How oral care startup Flaus wants to make flossing accessible to everyone

One of the unexplored applications of assistive technology is oral hygiene.

As is the case with exercise and weight, society has this obsession with having perfectly straight, white teeth filled with the healthiest gums. From a health point of view, these are all good ideals. It is good to have healthy teeth and gums. By the same token, however, striving for idealism is not always realistic. For many people with disabilities, myself included, having healthier teeth and gums may be literally impossible. I once read somewhere that people with cerebral palsy have the worst dental health. This is mainly because brushing is often an exercise in futility and frustration due to the motor skills involved in getting a toothbrush in and around the mouth. Less “careful” brushing leads to not very clean teeth and leads to a number of unpleasant situations such as gingivitis and periodontal disease.

The bottom line here is simply that regardless of the desire to have healthy teeth and avoid the stigma surrounding poor oral health, the reality is that not everyone can take care of their teeth properly. In other words, this issue isn’t so much about laziness as it is about full function and capability. The same goes for flossing. As much as one can they want to do it, many times it is simply unsustainable to do so.

Enter Samantha Coxe and her team at Flaus.

On the company’s website, its product is easy to understand: it’s an electric flosser that’s “like an electric toothbrush, but for flossing.” Flaus touts itself as a money- and time-saving solution to manual flossing, an environmentally friendly, easy-to-use solution that helps build healthy dental habits. The device uses 18,000 sonic vibrations and has three speed options, an ergonomic handle and recyclable thread heads. Additionally, Flaus is waterproof, portable and has the endorsement of “over 200 dental professionals” who participate in the company’s ambassador program. Flaus costs $119 for a one-time purchase. A subscription brings the price down to $99 and includes 90 floss heads delivered to users’ doorsteps every three months. This is an accessibility aid in itself, insofar as it is cheaper and saves a person with a disability the logistical and/or physical barriers of going to a brick and mortar store to purchase replacement heads.

In an interview with me conducted last week via video conference, Coxe explained that the impetus for starting Flaus came during her time practicing mergers and acquisitions law in New York. She told me that an appointment with the dentist caused her to start flossing “hard” a week ago, despite being a faithful brusher. With a hefty bill in tow, Coxe started talking to friends and colleagues about flossing and decided to look for an electric flosser to make it easier and speed up the process. To her surprise, there was no such thing on the market. It was then that Coxe had her “lightbulb moment” that would eventually bore Flaus.

“Fossing is a massive pain point for almost every single person,” she said. “Sure, there are some people who love flossing every day, but over 70% of Americans don’t floss every day. The pain points are unanimous across the board: it takes too long, it’s hard to do, it’s painful, cumbersome, and wasteful. That was really the moment I realized I had stumbled upon a massive market opportunity. Something that excited me the most was, up until this point, threading is such an unsexy category in such an unsexy space. That got me excited about all the possibilities for innovation on the product side and on the brand side.”

Coxe incubated Flaus for a year and a half during the pandemic while still working at one of the country’s most prestigious law firms at Skadden Arps. She went through approximately 250 3D-printed prototypes, all of which involved Coxe “running around putting as many people’s mouths in” as he could. In April 2021, she started an Indiegogo campaign to see if her idea could gain traction in the market. However, she knew that she could not work for Flaus while also performing her duties as a law clerk. She resigned from practice and started campaigning. Coxe decided to devote all her time and energy to Flaus.

“I feel like I’ve been involved in this oral care racket ever since (leaving the law),” Coxe said of working at Flaus. “It’s been an incredible journey — and a total 180 (turn) from being a lawyer, especially as someone with no engineering background and no dental experience.”

Between venture capital funding and the Indiegogo campaign, Flaus has raised over $3.5 million to date.

Much of my conversation with Coxe revolved around her recognition of the accessibility issues inherent in using conventional floss, and the subsequent empathy she has for those in the disability community, who who, like me, have long had issues with flossing. Basically, Coxe tried to make Flaus more accessible (in more ways than one) in a way that regular dental floss has not been and never will be. To wit, she told me she had an epiphany early on that Flaus had the potential to be “an incredible accessibility tool for those who have a dexterity impairment or visual impairment.” She shared an anecdote about getting feedback from three blind people who told her they always had trouble flossing. The team, Coxe said, has “really thought about” the merits of Flaus’ accessibility, saying the disability community is an “amazing” group. The team tried to teach themselves Braille in order to incorporate it into the packaging. There’s also a QR code that, when scanned, takes users to a Flaus how-to video containing audio descriptions. Making the product packaging accessible obviously caused the company’s bill of materials to rise, but the team was adamant about sticking to their ethos of inclusion. Coxe called the blind and low vision community “a huge subset of the population that’s honestly been overlooked,” adding that she relishes the opportunity to connect with them and make them feel represented.

“I’m really excited, as we continue to work with different customers in this community, to continue to make Flaus — both from a product perspective, but also from a packaging perspective, as accessible as possible,” said Cox.

Asked about the aforementioned stigmas surrounding pristine teeth and gums, Coxe told me that Flaus exists to help people “pamper and access and invest in their smiles as much as the skin and hair on their teeth,” telling me that Flaus is uniquely positioned to help revolutionize the beauty space. vis-a-vis oral care. Coxe said another goal of Flaus is to help break down barriers and destroy stigmas around prioritizing beauty and so-called “proper” dental care. She called the concept of literally everyone having the straightest, whitest teeth “completely unrealistic”, likening it to “the social dysmorphia one has (in terms of) what we’re supposed to look like which is out of reach for the average American.

Looking to the future, Coxe said he hopes Flaus can help everyone, especially children and the elderly, use flossing as a tool to achieve healthier dental habits. More specifically, the long-term goal for Flaus is to get one in every bathroom in America. Coxe noted that a lunar project for the company is to one day create a device with interchangeable heads so that a person does not need the clutter of an electric toothbrush and an electric flosser as discrete devices.

For Coxe, it would be an all-in-one product. Again, access itself.

“There are many different ways that we (at Flaus) can continue to push the oral care space further to make it more accessible and easier to incorporate into your daily routine,” Coxe said. “Especially starting with kids — that’s where these habits need to start because it’s scary to think what this generation’s gum disease and oral health (problems) will look like with the amount of sugar in our food.”