How Oralucent Leveraged Insights from Google Ads to Refine Its Positioning and Disrupt the Dental Health Market

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Hello, everyone. Stewart Gandolf here. Welcome to another edition of our podcast. Today, my special guest is Hans Kaspersetz. He is CEO of Oralucent. First of all, welcome, Hans. How are you?

Hans Kaspersetz (oralucent.com)

I’m well. Well, Stewart, thanks for having me on the show.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Yeah, it’s great having you. So, I actually was introduced to you through Mark Coulter of the MedDev Device Summits over in San Diego. Are you going in August this year or no?

Hans Kaspersetz (oralucent.com)

I will. Coincidentally, I was one of the very first sponsors of their events back in the teens, 2000 teens. And I’ve spoken at it several times. I will be speaking again in August. And we’ll be talking about the use of artificial intelligence in, you know, launching a small startup and how you can maintain lean teams by using Gen AI.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Great. Awesome. Well, I’ll see you there. So, it turns out Mark and I had dinner last time I went and he’s Scottish and I have Scottish heritage. So now we’ve become buds. We have the Scottish thing in common. Anyway, well, welcome to our podcast. So, you know, having been introduced by Mark, I took a look at your website and I’m looking forward to getting the product. can’t wait to try it. I haven’t received it yet, but I can’t wait to try it. And, you know, Mark speaks very highly of you and the work you’ve done, and certainly we’ve had some good conversations prior to this meeting today. You know, you’ve had a, you know, successful long career in healthcare, marketing, leadership, entrepreneurship. You know, why oral health and why Oralucent? Why now? Just give us kind of a little bit to tell the listeners first, what does it do and what is it?

Hans Kaspersetz (oralucent.com)

Yeah. So, I mean, first of all, so that we’re all on the same page, this is the oral lucent pro edition toothbrush. It’s actually a light therapy sonic toothbrush. It uses red light therapy to help with gum health and improves blood flow, reduces inflammation. And then blue light therapy helps whiten the teeth and then selectively kill the pathogenic bacteria in your mouth. Now, why Oralucent? Why now in this part of my career? So, you know, Stuart, my personal mission statement is to help people live longer healthier lives. I’ve been doing that since, I guess, about 2002, 2003, when I started doing healthcare marketing. And so, I built a couple of healthcare marketing agencies. I sold one to a bank in 2007. I sold another one to private equity. And I had the good fortune of launching a number of prescribed products and marketing a number of prescribed products. And then I worked in MedDevice for quite a while. And once I sold that agency, I was looking for something to do and a board member at the company introduced me to a healthcare delivery company, actually a tele-ICU business. And so, I got to work in healthcare delivery for two and a half years, help them grow revenue by two and a half X, and modernize all of their infrastructure for delivering critical care services remotely.

As that was going on, I joined New World Angels. New World Angels is an angel investing syndicate out of Tampa and Boca, Florida, Boca Raton, Florida. There’s about 111 of us. And we… We make early-stage investments in four different areas, healthcare, technology, industrial, and consumer products.

And so, I joined the healthcare team and the technology team. And after being an angel investor there for about a year, the chairman of the board of New World Angels raised his hand and asked if any of one of the angels wanted to take on the CEO role at Oralucent and help build the company. And they asked, generally, does anybody have healthcare marketing experience and is interested in oral care? And I had the good fortune to work on gum brands at one point in my career. And so, I had a really deep understanding of the link between the health of your oral microbiome and all of your other systems, right? So, there’s really strong links between the pathogenic bacteria and the health of oral microbiome with Alzheimer’s, cardiovascular disease, inflammatory disease, and metabolic disorders. And so, the better health we were able to sort of generate in the mouth, right? It appears the better health you have. Now, the data, there needs to be more research, and I’m not making any claims about that, but the data is improving all the time. And so, I thought to myself, I’ve been in pharma, I’ve been in med device, I’ve been in healthcare delivery. What would it be like to run a medical device company, a toothbrush company? And I took on that responsibility a year ago, May, and it has been tremendous fun. The beauty of that sort of transition was, we’re on our third generation product today. It is, you know, a much better product than we started with.

You know, originally, we had a toothbrush that only had blue light. And we went into the market, and we sold a whole bunch of them, but we realized we could build a better product.

So, then we re-engineered it, and we had a toothbrush that had blue light and red light. That product was manufactured in the United States, and a couple of things that we discovered.

