A new self-care product company that describes itself as celebrating "an active lifestyle and a healthy world," just launched in Vancouver, and it's one you might want to support.
It's called Before and, full disclosure, it's headed up by a good friend of mine.
That friend is Steve Thorp, a serial entrepreneur who's partly responsible for bringing wine-on-tap to B.C. as one of the co-founders of FreshTAP. He also co-founded Settlement Brewing, and is always working on something innovative.
He's partnered up with co-founders Jamie Collins and Kevin Shaw with the aim of producing "better" products with a positive impact, and they've come out of the gate with a subscription model where customers get their new toothpaste delivered on a schedule.
The packaging design is modern, the marketing gives off a sort of "this is not your uncle's toothpaste" vibe, and the business has been in the works for the last three years.
Thorp tells me that they worked for a year and a half on the formulation of the toothpaste itself and that they've managed to remove "all the harmful junk ingredients," that he says are found in most big-brand toothpastes. He says they've replaced those ingredients with "clean" alternatives.
He also tells me that they worked for a year and a half on the Before formulation, after sampling hundreds of other toothpastes.
The company sent some samples my way and after testing them out, two out of the three people living in my house loved it and have decided to buy subscriptions. I'm getting the Classic ($10/bottle) and a member of my family signed up for the Sensitive ($12/bottle).
The bottles themselves are made of recyclable, plant-based sugarcane, and the company says that their carbon footprint is 50 per cent lower than that of traditional plastic toothpaste tubes.
Thorp says they're one of the first in North America to sell toothpaste in plant-based tubes, and that one per cent of their sales will be going towards environmental initiatives such as beach cleanups, protecting old growth forests, etc.
And their future won't be just focused on teeth - the company has a number of other products in the research and development phase.
I'm absolutely biased here but you should absolutely check them out.
