Former J&J Exec Katie Omstead’s New Brand Mintly Looks To Energize Oral Wellness With Sustainable And Effective Products

If you’re trying to keep your mouth fresh and healthy, why not do it with a fresh and healthy brand?

That’s the logic that prompted Katie Omstead, previously senior manager of global strategy at Johnson & Johnson, to create Mintly, a new brand that views oral care as a critical element of wellness both for humans and the planet. It launched last month with seven stockkeeping units, including waterless toothpaste tablets with or without fluoride, mint lozenges with probiotics, a toothbrush constructed with a Moso bamboo handle and charcoal-infused bristles, and floss made with corn straw and plant-derived candelilla wax. The products housed in aluminum and glass packaging are priced for one-off purchases from $5 for the floss to $36 for the toothpaste tablets for four-month supplies. On several products, a subscription delivers a 10% discount.

“We are really focused on bringing that oral health, active and proven ingredient piece to a business that’s much more sustainable and also much more modern, with better branding and packaging, something you could stand up next to your beauty products and it would feel great on the shelf, but you could also buy in modern ways to make it easy,” says Omstead, adding, “My approach to the brand is to do with it what Away did for luggage or Casper did for mattresses, which is to take a category that hasn’t been that interesting and make it exciting.”

Besides its sustainability, Mintly’s point of difference is putting ingredients like fluoride and probiotics in its formulas. For toothpaste tablets, fluoride is a rarity. Budding oral care brands have been turning to nano-hydroxyapatite, an alternative to fluoride, but Omstead says that, every time she talks about tablets with dentists, they won’t consider them unless they contain fluoride. She elaborates, “At the end of the day, there are 70 clinical trials, and years and years of clinical research, and fluoride is the only active ingredient endorsed by the American Dental Association for the prevention of cavities.”

Capturing a tiny percentage of the toothpaste segment today, Omstead praises tablets as being eco-friendly—you can put them in reusable or refillable packaging, and they don’t have that stubborn problem of the final remnants of toothpaste stuck in the tube that ultimately wind up in the trash—and convenient for travel. While she notes online searches for tablets are mounting, a major roadblock is instigating consumers to make a behavior shift to them. In particular, Omstead details people worry the tablets aren’t the right quantity (they’re generally overloading their toothbrushes with toothpaste), and they trip up on their powdery texture that dissipates in a few seconds.

“My approach to the brand is to do with it what Away did for luggage or Casper did for mattresses, which is to take a category that hasn’t been that interesting and make it exciting.”

“As they say, all good things take time. Give yourself a few tries to get used to them. Most people say, ‘It took me three to five days, and now I’m used to it.” That was my experience,” she says. With Mintly’s tablets, she continues, “I send out an insert card that says less is more. These are perfectly proportioned to be the amount that you need.”

Omstead’s background shows series of steps that seemed to inevitably lead to her starting her own thing. In 2010, she began her career in finance at Goldman Sachs and pivoted to brands first as a consultant at Kurt Salmon before heading to J&J. From there, the graduate of Harvard Business School’s MBA program became the fourth employee of HealthQuarters, a company meant to be a one-stop shop for primary healthcare that came out of the venture studio Redesign Health. “I got really familiar with venture studios, startup life and that scrappy experience,” says Omstead. “I just loved it.”

Through her J&J connections, Omstead linked up with Ignite Venture Studio, a venture studio founded by J&J alumni Josh Ghaim, Jeff B. Smith and Marc Schorpion where she’s now general manager of oral health. Among the brands in Ignite’s portfolio are microbiome skincare specialist Layers, active haircare line Sunday II Sunday and personalized allergy solution provider AllWell. In oral care, Omstead spotted a gap in the market that wasn’t being addressed by the entrenched behemoths or the direct-to-consumer upstarts.

“We thought about the big traditional guys like Colgate, Sensodyne and Crest, but we also looked at the emerging players, there’s Boka, RiseWell and Bite. There are all these companies taking new approaches, but we felt like no one was doing it perfectly,” says Omstead. “The big players arefocused on efficacy, but they weren’t doing great on sustainability, and the newer brands didn’t quite have the proven ingredients and focus on oral health as a prominent part of their messaging.”

“There are all these companies taking new approaches, but we felt like no one was doing it perfectly.”

Out of the gate, Mintly has zeroed in on its tablets with fluoride for marketing purposes, and the product has been the early bestseller. However, the mint lozenges with probiotics have been a close runner-up. The success of the lozenges has compelled Omstead to ponder future probiotic products. With probiotics or without, Mintly will expand its product repertoire by touching on various formats, flavors and benefits. “There are other products in oral care like mouthwashes to complete people’s oral care regimen, and we are always thinking about being more eco-friendly,” she says. “I think we will stay focused on oral health, but we’ve also talked about what other categories we could bring into it in the long term.”

With gen z consumers its target audience, Mintly is leaning into short, lighthearted videos on TikTok and Instagram, and sharing its message through aligned influencers. “The biggest challenge for us will be the messaging and communicating the benefits of tablets and why make this change without being too down and not focusing on, ‘Oh my gosh, oral care is riddled with plastic problems,’” says Omstead. “It is, but we want to present it in a positive way.”

For its initial year of availability, Mintly’s goal is to cross $100,000 to $200,000 in sales. “We have built our products to be profitable long term,” says Omstead. “A lot of that comes with scale and volume, but we’ve always had that in mind. Everything that we look at in terms of formulas and components and how we pack and ship plays a role. It’s very much a focus for us from the start.”

Gen z consumers’ older millennial and gen X parents could be a secondary audience for Mintly. The brand is concentrating on DTC distribution, but Omstead imagines clean beauty retailers and e-tailers like The Detox Market, Credo and Goop reaching older consumers as being good fits for the brand, with Whole Foods a dream partner eventually. Omstead says, “I would love to have Gwyneth Paltrow and her older teen daughter both looking at Mintly, and thinking it’s interesting and appealing.”