CHRŌM Toothpolish wants to bite into Europe
‘We’re creating a brand-new category,’ says founder
By Kacey Culliney, Cosmetic Design Europe
New York indie brand CHRŌM Toothpolish wants to take its line of coloured, glittered, uv-reactive and whitening tooth polishes deeper into Europe, as it works on building an entirely new cosmetics category, its founder says.
CHROM Toothpolish is a temporary polish that can be painted onto teeth and lasts up to 24 hours at a time.
“In Eastern Europe, we’ve seen a huge amount of interest. And beyond Europe, Russia has a very positive response to the product.”
The products are currently shipped worldwide under a direct-to-consumer (D2C) model, including into several European markets, but the brand now wants to build presence in Europe further.
CHROM Toothpolish has now built up strong and steady sales, with a particularly strong uptick since the start of 2020, he said, and the company is now looking for European distribution, D2C or retail partners that had “the scale and resources” to further the brand’s message in this region.
‘Smile Wild’ - this is a fun product for anyone
With its ‘Smile Wild’ tagline, Silverstein said CHROM Toothpolish was a fun cosmetics brand aimed at anyone interested in shaking up their image.
“... Our philosophy is: let the consumer dictate how this product is going to work them.”
And for now, he said consumer uptake has been varied - from college girls to drag communities through to young men and the avant-garde fashion world - appealing to “anyone who wants to just try something different.”
Toothpolish could become ‘as common as hair colour’
Asked if Toothpolish could eventually rival nail polish as a category, Silverstein said: “I mean, as big and normal as nail polish would take some time. Nail polish is relatively ubiquitous.” In the meantime, he said the tooth polishes could become “something that would be as common as hair colour.”
“In the seventies and and eighties, only punk rockers coloured their hair yellow or pink - it was pretty limited - and now I watch sunday political news programmes and the commentators are women in their 50s and 60s and they have pink hair.”
Silverstein said there was still a way to go in normalising the concept of Toothpolish, but he hoped CHROM could reach a point where it was used like any other cosmetic product.”