Inspiring Conversations with Catherine & Chrystle Cu of Cocofloss

Today we’d like to introduce you to Catherine & Chrystle Cu.

Hi Catherine & Chrystle, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
We started Cocofloss with a mission to brighten smiles everywhere. Our goal was to reduce tooth decay and gum disease by inventing a super-effective floss that was actually fun to use — so fun that people would look forward to using it every day.

I grew up caring about oral care. My mom immigrated to the U.S. from the Philippines and worked as a dentist. I grew up hanging out in her dental practice, meeting patients and helping out wherever needed. Inspired by how she helped her patients achieve healthy, confident smiles, I decided to follow in her footsteps.

In 2008, I started my own career as a general dentist in private practice. I soon became super frustrated with all the totally preventable cavities I was seeing. More than half of them could have been prevented by daily flossing. Even my own little sister, Cat, wasn’t flossing! (Over 32% of U.S. adults never floss.) More than half the tooth decay I diagnosed in private practice in the Bay Area involved areas in between teeth, where only floss can reach. The majority of folks had some form of gum disease.

In mid-2014, when I was grappling with people not flossing, Cat was getting over the failure of her first startup, an online platform for commissioning art. She absolutely did not want to return to her previous career in finance.

We decided to return to our childhood dream of starting our own business. As kids, instead of playing house, we used to play “business” together a lot. We had these fantasy empires. Cat was always the CEO and I always wanted to be her assistant. I had fun pretending that she was a big tycoon and I was taking care of all her executive needs.

So we teamed up as adults to make flossing just as fun as other self-care treats, like a relaxing face mask or your favorite exfoliating scrub.

To research ways to reinvent floss, I gathered dozens of materials and fibers, even going so far as to pick up seaweed from the beach to test its elasticity. We wanted our floss to be soft, flexible, and also truly effective — unlike slippery “gliding” floss that just slides right over plaque. (Using that stuff is like trying to clean dirty dishes with a plastic bag.)

We finally decided on a grippy, loofah-like weave of 500+ expanding polyester microfilaments coated with vegan, microcrystalline wax (for comfort). Then we infused it with coconut oil, a natural antimicrobial, and enticing aromas.

In 2014, Cat and I handpacked floss prototypes and sent them out to friends and family for our first 21-Day Floss Challenge. It was a huge success! Shortly after in 2015, we launched our consumer website with three fresh fragrances: Delicious Mint, Fresh Coconut, and Pure Strawberry. Now we have 11 different aromas — including Summer Watermelon and Dark Chocolate — with more irresistible options coming soon.

Today we’re sold in hundreds of retail shops, including Goop, Anthropologie, and Credo Beauty. Thousands of dental professionals regularly recommend Cocofloss to their patients, and we’ve sold roughly 5 million spools of floss since our launch.

I hope one day to make Cocofloss available to everyone because we believe it’s truly the best and has the potential to make a lot of people much healthier. We just need to help folks build an enjoyable flossing habit. Because once that habit is established, it becomes something they want to do every day.

– Dr. Chrystle Cu

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It’s amazing what our bootstrapped, scrappy team has achieved together. When we first started Cocofloss, no one thought we could build a business around dental floss. Most people hate to floss — and investors couldn’t fathom that anyone would ever spend more than a few bucks on their dental floss.

Yet flossing is critical to preventing gum disease. We knew we had to do something totally different to transform consumer behavior. No one thinks of an exfoliating face wash as a chore. It’s a delight, a self-care treat. We wanted to make flossing just as fun.

With our super-cleansing, textured weave, soothing coconut oil, range of irresistible aromas, and delightful packaging, we transformed flossing into an appealing — even aspirational — self-care experience.

We’ve come so far from those early days, when my parents, Chrystle, and I would pack Cocofloss together at the dining room table while binging on “Planet Earth” and “Downton Abbey.” Then we’d nervously head over to the local food truck fair to peddle our wares in person. (Pulled pork and floss anyone?)

During those first few years, Chrystle and I packed tens of thousands of spools of floss ourselves. It was a total family effort. Our Auntie Loly came to help every day, Cat probably spent around 1-4 hours a day, and our parents, grandma, mother-in-law, and my now husband all pitched in. I think it’d be reasonable to say that all together we packed around 100,000(!) boxes over the years.