Number one, the cost of goods. So, the cost to manufacture that toothbrush was very expensive. Number two, generally in the U.S., we just don’t have the tradecraft necessary to manufacture electric toothbrushes really, really well. And so, we had a warranty rate that was higher than expected. I’ll put it that way to be kind to my predecessors. Once we realized that the market really loved the product and that we had to build a better product that was cheaper to build, we went and re-engineered our third generation product, which is what I just showed you. And now we manufacture that in Shenzhen, China, in a facility with other brands that you would recognize from the shelves at CVS or Walgreens, et cetera. That brought our cost of goods sold down by 66% and brought our quality rate way up, our return rate of, you know, we see fewer than 1.3% of product return for dissatisfied customers, which in consumer electronics is very, very low, and a warranty rate of less than 8%, which is much, much better than where we were. And so, you know, like it is an iterative process, right? When you think of like Eric Ries and lean startups and sort of small batch manufacturing, learning from each batch, improving the product iteratively, finding the best manufacturers in the world so that we can concentrate on distribution, marketing, and sales. And so that’s why we’re lucid now. A lot of that engineering risk was out of it, and that left fulfillment, you know, distribution, and marketing as the risk that needs to be conquered now.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

That’s awesome. So, the, you know, that we’ve had oral health. I remember early in my career learning about the oral health versus systemic sort of broader health a long time ago.

We used to work with lots of periodontists, dentists, and, you know, that’s, you know, kind of has evolved over the years. Like I said, it’s probably been 25 years since I first heard about that, and it’s more and more about that. So that’s exciting. You know, I’ve spoken about patient experience a lot. I would say that’s more of an avocation. It’s not something that we do a lot. We do a lot with, you know, how do you answer your phones and how do you convert inquiries? But the connection with patient experience just broadly is a passion project for me. You know, better health outcomes. How do you at Oralucent just reimagine oral care as part of that, like in patient engagement? Like, how does this all fit in?

Hans Kaspersetz (oralucent.com)

Yeah, so there’s a couple of really interesting things. I took my son for his orthodontic visit today. He’s 13. He’s got braces, know, gangly, pimple-faced, 13-year-old, great kid. And I had given his orthodontist an Oralucent Pro Edition back in May. No expectations, just gave it to her, just wanted to get her feedback on it. And the most interesting part was, she saw me, she had a big smile on her face today, and she’s like, I love my Oralucent Pro Edition. And I’m like, why do you love it? And she’s like, it’s like I’m throwing a party in my mouth every time I brush my teeth. I love all the light and how my mouth lights up. It’s just so much fun to brush.

And, you know, this was feedback we had heard previously. And while it doesn’t speak to efficacy, right, it does speak to this really wonderful experience you can have with the product.

And how having a really wonderful customer experience like that, where it’s joyful to brush, right, it’s a new kind of experience, leads to brushing longer, brushing more effectively, and sort of engaging with the product in a different and interesting way. And so that’s just like a really small anecdote, right? When we go beyond that, we spent a lot of time thinking about the design of the product. And there’s a couple of different pieces that we wanted to really focus on. Number one, when you hold a toothbrush, it’s really important to design it so that it works in lots of different hands. And the button position and the button depth tells your hand a lot about how you are going to move the toothbrush and control it in your mouth, you know where it is. And so small things like that make a big difference in the design of the product. The next piece was we realized we’re building a product that we believe will go a long way to reducing gum disease. And our mission is to cut gum disease in half in the next 10 years. And so, one of the core issues we’ve seen with toothbrushes is bristles that are too stiff. And so you’ve got people who want to brush really hard because they think that that’s good for them. And then you have a stiff bristle. And that combination ends up damaging the gum tissue and sort of keeping the gum tissue from healing on its own. And so, we have a particularly soft bristle that is designed to transmit the light. And so, when we start to put all of those things together, right, we have a product that’s sort of tailor-made for people whose gums are bloody or swollen or sore or tender. We have a product that is held well, right, and it feels substantial in the hand. When you get yours, you’re going to realize it feels pretty heavy. It’s got a pretty big motor in it and a pretty big battery. It’s not heavy, but it feels like high quality. And then we have technology inside the head that completes the eye protection and eye comfort circuit within the toothbrush.

