BURST Oral Care Files Prospectus Highlighting C-Series Funding and Community-Driven Oral Care Model

Recently, BURST Oral Care completed its Series C financing round, led by GS Growth. The specific amount raised was not disclosed. The funds will primarily be used to expand the brand’s product line and explore new distribution channels. Additionally, Allison Berardo and Hillel Moerman from GS Growth will join the board of directors of BURST Oral Care.

BURST Oral Care is an oral care company founded in 2017 by Brittany Stewart and Hamish Khayat. Headquartered in California, USA, the company has been dedicated to providing consumers with cost-effective sonic electric toothbrushes since its inception.

Chief Operating Officer Brittany Stewart is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). After graduating in 2007, she joined the investment bank Growthink as a Senior Business Analyst, later transitioning to the role of Director of Audit Practice Management, and ultimately serving as Chief Customer Officer in 2013. During her tenure at Growthink, she participated in fundraising and development planning for more than 250 startups and middle-market companies across industries including technology, e-commerce, and fashion. After leaving Growthink, she subsequently worked at FinditParts, ThursdayNights, and Dyrdek Machine.

CEO Hamish Khayat graduated from the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom. Prior to founding BURST Oral Care, he served as the CEO of Stand up and Smile. Although Hamish Khayat’s university major was not related to dentistry, he had a strong personal interest in oral care and participated in the establishment of BURST Oral Care after graduation.

After formally entering the oral care industry, Hamish Khayat identified many previously overlooked issues, such as the excessive pricing of oral care products by many companies. In Hamish Khayat’s view, oral care products can significantly impact people’s lives and should be made accessible to a broader population. To this end, BURST Oral Care aims to collaborate with dental professionals to expand the market and eliminate intermediaries—such as retail stores and freight logistics providers—that contribute to price markups.

BURST Oral Care engages with dental professionals during the development of each new product. To date, the company has launched electric toothbrushes, dental floss, teeth whitening strips, and toothpaste, with a children’s product line planned for future release.

The BURST Sonic Toothbrush is an electric toothbrush and the company’s flagship product, priced at $69.99. After purchasing the toothbrush, users can subscribe to an additional service for $6.99, under which the company ships replacement brush heads to them every three months.

The brush head of the BURST Sonic Toothbrush features charcoal-infused bristles, which more effectively remove surface stains from teeth. With low power consumption and an extended battery life, it requires charging only once a month. It is available in three colors—black, white, and rose gold—to meet the diverse preferences of users.

This toothbrush generates 33,000 sonic vibrations per minute during use, removing ten times more dental plaque than a standard toothbrush while causing less gum damage, thereby effectively reducing gum bleeding. Additionally, it features a built-in two-minute timer that automatically stops the device after two minutes of operation. The toothbrush also emits a gentle vibration every 30 seconds to remind users to change their brushing position.

This toothbrush comes with a lifetime warranty; if it malfunctions during the warranty period, the company will provide customers with a free replacement. Users can choose from three smart modes when using this toothbrush: whitening, massage, and sensitive teeth care, which are currently the most valued features by the majority of consumers.

BURST Oral Care Product Illustration

Image source: official website

Burst Coconut Whitening Strips: A gel-based teeth whitening strip product with a retail price of $19.99 per box, containing 7 packets of strips per box. These strips utilize hydrogen peroxide gel and coconut oil extract in their elastic gel layer, offering a safe and effective solution without the pungent odor associated with traditional whitening strips. For optimal stain removal results, experts recommend that customers use the strips daily for one week, with each application lasting 10 minutes.

BURST Oral Care Product Schematic Diagram

Image source: official website

Burst Expanding Floss is a cleaning dental floss featuring textured ridges on each strand to remove more plaque and debris. The floss is coated with charcoal, providing antibacterial properties and stain absorption. For an additional $6.99, customers can subscribe to a refill service that delivers a box of plastic-free floss every three months. The new floss can be placed directly into the existing dispenser, offering ease of use while reducing waste.

In addition, the dental floss contains eucalyptus leaf extract and peppermint extract, which impart a fresh and invigorating scent. Moreover, this dental floss exhibits excellent tensile strength and is resistant to breaking during use.

