Dr. Simon Chard on the Creation and Growth of Parla Oral Care

Sure, yeah. So my name is Simon Chard. I’m the co-founder of Parla Oral Care. We’re a next generation oral care brand looking to eradicate single use plastic from dentistry. I’m also a practicing dentist. So qualified back in 2012 as a dentist. Had quite a varied career since then, lecturing around the world on cosmetic dentistry. I’m also the past president of the British Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry and I run a multidisciplinary dental practice in Surrey just outside of London, UK.

Yeah, so basically we, I came together with two other high profile dentists, founders, because we were being used at the time back in 2019 for our profiles to promote the big brands. So I was on the TV advert for Oral -B, which is Crest in the UK, promoting their toothbrush. My co -founder Dr. Rona was being used for Sensodyne and Regenerate and those sorts of brands.

And we came together and said, right, we’re promoting these brands that package their products in single use plastic. They choose the cheaper ingredients so they can drive the price right down and sell maximum volume for minimum cost. It’s not really in alignment with the way that we do the rest of our brands. We’re looking to make sustainable choices, to use reusable water bottles, to use the best ingredients for our skincare, for our food, for our healthcare in general.

but we’re not really promoting that to our patients or to the young new generation of dentists who follow us on social media and in real life. And so we came together and said, right, how can we do something different? So we came up with the idea of Parla. So Parla is a dehydrated toothpaste tablet. I’ve got some, yep. So this is what our toothpaste looks like. So dehydrated toothpaste tablets, you basically pop a Parla.

Two on it for five seconds, bring a wet brush in and brush away as normal and you have your normal tooth brushing experience. The beauty of having the tablet form factor is that all of our packaging is 100 % plastic free. So we’ve got an aluminum lid with a glass jar and these refills can be refilled with our compostable plant-based bag refills. Originally we started as a direct consumer brand. So those would come through the letterbox on a four monthly basis. Since launching back in 2020, we’ve had an incredible run of success, built a fantastic tribe of subscribers online. And latterly, well, since 2021, we’ve been in national retail in the UK, people that know retailers in the UK, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Boots, Ocado, Whole Foods, GT3. So, the sort of more premium mass market retailers in the UK. From there, we’ve sort of expanded our product portfolio to include vitamin infused toothpaste tabs, probiotic infused mouthwash tabs, but always with this key mantra of Zero plastic, all of our packaging is either refillable, fully compostable or worst case scenario, infinitely recyclable. And all of our ingredients are of the highest science back quality, but ethically sourced at the same time. So, Parla actually means pearl in Swedish, which we thought was the perfect representation of who we are as a brand. Pearly White Smile being that we’re designed by some of the UK’s top dentists, pearl of the ocean being that we designed the brand to eradicate single use plastic from oral care and therefore stop that plastic from going into the ocean because every tube of toothpaste you’ve ever used still exists somewhere on the planet and 20 billion of them go into landfill in the ocean each year. So it’s quite a significant problem that we’re trying to solve.

Well, we’re very fortunate that our total addressable market is everyone on the planet because everyone’s got teeth and everyone has to brush them twice a day. I think our core following that we have attracted so far has been more of the Gen Z millennial audience who are open to innovation and adapting to new ways of doing things and are also more engaged in the fight against climate change and destruction of the planet from consumerism. Saying that, we’ve been very fortunate to have fantastic press in outlets such as the Times or the Telegraph, which sort of skew more towards the baby boomers. And they’ve also, I think, with a more disposable income and with a desire to protect the planet for their kids, been very, very engaged in the way that we’re working.

I think the interesting groups that we’ve seen are those that have struggled with cancer or treatment of cancer, because our products don’t contain any sodium lauryl sulfate, they’re much kinder to the skin of the mouth, which is especially important in cancer sufferers. And also to the blind population who really struggle with traditional toothpaste, whereas our very convenient tablet form factor is really great for them, which is, we’ve had some beautiful messages through from our consumers, talking about how much of an impact that’s had for them, which has been really nice to see. And obviously, I mean, not something you think about when you first start a toothpaste tablet brand, but actually a really lovely sort of sequelae of what we’ve been up to.

No, not at all. There’s lots of tablet brands and certainly since we’ve achieved relative mass market scale in the UK, there’s been many copycat brands come through. I think what they fail to realize is that actually mouth experience and the execution of the product is very, very difficult to do. I don’t think there’s anyone on the planet that’s eaten more toothpaste tablets than I have, to be honest. Because I’m integrally involved in the R&D of the product and continuing to iterate and improve it to the best of our ability. We’re on about the fourth iteration of our product now since launching in 2020, sort of our core base formulation. And it’s very difficult to achieve what we try to achieve, which is sulfate -free tablet form factor with obviously zero water, but with the experience of a traditional paste. That is very hard to do because of the way that the foamy agents and the flavor agents all work together. And then on top of that, we’ve built a very, very cool lifestyle brand. I mean, we’ve intentionally gone out of our way to execute this in a way that it becomes an icon of the bathroom. I always say, no one’s gonna wear a Colgate hat, but they’ll wear a parlor hat.

