Heather and John McDougall’s first small business experience came in a dentist’s office. The brother and sister played witness to the work habits of their parents, who ran the practice themselves. Their father was the dentist, their mother the manager, and the two saw medical entrepreneurship growing in front of their young eyes.   

The brother and sister got older and started their careers on different paths, Heather going to law school and John to design school. But after graduating, they started having a lot of similar conversations about sustainability, economic balance, and environmental issues.

Those conversations were not just idle chatter, as the siblings quickly brainstormed products and ideas, policies and practicalities, before creating the idea for Bogobrush. If that sounds like a confident, determined way to create a company, well, that’s John and Heather for you.

“We were always surrounded by the idea of, ‘Why don’t you just make something yourself?’ ” John said. “It wasn't really too much of a leap for us to go from, ‘Hey, there should be better products in the world,’ to, ‘Maybe we should be the ones to make them.’ ”

On their way to a fully funded Wefunder campaign, Heather and John learned a lot about the challenges of starting a company with more than just pure profit in mind. Bogobrush makes their product with either recycled or biodegradable material and donates one toothbrush to low-cost dental clinics for every one sold. So far, they’ve donated more than 7,000 toothbrushes, with 2017 contributions still to come.

That they have more than one arm of interest has forced them to make tough decisions, like moving their production from China to North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, but those decisions have ultimately helped the siblings develop Bogobrush.

“It’s hard to make even incremental changes,” Heather said. “John and I are definitely finding paths every single day, but it's a lot more work to create a company that changes things on so many fronts instead of changing nothing or just one thing.”  

The $57,500 the company raised on Wefunder has bolstered development in several areas, most notably the beta version of a subscription service similar to Dollar Shave Club. Launched earlier this year, the service is already bringing in 75% of the company’s total sales.

“It's good for us because we can have that touchpoint with our customer and we can have a better lifetime customer value,” John said. “To the customer, it's insanely better because now instead of having to go to a store to get a toothbrush every three months, they're getting a fresh toothbrush delivered to their door as they need it. That's a big point for them. They don't have to go online. They don't have to worry about it. It just shows up at their door, and it's been something that we've seen really positive results from.”

They’ve also ramped up their marketing campaigns. The company’s Instagram following has quadrupled in 3 months, driving more conversions to the website, and Bogobrush was accepted to Google’s Advantage Program to work directly with their marketing team for three months.

Bogobrush is looking forward to their next step of funding, which would go directly toward improved tooling technology that would drop their production costs by close to 90%. Those changes could turn preliminary talks with outlets like Target and Whole Foods into legitimate discussions, another big step for siblings accustomed to taking them.

“Ultimately, the goal was how could we set up a structure for a business that the better it does, the better it does for everything,” Heather said. “If we can prove that it's possible to create businesses like that, then that can be a model for other products, for things beyond toothbrushes and for things as big as any business in the world.”