CHALLENGE: Design an electric toothbrush at a price point similar to a manual toothbrush
SERVICES: Insights, Design, Engineering, Prototyping, Sourcing, Manufacturing
AWARDS / PRESS: P&G Healthcare Award; Smart Business
SUCCESS: #1 selling electric toothbrush; Hundreds of millions sold
Above: Behind the scenes, Nottingham Spirk associates had a little fun making the early Spinbrush models.
The Spinbrush electric toothbrush rose to prominence so quickly that it’s easy to forget that all electric toothbrushes used to cost more than $50 and accounted for only a tiny fraction of the market. As the cost of manual toothbrushes approached the $5 retail price point, we were convinced that if we could design an electric toothbrush at a manual price, it would be a runaway hit.
Launching a start-up company around the product, we sold 10 million Spinbrushes in the first year, instantly tripling the electric toothbrush market. Procter & Gamble then acquired the invention for its Crest brand and sales exploded, generating billions of dollars in sales for a new major consumer market.
“Five dollars was the magic price point,” John Spirk recounted for Smart Business. “Now it could have been $10 but we tested sales at $10, and they dropped like a rock after that. It still would’ve been successful but it would never have been the super product that it was.
“We had to manufacture it for $1.25 — batteries, motors, gearboxes, housings, packaging, shipping, displays. That was a challenge, but we knew it had to be $1.25 because we wanted a 50 percent margin. You’ve got to do that. You can go into a store and say, ‘This is a great product but you have to get a certain percent markup.’ It doesn’t work that way, so you have to have your numbers right."
“What makes you the proudest of the products that you have done? It’s very simple. It’s not because it was a great commercial success; it was because it really lowered the cost of power brushing — and we really changed the way children can brush in America. It put a power toothbrush potentially in the hands of all children and improved oral care in America.”