One of the other core issues with light therapy devices in general is making sure that you protect the eyes and that you ensure eye comfort. And there’s been a number of very high-profile products from brands that we would all recognize that have come on the market and then had to be pulled off the market because they weren’t engineered for eye protection and eye comfort. And so I was just on the phone with our co-founder, Tim today, Tim Lawrence. He’s the one who’s created all the patent IP on this product. And a lot of the initial work that was done was around how do we design a product that protects the eyes. And so, there’s a couple of different components. Number one, there is a human impedance circuit that detects when the brush is in the mouth. Number two is there are a number of sensors and a machine learning circuit that learn the biomechanics of how you brush and then integrates that data into a light circuit algorithm. I mean, a light ramping algorithm that increases the intensity of light based on the toothbrush being in the mouth and being used so that we can achieve sort of clinical levels of light intensity and delivery while the brush is in the mouth. And then we can detect when the brush is out of the mouth and then we ramp the light down so that you know it’s on. So, you get that sort of positive feedback that the brush is on without there being any risk. And really, the risk area that we want to be concerned with is about six inches, within six inches of the eye, right, in this direction. And so, between those, you know, all of those different features, I think we have a really differentiated product. And when we think about the target audience, really it’s, you know, 50% of adults, people 35 or older, let’s say, will suffer with gum disease. That number rises to 90% for seniors. And so, when we built the product, we really wanted to think about what would be the experience of being a senior using it.

And so that’s where having sort of a big substantial handle that you can hold on to, you know, if you don’t have a lot of like sort of dexterity in the fingers. There’s the soft bristles for the gums. And then there’s five different speeds, one of which is manual mode, where the motor doesn’t turn on at all. And so, it’s just the light delivery without the vibration, without the sonic cleaning action. And for people with sort of, you know, an older smile, right, this is a little bit more comforting, a little bit less jarring in the mouth. And so, depending on whether you want to be really aggressive with it or you want to be really gentle with it, we thought through all those different design aspects and the customer experience.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

That’s awesome. So, the, it’s funny, you mentioned when we spoke last time, people don’t floss. And so, you know, I’m in the business, I floss. And I forget that not everybody is, you know, taught hundreds of dentists over the years or marketed them. So, you know, I’m not a good sample size. Any idea what percentage of people floss and like, you know, is this, we’ll talk about the doctor side of this in a moment, but can this really help people who don’t floss? Like, I’m just curious what your thoughts are there.

Hans Kaspersetz (oralucent.com)

Oh my God, I do not know the number of people who don’t floss. You’ve got me. I would normally ChatGPT that for sure. But, you know, when we think about the interproximal space between the teeth, you know, the light is delivered into all of those areas. And one of the core things that inspired us to do this is that frequently it’s the molars that are pulled first. And it’s the molars that develop cavities first because people don’t do a great job of brushing in the back of their mouth. And so, you know, sort of the technology really does help because the light showers all of that area in the back of the mouth when you’re brushing. So not only do you have the brushing effect, but you have the blue light effect, and you have the red light effect back there. And so, while I don’t have any data on flossing, which next time we do a show together, I’ll have some flossing data. Of course, you wouldn’t ask the question, but I will. Well, we do know that, you know, sort of adopting the BAS method, not pushing the bristles too hard, and, you know, the light showering and penetrating in those interproximal areas has a significant impact. The early clinical data that we have, shows an 80% reduction in HR5 bacteria after 30 days of use twice a day for two minutes over manual or standard toothbrushes. And we’re pretty happy about that data. And then we have to do some more clinical studies, which we’re teeing up for next year to really sort of flush that out. But initial data looks really, really strong in that direction.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

That’s great. With deep gum pockets, any specific knowledge on that yet, or is that what the trials are for?

Hans Kaspersetz (oralucent.com)

No, the trials will look at pocket depth. They’ll look at leading after probing. They’ll look at the attachment score. They’ll look at the plaque score. There’s, I think, five different areas that we want to study.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

That’s awesome. That’s really cool. So, you know, having done this, you know, let’s talk about fundraising. What should founders know about fundraising? I that’s a journey that I’m familiar with vicariously. We self-funded our agency. It’s a little different. It’s very slow that way. But technology, it’s very common to have angels and VCs and later, you know, private equity and all these things. Tell us about that journey for you.

Hans Kaspersetz (oralucent.com)

So, I’m going to, I’ll give you two interesting tidbits. So, I built an agency, right?

