A new sustainable approach for the oral care industry
Image: Floe Oral Care
Creating a new innovative product can be challenging. Doing that in a hugely competitive industry and standing out from the crowd shows real talent! That's what Will Welton and Javier Navarro are doing at Floe Oral Care.
Floe offer a box subscription with everything needed for the perfect oral care routine. Their products are made with sustainable materials, which can be returned for recycling free of charge.
To understand their product development journey, we spoke to one of Floe's co-founders Will Welton, who reveals the main challenges he faced since starting the company and their recipe for success.
R3NDER - How did you come up with your business idea, and what are Floe's core brand values?
Will Welton: We came up with the business idea a couple of years ago. Ultimately, it was based around trying to help people re-engage with their oral health. What we see is a fairly poor routine across particularly the millennial age group at the moment.
Fundamentally, there is a bigger problem, particularly in the UK, in terms of the way people engage with their oral health. There is a real access problem with millennials, in terms of going to the dentist. They're not going to the dentist regularly and they're only going when they have a problem. More broadly, basic things like; using the right products at the right intervals, remembering to floss daily, replacing your toothbrush every three months, are all really important things.
Your oral health is a key pillar of not only what's happening in your mouth - the health of your teeth and gums, but also your overall systematic health - your arteries, heart, etc. I think there's a lack of awareness in terms of how important it is. That's something we want people to invest in. That's the kind of idea that Floe is based on.
I think one of the key issues at the moment is, obviously, plastic pollution. We've come a long way in terms of waste coming from the kitchen and the rest of the house. I think we're being really proactive and the UK is a real pioneer, but with oral care and the bathroom bin more generally, I believe we're lagging behind.
If you think how many times we use a toothbrush, how many times you throw it away, that's a lot of plastic there. And that goes for other products too, such as flosses. So, we adopt a fully circular approach. We're proactive in our attempts to use sustainable materials for all of our products. For example, our toothpaste tubes are made from sugar cane, rather than petroleum-based plastic, our floss is in a glass jar and biodegradable as well.
When our customers’ new boxes arrive, they send all of their used products back to us. We then turn them into recycled plastic, which helps other businesses making new products, who are trying to reduce the reliance on virgin plastic. To summarise, we want people to subscribe and invest in a sustainable future for themselves and the planet.
R3NDER - What have you found most challenging since starting the company?
Will Welton- Probably, the biggest challenge that Javier and I faced was being separated due to the pandemic. Javier is based in Barcelona and I'm based in London. We were both working together in a rented office space in London before the pandemic hit so it was a big change. I think launching the business from separated countries definitely added a bit of spice to that process.
More broadly, I think the other challenge was finding suitable suppliers who met our quality demands. I think there are a lot of sustainable products at the moment, but the challenge is making sure that the user experience isn't limited. With oral care, that's a real challenge. We assessed options like bamboo brushes, but we couldn't find the quality. I think it's very hard as a dental business to recommend products as sustainable if they're at the detriment of your overall health and if they're not going to remove plaque effectively, for example. For us, finding that sweet spot without sacrificing the quality and effectiveness of our products was definitely a challenge.
Picking a suitable brand name was also another challenge, and credit has to go completely to Javier, my co-founder, who came up with the name “Floe”. I think it's a very effective name. It stands not from the verb to flow, it obviously sounds the same, but from an ice floe, which is a sheet of ice that floats in the Arctic. We feel there are links to sustainability, in terms of the imagery - it captures what we're about in terms of clean oceans, white teeth, etc. It also sounds the same as the verb “flow” and that helps describe what we're trying to do. We are trying to take people on a journey, and we're trying to get them to flow from one way of doing things to another, which is much more regular, and much more energised.
R3NDER - There are several huge brands within the oral care industry. What is Floe's recipe for standing out from the crowd?
Will Welton - That's a great question. This is our first product, which we launched seven months ago. It's got some really good feedback and we're really excited and energised by the engagement it's achieved from consumers, but we've a long way to go.
Our mission is for people to subscribe to a sustainable smile and a sustainable future. What we're looking to do is build a comprehensive, digitally-led subscription that addresses all elements of people's oral health - by using the right products during the right intervals is one aspect of that.
More broadly, we're looking to connect our subscribers to the dental clinics we've partnered with. We're looking to be able to track exactly how healthy their gums are, and therefore, their arteries and their cardio health as well.
We're not going to get into shower gels. We're not going to start broadening this into a kind of a one size fits all bathroom products delivery. It's all about being laser-focused on the dental industry, where we have good relationships and good investors.
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