All that bootstrapped, handpacked effort paid off though. Since we launched Cocofloss in 2015, we’ve seen a number of new, up-market oral care brands crop up. It’s become clear that consumers are willing to pay for style and quality, even in the oral-care category. Oral care is no longer a commodity business. Instead, people want to use products that resonate, and the products they choose fit into a much broader, holistic self-care routine and lifestyle.

– Catherine Cu

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
We create oral-care products that are not only superior for smiles but also better for our planet.

From the beginning, we’ve had a long-term goal: to consistently become more environmentally sustainable. Today we are proud to say that each new spool of Cocofloss is made from ~85% recycled polyester spun from plastic water bottles. So far, using recycled plastic for our floss has helped divert more than 400,000 water bottles from the landfill. Making Cocofloss from recycled plastic also uses 64% less energy, 94% less water, and 32% less CO2 emissions than non-recycled plastic.

All our Cocofloss dispensers can be recycled and refilled, and we’re in the process of converting to dispensers made almost entirely from recycled plastic. Our Cocofloss refill spools are packaged in fully compostable wrappers made of renewable wood cellulose.

In 2021, we also launched our ultra-soft Cocobrush, with a handle made of ~98% ocean-bound plastic certified by Oceanworks. Plus, for every brush sold, we remove an additional 10x Cocobrush’s worth of ocean-bound plastic from coastal communities.

We also donate each year to the San Francisco–based Wildlife Conservation Network (WCN), an inspiring nonprofit dedicated to assisting communities in 37 countries as they work to protect 87 different wildlife species.

Giving back to the environment and the communities that support us is interwoven into our company’s DNA.

How do you think about luck?
I think we’re all dealt some good and bad luck – perhaps even in equal parts. When dealt the more challenging cards of life, I do my best to reframe events and to focus on the good. And when luck comes, I try to harness it.

Fortunate timing brought my sister and I together to create Cocofloss. Chrystle was in her sixth year of dentistry, and she felt frustrated on a daily basis over the diseases she treated daily. I had recently left my job in finance to start an art company, which wasn’t working out. I was hungry for a meaningful problem to solve. Our frustrations and skills aligned at just the right time. Chrystle brought the intimate problem-solution knowledge, and I brought the business tools, marketing, and art.

On the other hand, the COVID-19 pandemic is an example of the completely unpredictable bad luck that can strike any of us. The beginning of the pandemic was very stressful for my sister as she led her dental practice. It was also difficult for Cocofloss as we struggled to keep our teammates and business healthy and viable. As humans do, we made the best of a bad and unpredictable situations. We focused on what we knew how to do. We doubled down on helping our customers keep their smiles healthy at home, and we worked hard to support our most valuable customers, our dental professionals. We came out of 2020 with more clarity about our purpose and with a stronger team overall.

Luck can also appear in small, but meaningful moments. I’m notorious for losing personal items, like my phone. I keep a record of all the times that strangers have gone to great lengths to return these items to me. I keep this log to remember how kind humanity can be.

–Catherine Cu

Pricing:

• Cocofloss (33-yd spool), $9
• Cocobrush, $10
• Cocofloss 4-Spool Happiness Set, $33
• Rainbow Set of 4 Cocobrushes, $38
• Smile Bliss Set, $27

Contact Info:

• Website: www.cocofloss.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getcocofloss/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lovecocofloss
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/getcocofloss
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQRo3aSwDQ2uAUjqI3d_1Sg

Image Credits
Personal Photo Credit: 1. Cheyenne Ellis (Catherine & Chrystle Cu) Additional Photo Credits: 1. Esther Huynh (Cocofloss mint silo shot) 2. Esther Huynh (4 Cocobrushes at the beach) 3. No credit needed (Rainbow array of 9 Cocofloss scents) 4. Camilla Brown (Mint + Coconut Cocofloss at the pool) 5. Camilla Brown (4 Cocobrushes in bathroom) 6. No credit needed (Cocofloss refills + water bottles) 7. Dana Gordon (Chrystle Cu product design)