Then Quip's biggest competitors, Philips Sonicare and Oral-B, slashed prices on electric toothbrushes to match Quip on Black Friday. Walmart came out with a $25 electric toothbrush in a " sleek, timeless design" to compete head on with Quip's brush.
Quip promo code 2018 series#
Uber investor Shervin Pishevar's fund led the Series A round.įormer employees said they had other reasons to think Quip was doing something right. It closed out the year with another $40 million in debt and equity financing. Its growth metrics made Quip the shiny new toy that investors were scrambling to back in 2018. The Target distribution deal was a boon for business, giving Quip exposure to a vast segment of new customers. That year, Quip began selling its toothbrushes starting at $25 at Target, its first physical retailer. The startup born in Brooklyn had sold more than one million toothbrushes and counted one million subscribers at the end of 2018. Long before the economic shutdown, Quip was very good at being a direct-to-consumer toothbrush company. Most of them spoke on condition of anonymity because some signed nondisclosure agreements, and others worried about damaging their career prospects if they spoke against Quip. "The upside of this has been a continually close-by path to profitability, which sees us on track to become self-sustainable imminently, an increasingly important goal to many businesses given these uncertain market conditions."īut the virus leaves no margin for error.Īnd while Quip's business of selling toothbrushes directly to consumers may seem in some ways well-suited to a quarantine society, the company's past missteps speak to a range of issues that could frustrate its ability to ride out the crisis.īusiness Insider spoke to more than a dozen current and former Quip employees to trace the startup's swift rise to toothbrush stardom and the growing pains that could undermine its dreams of dental care domination. "We have always been focused on efficient growth," Enever told Business Insider. Quip's 32-year-old cofounder and chief executive Simon Enever said in a written statement that the experience of the past four months has prepared the startup for "the unique external challenge all businesses around the world now face due to the pandemic." In a sense, Quip now has a head-start on other venture-backed companies that are rushing to cut costs, in order to survive. More than 50 startups, from scooter startup Bird to hiring service ZipRecruiter, have cut or furloughed about 6,000 employees in recent weeks, as business activity comes to a halt, according to an April 1 tally by The New York Times. Quip's cofounder and chief executive Simon Enever. And, as a standard bearer for the new breed of direct-to-consumer brands, Quip's struggles and ability to withstand the coronavirus could serve as an important test case for startups facing the biggest business threat in a generation. The restructuring was intended to re-focus Quip on its core business of selling oral care products directly to consumers.īut just a few months later Quip now finds itself confronting a much different crisis, which no amount of planning or experience could have prepared it for.
The January layoffs, which affected 17 employees, about 10% of Quip's staff, was in many ways a familiar tale of a buzzy startup backed by millions in venture capital, paying the price for unrealistic growth plans and a scattershot strategy. "Some people were more blindsided and upset," said a former employee. They were taking a tally of who had been laid off. But the Quip employees were not celebrating. The startup had just wrapped up an eventful year with a $16 million marketing blitz showcasing its growing portfolio of products. On a day in January, employees of the high-flying toothbrush startup Quip started drinking early at a food market in Brooklyn's Dumbo neighborhood.
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