Female Dentistry Collective Blog

We recently wrote a blog about Habox for The Female Dentistry Collective, a group of women who are championing all female members of the dental team! We thought we would share it here too!

Who are we? 

Katie & Justina. 

Dentist and Dental Nurse. 

Stepmum and Mum. 

Partners in life as well as business. 

How Habox was formed 

After graduating from dental school, I entered the working world of dentistry bright-eyed and bushy-tailed ready to change lives. I was so determined, full of knowledge and energy, which remained consistent for about 5 years. 

Gradually, it dawned on me that my 10-minute checkups every 6 months were not working to support or empower patients to change their habits. Habits that, if formed correctly would just accidentally lead to health. It was so demoralising, I felt like I was failing them, and I was failing as a dentist. 

I was working in Bath at the time and met Justina, we shared the same passion for children's dental health, and we started thinking about how we could be more innovative to help support families. 

We decided we could create something that would help families and make up for this lack of contact time with professionals. Habox was born, we had expert knowledge on what children should be doing to keep their mouths healthy but we didn't know how to get them to actually do it. 

We began testing habit-forming techniques on our patients and found children much more receptive to these techniques than adults. It was then we started developing a product to mimic these techniques so we could reach a wider audience. 

Over the next year, we researched and created products that would achieve the same things we had seen in our surgeries. We collaborated with the best children's toothpaste brand Brushbaby and in January 2019 we launched our first Habox. 

The launch

Well, it wasn’t smooth that’s the main thing you should know. Starting a business is so hard, time-consuming and overwhelming. We made some pretty awful decisions (which we have learned a lot from and bounced back from!) but all the time we had a fire in our bellies that kept us going. We knew what we were doing was important, and moreover, it was working already for lots of families so we kept going. 

For us, the hardest part of launching Habox this year has been keeping our nerve. As humans, we are filled with so much self-doubt, and every time we met a bump in the road (and they bloody well keep appearing!) this feeling of “what are we doing?” crops up. The thing that keeps us going are the Habox families. Emails, and messages saying how much it is helping them, and empowering children to make oral health their priority. 

Pivot

We thought Habox would be about subscription boxes only, but as it turns out there are so many amazing dentists, hygienists, therapists and nurses out there that share our vision of a different way of dentistry for children. We now supply in bulk to charities and dental practices. Again, it inspires us to keep going, reminds us that we are on the right track. 

The future

We have such bold plans for the future, luckily we have some amazing people around us holding our feet on the ground, reminding us of our bumps in the road, and helping us to stay present. Safe to say, we are going to keep moving forward, listening to our customers and the professionals and continue to develop habit-forming dentistry that will keep children's mouths decay-free. After all, health is in the habit.