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An alumna raises €700,000 with her responsible organic toothpaste
After working with various advertising agencies, Morgane Soret, a 2011 SKEMA alumna from the Grande Ecole Programme with an MSc in Digital Marketing, launched "NOICE", a responsible organic toothpaste. Today, her little glass bottles are sold in the UK and the US. We talk to her.
Morgane Soret, can you tell us about your background?
I am a graduate of the Grande Ecole Programme, and I did an MSc in Digital Marketing, specialising in project management. After my studies, I worked in an advertising agency in Paris as a client manager, then moved to Singapore, with another advertising agency. And over there, I found a thriving community of SKEMA alumni!
What led you to leave your job and found a start-up?
Working in the Singapore green ecosystem, I realised that what I was doing on a daily basis was less and less in line with what I wanted. And that's precisely when I met my three current partners. In 2019, I was looking at the list of ingredients on a toothpaste tube, and noticed a whole range of artificial ingredients. We wondered about the effects of these ingredients on the body – especially Triclosan and SLS, the active ingredient that produces the typical foamy effect in our mouths when we brush our teeth.
So this observation was the basis for your concept?
In 2019, we decided to collaborate with various dentists to research and develop a natural alternative to standard toothpastes, with the idea of giving our future customers a pleasant, effective oral experience. We replaced all the synthetic ingredients with powerful natural ones, like liquorice, coconut oil (for the foaming effect - Ed.), essential oils and eucalyptus. We needed ingredients to fight dental plaque and cavities, and to whiten teeth. As for the packaging, we went for glass bottles and said goodbye to plastic.
You joined an incubator in Singapore to develop your project: was it useful?
Yes, it taught us a lot. I learned how to pitch and develop a specific view. At the end of this two-month programme, we had to present our project to an audience of investors. In 2020, at the end of this programme, we obtained US$450,000 to develop our project. So in 2020, we launched NOICE and launched the pre-orders of our toothpaste through a KickStarter campaign. In 2020, we also closed a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, a real success with over 600 pre-orders in just two months, which equates to 3,900+ bottles of toothpaste.
That's when you decided to leave Asia to focus on the US and the UK?
Yes: we decided to reorient ourselves towards the American and British markets. We are now established in England, and we sell our products in London, Brighton, Edinburgh and Glasgow. We have four employees at the moment: two in the UK and two in the US.
You recently decided to open up your capital to your community, and have currently raised over £200,000 out of a target of £300,000. What lay behind this decision?
We are posting growth of 20% from month to month, and we will have to invest to grow. At present, NOICE has 94 investors, and we have reached 75% of our target. We wanted to open part of the capital to our community because we want to build on a circular model where transparency is the watchword. We want to be surrounded by impact investors in tune with our approach, which is to become a responsible player in zero waste oral hygiene, where no synthetic ingredients are used.
