Prior to the arrival of Whitestrips, packaged-goods companies viewed their role in oral care as simply selling mouthwash or toothpaste. But where do you find such a barrier? The answer came, somewhat improbably, from inside the company but outside the oral-care group. Out of its labs, Sagel obtained a clear, adhesive film, which he fashioned into strips that could be coated with the peroxide gel and then attached to the teeth. The dimpling technology developed in the food-wrap research enabled the strips to retain the gel so it stayed in longer contact with the teeth.
The original Whitestrips product Sagel designed was intended to be used over a day period. Plus, it allowed consumers to whiten their own teeth, without the added cost and effort of contacting a dentist. The Whitestrips project was sheltered to some degree by the skunkworkslike atmosphere in which it operated, recalls Bryan McCleary, associate director of external relations for Whitestrips.
For example, the general manager came over from the Swiffer sweeper product group — another disruptive project. Nevertheless, key decision makers still had to be onboard if the product were ever to see the light of day.
Stannous fluoride toothpaste was introduced in limited test markets in Crest debuted nationally in By the late s, a steep nationwide decline in cavities was attributed in part to the widespread use of fluoride toothpaste. Induction Event Collegiate Inventors Event. While Macleans, Ultrabrite, and Close-Up all enjoyed some success in their early years Close-Up held a market share of 14 percent in , they fell into decline in the s and s.
The most successful new toothpaste brands to be launched in the U. Beecham's Aquafresh and Unilever's Aim could best be described as brands that straddled the cosmetic and therapeutic sectors. Aim, launched in , was a gel dentifrice promoted for its distinctive texture and supposedly superior taste. The main functional claim made for it, however, was effectiveness against caries. Yet, despite being positioned directly against Crest, the smaller cosmetic brands were the ones that lost out as Aim gained a 10 percent market share.
With Aquafresh, Beecham made a rather more deliberate attempt to straddle the cosmetic and therapeutic sectors of the market.
This product was part paste, part gel, and it came out of the tube in three stripes. One stripe was described as containing fluoride, another was advertised as fighting plaque, and the third was held out as a breath freshener. Like Aim, the brand was successful maintaining a share of between 11 percent and 12 percent in the first half of the s , and gains were achieved at the expense of the purely cosmetic brands. The shift from cosmetic to therapeutic toothpastes was also evident in Europe, although there the therapeutic sector developed somewhat differently than it had in the United States.
Colgate was an important brand in many European markets, and its move to the therapeutic sector caused a number of other leading manufacturers to follow suit. Unilever, for example, added fluoride to its Pepsodent brand in Sweden and to its Gibbs SR brand in the United Kingdom in the early s.
By the s Unilever was marketing Signal as an anticaries product in most parts of Europe. In Germany and Austria, therapeutic brands, such as Blendax's Blend-a-Med and, later, Unilever's Mentadent, promised to protect gums rather than fight dental caries. Indeed, throughout Europe, the gum health sector was almost as important as the anticaries ones in developing the therapeutic toothpaste market. Its Blend-a-Med brand, introduced in , can lay claim to being the first therapeutic toothpaste to be sold in either the United States or Europe.
The limited distribution of Blend-a-Med meant that it did not build up a significant market share in the s and s, nor did it attract the attention of larger competitors. Only in , when the brand became available for the first time in food outlets, did the gum health sector of the toothpaste market really take off.
In Austria, where it was first distributed on a mass scale, Blend-a-Med reached a market share of close to 17 percent by In Germany, the switch to selling through food outlets had a more pronounced effect on sales: the brand's market share reached almost 25 percent by In both countries, Blend-a-Med's long-standing identity as a specialized health care product that was sold through pharmacies built its reputation over decades.
There was no equivalent of an ADA endorsement to reassure consumers that the product was effective, though Blendax did enjoy good public relations with the dental profession. Blend-a-Med was widely advertised as "the toothpaste the dentist gives to his family. In the early s, Unilever responded by launching Mentadent in a range of European countries, and Colgate-Palmolive did likewise with its Dentagard brand.
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