Not much to smile about
Brace yourselves… SmileDirectClub, the once-shiny telehealth startup that promised to straighten your teeth for a fraction of the typical price, has officially shut down its global operations after filing for bankruptcy in September.
In a statement posted on its website, SDC confirmed that it would be canceling any unshipped teeth aligner orders, and would not be honoring its popular “Lifetime Smile Guarantee” deal, which offered customers annual adjustments for life. The shutdown marks a serious fall from grace for the direct-to-consumer dental specialists — its 2019 IPO valued the company at $8.9 billion.
Misaligned
Founded in 2014, SmileDirectClub was an exciting presence in the orthodontal space, marketing its $1,850 teeth aligners as time-efficient and cost-effective alternatives to the dental brace courses that self-conscious smilers had been presented with for decades. They were, in hindsight, too cheap given that the company routinely racked up hundreds of millions of dollars in losses, like so many of the D2C brands that burst onto the scene as “disruptors” around the same time.
