WBHS senior launches bamboo and charcoal dental hygiene kit subscription business

A West Burlington High School senior has launched a subscription-model business providing monthly higher-end dental hygiene supply kits.

David Ricketts, 18, of Burlington first got the idea for White Rocks, named for the desired color for teeth and his love of mountains, at the age of 16 after visiting family in New York.

"A few years ago, I was on vacation and I was riding in the car, and I noticed in the mirror I wasn't too happy with my teeth," Ricketts said.

As he began working to improve his oral hygiene routine to combat his newfound self-consciousness, it occurred to Ricketts that others likely share similar insecurities when it comes to their smile.

"I thought, 'How can I fix that?'" Ricketts recalled.

He began looking into dental hygiene products and business models and soon came across the Dollar Shave Club, a business that delivers razor blades to its customers on a monthly basis.

"I figured I could do the same thing with dental hygiene that they do with shaving," Ricketts said.

And thus started his search for a company that would supply the products he wanted for the kits, which proved to be more difficult than he had initially thought it would be.

"That was actually the hardest part," Ricketts said. "Minimum order ones for custom toothpaste are very difficult to find. Most of the ones in the U.S. were 10,000 minimum order."

Eventually, he came across Cinoll, a dental hygiene product manufacturer based in Guangdong, China, that allows minimum orders of 1,000.

Through that company, he was able to find and order the bamboo toothbrushes with charcoal bristles, bamboo dental floss boxes, and day- and night-time toothpaste that he now includes in each kit.

The charcoal bristles, Ricketts said, are better at removing stains from teeth than typical toothbrush bristles due to charcoal's absorbent properties.

Likewise, the nighttime toothpaste also contains charcoal and is meant to protect from plaque buildup overnight.

The daytime toothpaste, Ricketts said, removes any plaque that may have gotten by the charcoal toothpaste and applies a protective coating, "so you lessen the coffee stains and things like that."

The toothpaste is fluoride-free, which permitted Ricketts to bypass the time-consuming process of gaining Food and Drug Administration clearance.

Ricketts has spent much of his high school career in engineering classes, and though he has branched out into the arts this year, he has yet to take a business course. Instead, he looks to his father, Todd Ricketts, who used to own a business in New York, and the internet for ideas and advice.

Still, the prospect of a review by the FDA caught him off guard.

"That almost stopped me in my tracks," Davis said. "But this is a cosmetic because there's no fluoride in it."

Another hurdle Davis had to navigate was finding a website host capable of accommodating a subscription-based business.

"I really struggled finding a place to set up a subscription-based system," he said. "There's not many of those."

He ultimately settled on Shopify and, with the help of his mother, Virginia "Ginger" Ricketts, due to Davis being only 17 at the time, set up whiterocks.shop.

The website and business went live April 1.

Thus far, Davis's only customers have been family members, which he attributes to a lack of marketing efforts prior to his business's launch.

Now that it's up and running and he knows the website and ordering process work, however, he is hopeful his customer base will grow.

"Not only is this stuff higher quality than the average dental care, but it also arrives right at your doorstep each month without you doing anything," Davis said. "And I think that will encourage good habits."

He still is trying to figure out how to add features that will allow customers to customize their subscription plans, such as the ability to skip months or otherwise change the frequency of delivery and opt out of items included in the kit.

Currently, the monthly subscription price is $16.65, though Davis said that price may be lowered in the future when he is able to secure floss refills for the bamboo containers rather than ship out a new container each month.

Shipping is not included in the subscription price and, depending on where the customer lives, costs up to $8.

"Unfortunately, right now, I have to charge the customers for shipping," Davis said. "As (my business gets) a little bigger, I'll be able to fix that."

Subscribers will be billed once every 30 days, with Davis sending out packages on the same day as customers are charged.

Michaele Niehaus covers business, development, environment and agriculture for The Hawk Eye. She can be reached at mniehaus@thehawkeye.com.

This article originally appeared on The Hawk Eye: Burlington teen launches Dollar Shave Club-inspired kits for teeth