Mission Creep
There is usually a moment that defines your actions, and for Clean Bite™, it was a specific experience of the founder, John Gallagher.
As a college student in 1968, Gallagher enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserve and was trained as an Army medic. After returning to reserve status, he was assigned to an amputee ward at the Walson Army Hospital at Fort Dix, N.J., during the Vietnam War era. While on the ward, his experience with his most severely wounded patient was so impactful that it planted the seed for his future endeavor to provide oral hygiene with a single-use appliance that would dissolve and be swallowed after its utility. The intent was to restore the user’s ability to brush their teeth without the help of a caregiver, restoring a degree of independence.
As life would have it, decades passed, with running his own companies, marriage, and raising a large family, which postponed Gallagher’s starting what is now Clean Bite, Inc. In July 2009, the patent application was filed under an LLC and was granted in October of 2012. Kodak, Inc. was a strategic partner until January 2012, when it entered Chapter 11 protection. This period was difficult with the uncertainty of a patent award.
In early 2013, Gallagher began to barter his equity in exchange for development services. On a very limited budget over the next two years, molds were transitioned from hand-held to automated prototype equipment. The failure rate was epic, and the changes made to overcome aspects of failure were singular to track the complexity of an outcome. When the finished product was produced, it perfectly aligned with the original drawings from decades before. The knowledge gained is proprietary and has become the “secret sauce” when moving to scale production. The first U.S. Patent is Clean Bite™ I.
In 2016, Clean Bite, LLC was approached by a pharma company known to everyone. The carrot was that they could develop a billion-dollar division in Africa, using their product name. The stick was that CB, LLC would need to attain annual revenue of $100M, at which point they would acquire the LLC. This experience changed everything; there was concern for people in Africa or students in the U.S.; it was solely about waiting a small company out and the bottom line.
Gallagher’s response was to change the company to an R&D firm focused on efficacy, single-use, API delivery, and IP adaptation for human and animal uses. This would include design, prototyping, and patenting in the United States and ultimately throughout Europe and India. What has evolved is Clean Bite, Inc., a Delaware corporation with two U.S. Patents and 26 international patents that have a purpose in human and companion pets. Clean Bite™ II & III, within the Clean Bite™ product line, represent variations designed to address the oral hygiene of companion pets and humans with special needs, respectively.
Clean Bite, Inc., is charged with managing a global portfolio that has a proprietary position throughout countries with pet populations of ±715,000,000 dogs and cats, with a human population of ~ 2.5B people. CBI now looks to the future and the need to be aligned with the dominant companies, who also have cross-sectional markets, i.e., oral hygiene, pharma, global manufacturing and distribution, et.al.
The things that Clean Bite, Inc. knows about itself are simple:
- We have become a portfolio firm that has defensible global IP
- Prototyping provided our understanding of production and elements of scale manufacturing
- The Clean Bite™ line of products addresses the needs of people and companion pets
- The TAM is beyond the number of units and is compounded by frequency of particular use
- Potential for better oral health for U.S. students would represent the most appropriate intervention
- Speculation will not do justice to actuaries in five or 10 years measuring dental health
- Increases in better oral health are the forerunner to overall human and animal health
- Better overall health means less chronic disease, and reduced costs to government health care
- Addressing NTD on a global scale, using API delivery, negating clinicians would be impactful
- Now it is your turn; Name a market, there is no wrong answer!
Clean Bite, Inc., will live up to its global potential through collaboration in whatever form necessary. When the Clean Bite™ needed a dentifrice that met all the characteristics inherent to Clean Bite™, LivFresh by Livionex, Inc., was precisely the right product to incorporate our specific needs. It was ingestible, fluoride-free, with no questionable ingredients, and an efficacy rating that was superior to the touted “Gold Standard.”
Studies performed at UCI’s Beckman Laser Institute and Medical Clinic show LivFresh having 250% greater plaque removal than the leading brand of toothpaste. Additionally, in June 2021, LivFresh was awarded the European Union’s CE Mark as the first Over-the-Counter (OTC) dental gel recommended for the prevention and treatment of gingivitis and periodontitis.
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