Sonic Boom

Optiva started to advertise in dental journals and began to marshal a small sales force to call on dental practices. A poll showed that 98% of dentists who tried Sonicare would recommend it to their patients; some were even signing on to sell the units to patients. Optiva was on track.

Now that they were establishing some push and raking in a little cash, the company set out to whip up a little pull by trying its hand at consumer marketing. One of its first efforts was to buy insert ads in millions of credit-card-bill mailings, resulting in a grand total of 11 sales. The real lesson: Sonicare's edge can't be convincingly explained in a quickie ad. Instead the company tried infomercials and sponsorship of the Paul Harvey radio show, on which Harvey himself hawks sponsors' products at length. Both scored big for Optiva.

Then, in August 1993, Optiva got a return call from the Sharper Image: the upscale retailer liked Sonicare's high-tech angle enough to want to try the product out in the company's catalog, backed by an order for 4,000 units. Sonicare became one of the top-selling products of all time for the Sharper Image, leading to a second order a few months later for an additional 16,000 units. "We didn't know how we'd get an order that big on the truck because we didn't own a forklift or pallets," recalls John Tubbs, Optiva's vice-president of operations, who is in charge of running the company's manufacturing facilities. Then Oprah raved about the device on her TV talk show. Sonicare was achieving buzz.

All that confirmed the sense of mission the founders had felt early on. "This product had a destiny," Giuliani says. "Whenever we were faced with a decision, the question we'd always ask ourselves was, What would be in the product's best interest? We were stewards for Sonicare."

If there was a shadow hanging over Optiva, it was the fear that a competitor would develop a similar product and outmarket the company. Optiva had applied in early 1992 for a broad patent that sought to sew up the key functions of Sonicare technology--namely, the way the vibrating head churned up fluid into a plaque-eroding froth. But the patent hadn't been awarded as of the summer of 1994. That's when Teledyne introduced its SenSonic electric toothbrush, with similar bristle-vibration characteristics.

Six months later, Optiva received patent number 5,378,153 for a "high-performance acoustical cleaning apparatus for teeth." It immediately sued Teledyne for patent infringement, and Engel and others started putting in 18-hour days to prepare research that would support Optiva's case. "It was like preparing for a battle," says Engel.

It would be nearly two years before the suit was settled.

In the meantime, optiva wasn't going to stand still for however long it would take to resolve the lawsuit. Sales had begun triple-digit growth, and the company needed an infrastructure to support it.

Its immediate problem was manufacturing. The second Sharper Image order alone was for four times as many units as the first. Tubbs got to work transforming the manufacturing process. By redesigning some components, and by automating some of the assembly and farming some of it out, he eventually reduced the manufacturing cost by 60%. What's more, a series of rigorous quality checks he instituted hammered annual failure rates from 8% down to 0.5%.

The sales and marketing organization, meanwhile, expanded to play on Optiva's strength: the high regard it was winning among dentists. The company built an inside staff of customer-service representatives who phoned dentists to follow up on field sales calls. To keep its reputation as a clinically savvy company polished, Optiva poured 5% of its revenues back into research and development, not only setting up its own labs but also funding dental research at Harvard, Northwestern, Tufts, and elsewhere. Some 47 papers on Sonicare's effectiveness were published in dental journals, which bundled together would make a satisfying whump when dropped by a salesperson on a dentist's desk. "Our goal was always to get the dentists to try the Sonicare," says Giuliani. "If we got that, we'd win their recommendation."

On the retail front, Optiva added some 50 manufacturers' reps on pure commission to represent Sonicare to mass merchandisers like Wal-Mart, pharmacy chains like Walgreens, buying clubs like Price Costco, and specialty stores like Brookstone. By the end of 1995, about a third of the 160,000 dentists in the country were recommending Sonicare to their patients, and some 25,000 retail stores stocked the product.

Optiva had also started to pick up accolades for its employment practices. Among the benefits available to both full- and part-time employees: interest-free loans for home PC purchases, computer training classes, English-as-a-second-language classes, 24-hour personal-problem and nurse-consulting hot lines, and stock options after one year of employment. Those policies were cited by the White House when it invited Giuliani to join President Clinton and other business leaders for a breakfast meeting in May 1996.

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