Your parents mortgaged their house... so you could wear braces. SmileDirectClub tried a new approach to teeth straightening. The $3.2B startup has fixed incisors on 700K mouths since 2014 and just filed Friday to IPO. Its techie approach to orthodontics focuses on 2 things: Time (6 months vs. up to 2 years in braces) and money ($1.8K instead of $5K on braces). Here's how:
- Direct-to-Consumer: They ship you an at-home mold kit, you send it back, they return with clear aligners — no middleman (like Dollar Shave Club shipping out razors).
- Telemedicine: A licensed dentist then checks up on you online every 90 days till your pearly whites are feng-shui'd.
It's all thanks to Tinder and Instagram... When we jumped into SmileDirectClub's IPO paperwork (aka its "S-1"), this description of a core trend hit us hard: “Higher awareness of aesthetic image among consumers.” Social media's pressure on a generation to "present an image of their best selves" is powering the Club — and the company fully embraces that.
The greatest threat to this grinning unicorn is public policy... The American Dental Association isn't a fan of SmileDirectClub's "no-doctor-visits" biz model, so orthodontists are suing in 36 states. Any regulation requiring physical appointments would likely hurt its momentum — just like Uber worries about policies that could make it treat drivers like employees, not independent contractors. Policy has impact.