And that’s what I sold. So, you and I, and I bootstrapped my agency just like you did. It was slow and painful. And it was really interesting. When we were approached by Private Equity to sell the agency, they talked about the word investment a lot. And I have really, really good Private Equity partners. This falls on me, not on them. And I thought, oh, great. They’re going to come in. They’re going to invest in the company. You know, they’re going to buy the company. They’re going to invest in it. And then we’re going to be able to go out and build all this technology and really scale the business. And what I learned after Private Equity acquired us, and we had a very heavy intellectual property component. We did a lot of natural language processing and a lot of natural language understanding work at that time. They’re investing in the balance sheet. They’re not investing in the P&L. So, in other words, they’re giving us investment dollars to go out and buy other cash flow positive companies that are going to positively accrete to EBITDA. They’re not looking to give us millions of dollars to go build software that might turn into revenue later. Versus venture capital, angel investors, who are literally giving us money, they’re investing in the profit and loss. They’re investing in us going out and scaling the company using those investment dollars, creating new products, validating those products, and then moving forward. And that’s obviously where Oralucent is. So, when you think about do you want a strategic investor, do you want a financial investor, do you want a VC or an angel investing in you, you really need to understand what their intention is for the use of capital and use of funds. And I think that differentiation, that learning moment was really salient to me back in between 20 and 22. And so coming into Oralucent and thinking about it both as an angel investor, and I’ve got, I don’t know, 15 or 16 companies in my personal portfolio now, and as an operator, it was meaningful. Now, for Oralucent itself, there’s been an interesting set of things that we’ve learned. The early stage investors, so let’s say our first $4 million came from angels and individuals. They were very, very interested in the product and the promise of the product. And gaining some degree of traction through sales, DTC, retail, et cetera. And they were happy with DTC. They wanted to see the concept of the product de-risked, and they wanted to see the engineering and design manufacturing de-risked. As we’ve moved up the food chain to Series A investors, which would be another $4 million to, let’s say, $6 million, or strategic investors, say, another oral care company, another consumer products company, they have been less interested in the product and less interested in the financial performance of the company’s sales and marketing and much more interested in the clinical development and the clinical data that supports the product and supports the marketing claims. And that shift has been a very interesting shift to navigate because those are really different kinds of investors with very different interests, right? The early-stage investors wanted to outsource the product development to us. These mid-stage investors, right, strategics, really want to outsource the risk management and clinical development of the product so that they really understand the financial, the marketing claims that can support the product and create a moat around it. And then across that spectrum pretty evenly has been sort of, you know, what is our intellectual property? Can we continue to develop it?

Can we, you know, continue to develop new claims that will support new products? And so, when we look at our IP portfolio, you know, we’ve got two granted patents. We’ve got a couple of patents, you know, patents in prosecution. We’ve got patents in the U.S. and globally to protect the product. And certainly that has been, while it was important to the early-stage investors, very, very important to those Series A and strategic investors. They want to really understand that protection. Yeah

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Yeah, it totally makes sense to me. know, it’s funny. We work with lots of private equity-owned businesses. We work with corporations. We’re all sort of different. And also startups typically with VC money behind them. They’re very different to work with. It’s a completely different animal. And in my own experience, which isn’t the same level as yours, but certainly as we’ve been, we’re of scale and we’re a specialized firm. So, we’ve been giving calls from private equity for a decade, right? You know, pretty regularly. And I have lots of friends that are investment bankers when I go to the various shows. But one thing I have learned, and hopefully that may help some of the listeners too, is, you know, private equity businesses are very different in their objectives. I think it’s really important to understand that some want that intellectual property and want to do more. Others just want to bring up the cash flow like you talked about. Others are looking at scale. Others are looking for a platform. I mean, there’s a lot of different – it’s not just about the dollars. And it’s important, but it’s not all of it. And I can totally see, as you get into larger, more institutional investors, you know, risk is the first thing they probably bring up, right? Okay, patent risk. Can I control this? Will anybody go blind? The safety risk. The… Infringement risk. There’s a lot there. And so, I can see why that would be sort of front and center. that’s, I guess, why things are set up the way they are. Innovators jump in later. The other guys need to come back and say, whoa, whoa, let’s slow down a little. And I’m pretty sure, I’m guessing you would agree that the reason they’re as interested in the P&L as much is because that’s a given. They’re looking to scale it, right? Assuming it’s all safe. They have other ways of distributing that they believe they can sell it much better and faster than you guys can. And that’s where, you know, that’s why they’re not focused on that, is my guess.

Hans Kaspersetz (oralucent.com)