As you can see, I’m wearing mine right now because we are a cool brand that people are attracted to and align with because we have very clear brand values and we are aggressively authentic in the way that we execute on those.

Yes.

Yes, as I was saying, we have a four monthly subscription. So the original product comes out in the glass jar, a bigger version of this with 248 tablets, so enough to brush your teeth twice a day for four months. And then the refills come in compostable plant -based bags that you simply pour into the glass jar. And then that bag can go in your green waste and turns back into plant food. So it has zero impact. So it’s a truly closed loop solution.

which we think is really unique. We were actually on Dragon’s Den in the UK on BBC back in 2021. It went live on TV. We filmed it in 2020. For your international viewers, they may know that as Shark Tank. Dragon’s Den was the first one, but Shark Tank’s probably got more viewers nowadays. But yeah, that was good fun.

So we see the growth in oral care around a more modern approach to ingredient selection. People are very much more aware nowadays about what they’re putting in their body, what they’re putting on their body as they should be. And big multinational companies are guilty of just using, again, the cheapest ingredients that are legal, but aren’t necessarily the best for you. And we’ve seen many ingredients over the years be removed from oral care products and other personal care products because we find out at a later date that they’re not good for you, they’re inflammatory or even worse. So our focus is towards being at the front line of that, really innovating around ingredient selection, using ingredients like probiotics that actually work with your body and work with your mouth to reduce your risk of disease from things like gum disease and decay and help you to have fresher breath and a brighter smile. So leaning more into that functional oral care space is something that we’re really working hard on.

And I’m just innovating and growing our product range to fulfill more communities. We also have plastic free floss and a fully compostable bamboo brush. So again, filling out all of your oral care needs in a way that is completely plastic free and more modern in its approach is going to be our focus moving forward. We’ve still got, Although, our distribution in retail in the UK is already great, we’re having conversations with lots of other retailers with regards to expanding that as well. So that’s super exciting.

We did it, yeah.

Dragon’s Delo, I guess. National TV tends to do that.

Yeah, I mean, I think for us, I mean, there’s been loads, let’s be honest, when you’re starting a new brand like this, the three founders are all dentists, we’re not FMCG or CPG experts. We’ve run our own businesses, but bricks and mortar dental practices are very different to fast moving consumer goods in so many ways. So we’ve had lots of failures, lots of learnings.

The performance marketing landscape over the last four years has become more and more difficult. Meta has been more and more difficult to work with. Amazon has become more and more difficult to work with. Costs have gone up across the board. We’re already a premium mass market product, so we don’t have that much flex in putting through cost price increases or anything like that. So we’ve had to find creative ways to keep ourselves profitable.

And whilst not raising the price of the products. So yeah, I would say all in all, everything’s been difficult. But we’re very lucky that actually we have a fantastic community that supports what we’re doing. And there’s a real demand for a product like ours, a genuinely authentic product designed by experts in their field, not like the other big brands that say recommended by 99 % of dentists, genuinely made by dentists on the front line who understand what their patients need and what people need in general and try to help them to have more confidence in their smiles.

Don’t do it. No, I’m joking. Yeah. No, I mean, you have to go into these things with a delightful naivety, don’t you? Because if you knew how hard it is to run a brand like this, then you probably wouldn’t do it. But no, I love what we do. I’m very passionate about it.

I guess that’s really the core of the message is that try and avoid going after something purely for commercial means because you will fail because you’ll get to the hard points that inevitably come for everyone and you won’t have the drive to get through those moments. For me, when the difficult periods have come, I’ve had an unwavering commitment to what we’re doing as a brand and the quality and the execution of our products and everything that we stand for. So I think that shines through to your consumers. I think it shines through to your team. And it allows you to punch above your weight than if you thought that CBD was a financially growing sector, but you literally didn’t care about it at all.

I don’t think you’re going to win in the long run. You might have short term sales spikes, but you’re not going to have a brand that lasts a test of time. And that’s, I think, what we’re growing with Parla.

No, my practice is always so busy anyway, but if you, I’m a cosmetic dentist, if you need your smile sorted out, you know where I am. But no, I think, as I say, my big focus is towards making Parla the next generation of oral care, expanding that across the world, changing the way that people brush their teeth and making my own little positive impact on the planet.

Thanks for having me.