BACKGROUD
Köppen is an oral care brand making toothpaste, mouthwash, floss, oil pull, mouth tape, mints, lip balm, and a copper tongue scraper. Founded by siblings Parag and Priya Shah.
Oral care has been one of the most boring categories in retail for decades. Colgate owns toothpaste. Listerine owns mouthwash. Oral-B owns floss. Each one is a separate aisle, a separate purchase, a separate brand, and nobody has seriously challenged that structure since the 1990s.
That's the tension Köppen found. Not that any single product was bad — but that nobody owned the whole thing as marketed as a premium routine.
They're bootstrapped, took only a small friends-and-family round, and have prioritised profitability from day one.
Move 1:
They redrew the category boundary instead of competing inside it
Five products. Five different companies own them. Toothpaste is Colgate and Crest. Floss is Oral-B and Cocofloss. Mouthwash is Listerine. Mouth tape is Hostage Tape. And tongue scraping? Nobody owns it at all.
Köppen didn't build a better toothpaste; that fight is unwinnable. They drew a bigger box around all five and called it one category: "an oral care system designed for your whole mouth, not just your teeth." Gums, tongue, lips, saliva.
Why it works: you can't out-spend Colgate on toothpaste, but you can compete in a category that doesn't exist yet, because you're the only one in it.
Move 2:
They led with the weirdest product, not the flagship
When they relaunched in 2023, they didn't lead with toothpaste. They led with a copper tongue scraper — the smallest, strangest thing they make.
It went viral on TikTok, reportedly pulling close to 10 million views across user videos, selling 40,000+ units and collecting 1,500+ five-star reviews.
The strategic reason it worked: a tongue scraper is an Ayurvedic tool that's centuries old. No brand owns it. There's nothing to trademark and no incumbent. So when the format went viral, all that attention had nowhere to land except the only branded option available.
Why it works: a viral moment in a branded category feeds the market leader. A viral moment in an unbranded one feeds whoever showed up first.
Move 3:
The scraper was a belief-installer, not just a product
Here's the part underneath the virality. Once someone scrapes their tongue every morning, they've quietly accepted a new idea: oral care is a ritual, not just brushing.
That belief has to exist before a $265 system makes any sense at all. The scraper didn't just generate revenue; it manufactured the exact customer who would later buy everything else.
Why it works: cheap entry products that change a habit are worth more than cheap entry products that just get a sale.
Move 4:
Their biggest bundle costs MORE, on purpose
Most brands make the top bundle the best deal. Köppen inverted it.
Their three sets genuinely discount: Detox is $71 against $88 of parts, Protect is $68 against $85, Support is $63 against $74. Roughly 20% off each. But buy all three separately, and you pay $202. The System is $265. That's $63 more for the complete box.
It contains items the sets don't, but the framing is the point: the top tier isn't sold as savings. It's sold as completeness.
Why it works: if your brand is built on ritual, a discount undercuts the story. You're not buying a deal, you're buying the whole practice.
Move 5:
Scarcity in physical retail replaced ad spend entirely
I checked the Meta Ad Library directly. Köppen is running zero active ads.
To be sure that wasn't a broken search, I ran the same query across their category and got 11,462 ads from competitors. The category is saturated. Köppen just isn't in it.
Instead: organic TikTok did the acquisition. Then Laurel, a luxury grocer in LA, where they reportedly sold out their entire range five times. Then luxury hotels and holistic dental clinics. And they're deliberately staying out of big-box retail.
Why it works: selling out repeatedly in one desirable store creates more demand than a cold ad ever could — and it protects the premium positioning that a Target shelf would destroy.
TAKEAWAYS:
Find the boundary nobody drew. Stop trying to beat the leader at their own product. Look for the adjacent things your customer already buys from four different companies, and be the first to call it one category.
Lead with your weirdest product, not your best-seller. If there's something in your range no competitor has branded, that's your wedge — attention in an unowned category has nowhere else to go.
Pick an entry product that changes a habit. A cheap first purchase that installs a new belief is worth far more than one that just makes a sale.
Stop discounting your top tier. If you sell a ritual, price the complete version on completeness, not savings. Discounting it tells people the ritual was optional.
Use constraint as marketing. Before you scale ad spend, ask whether selling out somewhere desirable would build more demand than buying impressions would.
One-line takeaway: “Take a boring, utilitarian category and repackage it as a premium ritual.”
Until next week,
BTB - AMAY