For sure. mean, I think it’s, I mean, they’re worried about mass tort. You know, if they buy the product and then they move it into their distribution channels and they own the distribution channels, which means they can scale it much faster than we can. They’re trying, you know, they’re trying to identify and mitigate those risks, right? All the ones you talked about, intellectual property risk, the mass tort risk, the safety risk, etc. And it makes complete sense to me. you know, thinking about the private equity, you know, buyers and the strategic buyers and the financial buyers and the product buyers, mean, they just understanding the motivations of your buyer and what your value proposition to them is and how you fit into their model is crucial to choosing a buyer, choosing an investor. I mean, for us, you know, very much understanding what is the value beyond the dollars that the next round of investors brings to the table in scaling the organization and understanding the current and sort of near-term risks, the risks for the next 18 months, let’s say, of scaling the organization is essential to understanding who to pitch to and then who to take a term sheet from.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Yeah, by the way, I’d just say anybody who’s interested in this topic, like I’ve sort of studied this from afar. I haven’t been through it, so I’m not an expert for sure. But at least I’ve learned a lot of basics from talking to a lot of smart people and listening to people like you, right? You can, the same thing has come up over and over again, right? Right. Like What else can you bring besides just money? Is there chemistry? Can you work with these people? What’s the chance? What is your goals? What is their goals? All those things are, it’s been done. So, you can study about that. I want to talk about switch over to marketing, which is obviously we’re a marketing agency. We do a ton of marketing. And oftentimes, Hans, when I explain to people, our point of marketing is broader than most agencies. So, when I’m talking about marketing, I break it into six categories. And so, I’m going to tell you this is relevant, so bear with me here. But OK, there’s branding. That’s cool. There’s a lot of agencies who do that. Digital marketing. That’s cool. A lot of agencies who do that. You know, sort of traditional advertising distribution. That’s cool. A lot of agencies do that. Now, by the way, if you do all these things, like everything becomes so specialized. We, for good and ill, have decided to go integrated. The good news is we win a lot of contracts like that. The challenge of that is always just a lot of complexity, right? And scaling is harder when you do all these things to do them well. And I always joke when people say, how do you do all these things? Well, it’s like, well, it did take me 20 years almost to get all those people. Like, for example, our creative wasn’t always so strong. But the other sides of it are doctor referral building, which I’m going come back to, doctor referrals or HCP building, patient experience, and then PR. I mean, you really have all those things here. You know, you have the patient experience. By the way, I love your doctor’s comment. I want to build a campaign around that. Talk about that in San Diego. That’s like, that’s a cool idea. So, like, there’s all kinds of potential there with influencers and all these things. So, that’s cool. But the periodontist and the general dentist and reaching out to the HCPs, you know, we talked, and I was curious, before I even brought it up in our pre-call, you said, yeah, we’re kind of moving in that direction. Give me a sense of that, because that’s a whole thing, right? There’s congresses. There’s big conferences like, you know, California Dental Association has two huge conferences alone. That’s just California. There’s study clubs. There’s a lot. Like, I don’t know of any, really, any profession more committed to continuing education broadly than that. There’s just so many options for dentists. So, what are your thoughts there? What have you learned? What’s the plan? How are things evolving to reach out to them and get them to refer?

Hans Kaspersetz (oralucent.com)

So, I spent almost 20 years doing marketing to healthcare professionals. Like I’ve never done the bathtubs and hammocks thing. I’ve done high science marketing, right? So, I’ve marketed to payers and to physicians and to formulary decision makers and to all the allied professions, right? And so, I’ve, you know, like you, I have a sort of a lot of experience there. And it’s been interesting to think about how that applies to dental professionals, right? They’re revenue centric. They’ve got enormous patient loads. You know, they’ve got a couple of really big players on the direct-to-consumer side, right? You’ve got Sonicare, you’ve got Oral-B, you’ve got gum brands, you’ve got Colgate, you know, Dwight & Church, all marketing brands to. These professionals. And so, they are truly saturated with options and really good options, particularly in the oral care market, right? So, when we think about it, when I joined Oralucent, the marketing was in large part centered around sort of emotional and vanity topics, right? So fresher breath and whiter teeth. Now, the problem with fresher breath and whiter teeth is it is extraordinarily competitive.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Yeah, everybody says that. Yeah, for sure.

Hans Kaspersetz (oralucent.com)

Right. How do you differentiate yourself with fresher breath and whiter teeth? First of all, how do you measure fresher breath, right? I mean, it’s pretty subjective. But the so I looked at what the business was doing and I thought, OK, where can we carve out a space? What can we do that’s differentiated and really speaks to the technology, right? What differentiates us on a product side? What differentiates us from an efficacy side? And where can we take this thing? And so we started running customer surveys and started trying to figure out why do people buy Oralucent Pro Edition, right? And we were understanding that there’s going to be selection bias because we’re a direct-to-consumer and we’re on Meta and we’re on Google and we’re, you know, using sort of PMAX and we’re using sort of social ads. I mean, customers only come from so many places there in those two contexts, right? And so, when we looked at the data, greater than 30% of people who purchased an Oralucent toothbrush purchased it for gum health and gum disease. And immediately following that was overall wellness. And at the very bottom in single-digit numbers was reduction of cavities, fresher breath, and whiter teeth.

