a built-in network of entrepreneurs."

Want to get involved? Ask us how at startuplab@wlu.ca.