Product Diagram of BURST Oral Care

Image source: official website

With the improvement in quality of life, people have increasingly focused on oral care, and toothbrushing tools have gradually shifted from traditional manual toothbrushes to electric toothbrushes. According to relevant statistics, the number of electric toothbrush users increased from 94 million in 2012 to 118 million in 2019. The market expansion has also promoted the development of BURST Oral Care. As of October 2019, the brand’s sales revenue recorded a year-on-year growth of 100% compared with 2018.

BURST Oral Care sells its products through a direct-to-consumer subscription model. Just last year, the company successfully launched on e-commerce giant Amazon, allowing customers to order directly via its official website and Amazon with no minimum delivery requirements. To date, the company has amassed over 10,000 long-term subscribers and more than 25,000 five-star reviews.

BURST Oral Care adopts a multi-level marketing strategy, allowing dental professionals to become company ambassadors through its Ambassador Program, which enables practicing dental staff to earn additional income. After joining the program, numerous dental professionals can interact with one another, forming a vast “ambassador” community network. Customers can purchase products at a discount using codes provided by ambassadors, who in turn earn referral fees. Hamish Khayat stated that, compared with other competitors, the company’s advantage lies in the social system it has built with professionals.

Due to the impact of the novel coronavirus, the American Dental Association recommended that dentists nationwide postpone certain procedures for the time being, leading to rising unemployment among dental professionals. To address this issue, BURST Oral Care announced in March that it would waive the $20 fee for dental professionals to join its Ambassador Program, encouraging more financially affected dental workers to become part of the ambassador community. As of March 24, BURST Oral Care had distributed $5 million to over 20,000 dental professionals.

Brittany Stewart, Co-founder and President of the brand, stated, “Consumer demand for electric toothbrushes has surged recently. However, with most dental clinics temporarily closed due to the pandemic, the only option left is to maintain oral care at home.”

Through this initiative, BURST Oral Care has partnered with more dentists who recommend the brand to their patients, advising them to undergo professional dental cleanings once the pandemic situation stabilizes. BURST Oral Care’s products are primarily manufactured in China. Although the pandemic caused temporary shutdowns at its factories, Brittany Stewart stated that proactive and sufficient inventory planning ensured no disruption to order fulfillment.

In recent years, driven by the wave of consumption upgrading, Chinese residents’ awareness of oral care has gradually increased, making electric toothbrushes one of the fastest-growing categories in the small home appliance market in China. However, the current penetration rate of electric toothbrushes in China remains low, lagging significantly behind that of developed countries, which indicates substantial market potential.

The core components of an electric toothbrush are the battery, motor, and brush head. Among these, motor technology and materials R&D represent the key technical bottlenecks in the electric toothbrush industry. Currently, few brands in the Chinese market possess proprietary motor technology. Apart from global leaders Philips and Oral-B, which can supply their own motors, most domestic brands rely on imported motors or are still in the R&D phase.

Due to the timeline of breakthroughs in core motor technologies, a growing number of domestic electric toothbrush brands are currently focusing on structural design and tuning while utilizing the same motors. Structural design has also become a key focus of electric toothbrush patent applications in China. The position of the motor within an electric toothbrush can affect the vibration intensity of the brush head and the overall user experience.

From the perspective of overall product technology stages, the global electric toothbrush market is transitioning from the 1.0 electrification stage to the 2.0 intelligent stage. In contrast, domestic brands have not yet completed the 1.0 product stage in terms of overall industry development; product homogenization is severe, with differentiation limited primarily to exterior design.

On the other hand, domestic brands have been more aggressive in their exploration of smart technologies. Many have introduced internet-connected home appliances and Internet of Things (IoT) concepts into the electric toothbrush sector to drive business model innovation, proposing an “integrated hardware-software” approach. By positioning electric toothbrushes as high-frequency data entry points—such as by pairing them with mobile apps to collect users’ brushing data—these brands are reshaping the market landscape.

However, the current combination of software systems and toothbrush hardware remains somewhat rudimentary. It has not raised the technical barrier to entry nor enhanced the consumer experience. Although brushing teeth is a high-frequency activity, it is brief in duration; requiring connectivity with a mobile app adds steps to using the electric toothbrush, thereby actually diminishing the product experience. Moreover, the volume and value of data currently collectible are quite limited.

Although the approach is not yet mature, the trend toward intelligence is inevitable. Future smart electric toothbrushes are expected to be endowed with more digital features, becoming a component of the Internet of Things (IoT) and a key entry point in the field of oral health.