And so, like 60% 25% or 55%, I don’t have the data in front of me, of people who purchased it were in those two categories. And I looked at the keywords and understood sort of what the traffic sources were and sort of what their areas of interest and intent were prior to looking at the data. It was a little bit on the confirmatory side, but it indicated to us that we needed to pivot the company and that we needed to pivot our messaging away from the vanity measures, right? It’s a sort of whiter teeth, fresher breath piece and move it to gum disease and to move it to overall wellness, like tying it into this sort of mass movement around wellness. And that was sort of the first big shift. And then, you know, sort of that resulted in, you know, really designing the website, really highlighting the scientific story, you know, sort of making the presentation of the content a little bit bolder. Right? Less about a beautiful bathroom. Right? And more about the science of light, right? And the science of light therapy and the impacts it can have and the studies that we’ve identified that support our sort of our beliefs about the market and our beliefs about the use of the product and the efficacy of the product.

And that was a really big shift for us. It took us quite a while. I mean, we’re a very small team.

It’s not like we had the resources to go out and hire an agency to go rewrite all this content, rebuild the website, rebuild the marketing materials. The output of that has been that, you we sort of are trying to corner this part of the market that isn’t really well served by the bigger brands. Now, what’s really interesting about that is we took we recently took a look at studies around the prevalence of gum disease over the last 20 years and whether there’s been any change. And there hasn’t gum disease is just as prevalent today as it was 20 years ago, which to me. It means that the toothbrushes from the big competitors, right, you have sonic toothbrushes and you have oscillating head toothbrushes, aren’t changing the landscape.

They’re not leaving people healthier. And so, once we sort of outlined that and we started to understand like our core audiences, right, so core audiences would be women 35 to 55 who are making household purchasing decisions. When we looked at our internal data, 85% of all purchases in the last five years for our product have been from customers that have names that are readily identifiable as a Western female name. And I’m trying to be sort of sensitive about how I say that, right? I’m sure there’s some mix-up in there for sure, right? We don’t know for sure every name is what, but the ones that were sort of questionable we just put in the unknown bucket. But that’s pretty persuasive. mean, that’s a lot of buying and it matches up to the fact that 85% of all household purchasing decisions are made by women in the U.S. When we looked a little bit beyond that, we identified the overall wellness sort of markets, market and longevity enthusiasts. And then we identified biohackers. And sort of that sort of makes up the beachhead markets for Oralucent. And so that has sort of caused a shift in the way we market and the way we segment our audiences and the way we craft our messaging and our imaging to make it more relatable to those audiences.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

That’s cool.

Hans Kaspersetz (oralucent.com)

I don’t know if I answered your question.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Yeah, I know you did. Looking at one of the things, you know, it’s funny. I think back to marketing 101, which I took, by the way, as a lark. I thought I was going to be an engineer, but I just fell in love with marketing. And there’s some stuff I really remember to this day. I remember the four Ps. I remember being taught the idea that marketing is helping people get what they want versus selling, which is sort of selling what you have. But I also remember that a few and the 80-20 was a But the diffusion of innovations is really relevant here. And you mentioned a beachhead. And for those listeners who don’t remember or have never heard of it, the diffusion of innovations is a simple idea that, you a certain percentage of the population, maybe 2% to 4% innovators, they love just trying new stuff. Then you’ve got innovators who are, they come in and buy. The big dollars start happening when you have early majority and late majority. And then behind that, you have laggards. And so, there’s kind of like a bell curve. And the competition raises as you get into that healthy part, right? And then later, there’s a shakeout. So, there’s a lot around that. can look that up, diffusion of innovations. But it’s interesting because your market today will probably be different than the market later.

And then you also have sort of the Malcolm Gladwell concept of connectors and, you know, people that are, what was the other word he used for that? But they’re well-connected. And in this day of social media and influencers, there’s so much opportunity there on a consumer direct side. So, it’s a really intriguing marketing. So, if you think about it, there’s nothing but opportunity here. You have consumer direct with digital marketing, you have the whole doctor side of it, and then you have distribution channels. So, there’s like three different areas all ripe with opportunity. I’m just thinking it’s a cool thing to think about. So, let’s talk about the future, you know, like where, you know, the product will continue to develop. Hopefully you’ll get the funding you guys need to really scale. How do you see like, you know, this kind of therapy, you know, evolving over the next five to 10 years?

Hans Kaspersetz (oralucent.com)

Yeah, so I think that there’s, there’s one comment I want to make on the last question. The, you know, I’m going to skip that comment. I’m going to answer the question you asked me. The, over the next, I mean, our belief is that home-based oral light therapy should be ubiquitous in the home. And that there should be products available across the spectrum. Right. Regardless of whether it’s a $39 toothbrush or a $300 toothbrush, there are buyers at both ends of the spectrum who have, you know, either gum disease or might develop gum disease or just want to have healthier oral microbiome, like just help, like more wellness. And so, you know, for us, you know, we are really thinking deeply about what would a product at the $39 price point look like? What would a product look like at the $300 price point? How can we design different kinds of products that, you know, interact with the teeth in different ways? I’m trying to be sensitive because we have patent applications out there, and I don’t want to reveal too much. But, you know, we do know that we need to have a product that is accessible, you know, certainly at the lower end of the market and is delivering light therapy. Whether that particular product needs to have, you know, artificial intelligence and machine learning built into it and other sorts of, you know, and IoT and sort of mobile apps, I don’t think so, right? mean, at that point, we just need something that… It’s going to deliver red light and blue light and either, you know, a sonic cleaning action or oscillating cleaning action, depending on what your consumer preference is, right? Some people just don’t like vibration, and some people don’t like the twisting. So, you know, we’re really focused on product development in both directions. I think having, you know, being able to deliver light is important. And then, of course, you know, there are other, you know, potential products that can be developed that I don’t want to say any more about before I get myself in trouble that, you know, that will be important. I think the other piece is, you know, the clinical development program. We really want to understand deeply what the short-term, medium-term, and long-term benefits of oral light therapy are in the home and be able to continue to evolve the product based on that. We know we have a safe product now. It’s, you know, registered and with the FDA. It works really well, we get great anecdotal feedback, but sort of really flushing out the clinical story so that we can sort of create a product that would be reimbursed by your insurance company would be amazing, right? I think that would be great. mean, currently you can use your FSA, HSA, and HRA money to buy the Oralucent toothbrush, but understanding how we might be able to build the product in a way that it can be used in a hospital in order to try to, you know, help prevent, you know, hospital-acquired pneumonia, hospital-ventilator-acquired pneumonia, and other sort of chronic issues that are associated with oral hygiene when you’re in the hospital. And so I think that there’s a number of areas that would benefit from having oral light therapy in, you know, the form of a toothbrush, both at home and in clinical settings.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

That’s awesome. So, I’ll just give some sort of finishing thoughts from my point of view. One is I’m just really intrigued by this. I’m a minority investor an investor in a… Friends and family product called Memory Air, which is based on the life’s work of a scientist friend of mine.

It’s a very healthy friends and family. We have the money we need, so we didn’t have to go to Angels. So that’s developing. So, I’m watching this happen now and thinking about that experience. I’m not close to it. I’m just an investor on that one. But the, you know, the manufacturing process and getting it right and then scaling it and having tests and doing these kinds of things are super exciting to me. And I think that, you know, like there’s different markets, just like for that product, just like this one, there’s different marketplaces to explore.

So, I’m intrigued by your story. just exciting to me just to look at it from that standpoint. I love that you looked at your data from the Google Ads campaign and the, I think that’s awesome.

You know, like that’s a really easy way. I fell in love with paid search when it first came out.

Hans, that’s when I started my agency, when that first started getting real traction. And I just love the immediate impact, the test. Stuff that used to take a half a million dollars in months, you could do for a thousand dollars and get the info in days. So that was the direct response side of me. So, I think that’s really cool of looking at that from a product development standpoint, coming up with your market segments. And of course, you can do research. And I get when you’re bootstrapping here, it’s a little harder, but to get proper research at some point, too, to talk to your clients and expand upon the learnings you do. So, there’s opportunity all over there. The doctor market, you know, you mentioned competition there. Like I mentioned to you offline, Sonicare is like a machine at the dental shows.

The hygienists line up for hours waiting to get their free toothbrush. So, there’s a lot of competition there. Another thing I thought really resonated with me was the competition for fresh breath and, you know, cleaner teeth. I mean, Crest has that positioning for years, right? The different brand extensions. And so, you’re competing with toothpaste, with things like what used to be strictly dental. And all these different products. So, there’s just a lot there. So, I think that, you know, you guys are kind of bringing together all these concepts, right? You’ve got new technology; you’ve got different marketing channels. I really thought this would be a fun topic is it’s just so rich. There’s so much here and all the stuff that we’ve done, you know, over the years and, you know, haven’t worked with providers in the day, working with device and other kinds of businesses. Now, I guess any last sort of, you know, this is, you know, my, our show here is about business. And I always say it’s about business innovation and marketing. Any last marketing, you know, wisdom you’d like to share based on this experience so far where you think you might be going?

Hans Kaspersetz (oralucent.com)

I think, I mean, the ability to understand our audiences has gotten really inexpensive. I mean, which means it’s commoditized. Like that means your competitors can do it well. As well. I mean, when I think about Oralucent and I think about our Shopify site and how much data we’re able to collect. And the fact that implementing a post-purchase survey took less than 15 minutes. And so now every time we sell a toothbrush, mean, we ask really simple questions.

Like we give them a multi-select list on why did you buy the toothbrush? And we shift the order of the list all the time, right? So that it’s randomized. So, we don’t just get somebody clicking the first item. And then the second question we ask is, hey, why did you almost not buy the toothbrush? Right. So, we want to know why you bought it. And then what about this experience caused you to almost not buy? And, you know, it’s understanding what it’s like to interact with the brand. Another one, I mean, you know, using Hotjar and other sort of heat mapping software. We learned an enormous amount about the impact of, you know, the full page takeover with an offer. Right. And so, and how that caused a lot of bounces. Right. So, you know, why are we selling against ourselves?

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

That’s really old school, Hans.

Hans Kaspersetz (oralucent.com)

Yeah, yeah, I know. Well, you know, why are you selling against yourself?

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

It used to work like crazy. It was fantastic.

Hans Kaspersetz (oralucent.com)

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I think look at the data, make sure you have all the right instrumentation in place. Be willing to really set aside your ideas about what the brand is about and listen to the consumer. I know it sounds so basic, right? I’m going back to books like Positioning and The Purple Cow and, like, know, marketing stuff and, you know, Dr.

Cialdini. You know, one of the things I do, which with our internal team is I have them, you know, diagram a marketing piece against Cialdini’s six rules of ethical persuasion.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Yeah.

Hans Kaspersetz (oralucent.com)

And show me how, you know, whether you’re able to achieve all those things. I mean, it’s really simple. It’s doing the basics well over and over and over enables us to do bigger things.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

So, I love it because I feel like, you know, marketing, when it’s done well, begins and ends with the consumer. Because they’re the ultimate purchaser. And I feel like in our field, one of the criticisms I’ve had since day one is it’s really getting caught up in the creative. And so one of the things I often talk about is the four P’s, product, place, price, promotion. Then we get into healthcare. We okay, now there’s five. We add in the staff. Okay, now we’ve got add-in packaging and positioning. So now we’ve got seven, whatever. However many P’s you want to cover. But the first P that really matters a lot is the product. And most amateur marketers jump straight to promotion because that’s the cool part. That’s the fun part. But all those other P’s are really, really important. And then within that P as you’re designing, going back to the target audience, which really should be part of P’s, and figuring out what their motivation is and how do you design a product that fits that. And then how do you promote that and find out what’s most compelling. And I guess the last part of this all is to me is the part about just the simple research you guys are doing. I love it. You’re using the keywords and now you’re using bounce back surveys. It’s all at virtually no cost. You’re getting data. You’re So, you know, you’re getting great research without having to use a researcher. And like, so there’s, and as you guys grow, you can drill down on more and more, but those insights are spectacular, right? To be able to understand, and I’ll be really curious too, as you get into the HCP side, understanding the dentist more, right? Because those are things, you do have a big head start having worked in that space before. Like, you know, once you’ve worked with a few hundred or a few thousand dentists, you kind of know, have some ideas of how this stuff all fits.

Okay. Hans, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you for joining me. I knew it’d be. I hope you had fun, too, as we did this. So, I have two final questions. I got to give you a moment here, a pitch moment, right? So, assuming that everybody’s really excited as I am, I cannot wait to try my sample, by the way. So, I appreciate that. But I would buy it otherwise. But for those of you that haven’t been on the podcast hosting part, and they want to buy this and try it out, where do I go? How do I find your product?

Hans Kaspersetz (oralucent.com)

All right. So, the product is available on our website. It’s oralucent.com, O-R-A-L-U-C-E-N-T.com. And for your audience, Stewart, we’re going to give you guys a code, which will be HEALTHCARESUCCESS20, all one word, HEALTHCARESUCCESS20.

And that’ll get your audience 20% off.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

I love it. And by the way, Hans, just because there’s a little bit of breakup on my end, I’m not sure if the listeners heard the URL, but just to repeat it again slowly, oral, O-R-A-L-U-C-E-N-T, oralucent.com. So, hey, that was great. Bye. Thanks. And we’ll see you in San Diego.

Hans Kaspersetz (oralucent.com)

See you soon. Thank you.