Puneet Nanda’s Buena Park company makes more than a billion yards of dental floss and 30 million toothbrushes a year. You could call him Orange County’s tooth care king, though he prefers to go by Dr. Fresh.
“Everyone calls me Dr. Fresh,” Nanda said. “My family, my employees, everyone.”
Nanda owns Dr. Fresh Inc., a dental and personal care products company with $35 million in yearly sales.
The company makes toothbrushes, floss, mouthwash, digital thermometers, soap, razors, wet wipes and pens, among other products.
It owns more than 38 patents, including one for a light-up, flashing toothbrush called the Firefly and the Flosh, a toothbrush and floss rolled into one.
Dr. Fresh develops, designs and tests products at its 60,000-square-foot headquarters and has them made at factories in China, India and around the U.S. They’re sold at stores of Target Corp., Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Walgreen Co. and others.
The company owns the Dr. Fresh and Firefly brands. It also makes store brands for Wal-Mart, Walgreens and Target and has licenses to make Disney, Bratz, Marvel, Garfield, Peanuts and Clifford products.
Dr. Fresh employs about 64 people in Buena Park.
Big Rivals
The company has some big competition, including Procter & Gamble Co. and Johnson & Johnson. Dr. Fresh gets into stores because its products don’t cost much, said Ajay Bansal, director of operations.
“Our bottom line prices are low,” Bansal said.
Dr. Fresh makes its products cheaply because it has close ties with plants in India and China. Nanda’s relatives own the Indian factories, Bansal said. And the company has worked out good deals with contractors in China, he said.
Creativity and speed also help Dr. Fresh, according to Bansal.
“Dr. Fresh is always trying to come out with new and different products, and we do it fast,” Bansal said.
It takes Dr. Fresh up to six months to launch a product, according to Bansal. Bigger companies such as Procter & Gamble can take much longer because they go through more approvals, he said.
“We just do it,” Bansal said.
Nanda, who’s also president and chief executive of the company, knows a thing or two about the business.
He grew up in New Delhi, India, where his dad owned a small toothbrush company called Denton.
He said he wanted to become an entrepreneur like his father. His parents urged him to become a doctor.
“My parents were traditional Indian parents,” he said. “They wanted me to become a doctor and just focus on that.”
Ladies Man
Nanda studied medicine in college. He said his popularity with women created a stir. He was a notorious flirt and even dated the dean’s daughter, he said.
His reputation led to the nickname Dr. Fresh. It stuck.
Nanda said he was sure he was going to become a doctor until his father had a heart attack in 1989.
He took over Denton but wanted to do things his way, he said. The first thing he wanted to do was improve the quality of the company’s toothbrushes. At the time, Indian toothbrushes had hard bristles and were made of cheap plastic, he said.
He renamed the company after himself,Dr. Fresh,and designed a diamond-head toothbrush with glitter in a bright plastic handle. It had an American look but it was affordable. It was exactly what Indians wanted, he said.
Dr. Fresh started selling his toothbrushes to Russian traders who were looking for cheap consumer products to sell back home. He said they started stopping by his factory every week. Nanda learned Russian and even hired a chef to cook Russian food for his visitors, he said.
In 1993, at age 25, Dr. Fresh opened an office in Moscow, leaving his relatives to run the business in India. He was young and fearless.
“I just wanted to break out and experience something different,” he said. “India was the only thing I knew. It was a real adventure for me.”
Dr. Fresh’s first day in Moscow wasn’t what Nanda expected.
Police approached him when he walked out of the airport, he said. When he didn’t have the stamp they were looking for on his passport, he said they took him to jail. After hours of pleading and $20, he said the Russian guards released him.
Nanda had friends in Russia, he said, which helped him adjust to life there.
He said he scraped by with the little money he had. He shared an apartment with an old Russian woman and survived on boiled potatoes and salt when stores ran out of food.
“Let’s just say it was a humble beginning,” Nanda said.
He networked with buyers and eventually grew his business to 45 workers.
In Moscow, some days were great. He said he couldn’t import toothbrushes fast enough to meet demand.
Other days weren’t so hot. Like when the mafia came to his office to collect a “tax,” or the time he was mugged and beaten at a subway station, he said.
Three years into his stay, the bad started to outweigh the good, Nanda said.
Bullet to Head
Renegade mobsters robbed him, he said. They shot him in the head and cut off an employee’s hand, according to Nanda. He survived but fled the country afterward.
He went back to India empty handed, he said. The only thing that he brought back from Russia was a bullet wound over his left eye. The scar remains to this day.
“I spent three years of my life there, built everything up and then lost everything,” Nanda said. “The only thing I had left was my life.”
He said he spent almost two years picking up the pieces in India.
By 1998, Nanda said he was itching to get out of India again. This time he headed for New York. His family was terrified for him to leave, he said.
Starting his business in America wasn’t easy. He had the products and the ideas but he didn’t have the connections. He also had a thick accent, which made it difficult for him to talk with distributors and stores, he said.
Nanda said he rented a motel room and tried selling toothbrushes at stores. On Christmas Eve of 1998, snow piled high on the streets. Nanda was battling the flu.
He walked to the nearest pharmacy to buy medicine for his fever and slipped on the wet sidewalk. As he lay on the cold ground he realized that he was getting nowhere in New York.
“I just laid there on the cold ground thinking, ‘What the hell am I doing here?'” he said.
He decided to try Miami.
“At least it would be warm,” he thought.
When he went to the airport, his flight was canceled. He opted for another hotspot, Los Angeles.
Settled in Little India
Nanda said he had heard about a thriving Indian community in Artesia called Little India and decided to settle there.
“It reminded me of home,” he said.
He said he bought a used computer and a mobile phone and spent three months in a motel off Pioneer Boulevard making cold calls to buyers. He went to Wal-Mart, Walgreens, Target and other stores. He tinkered with his own ideas and thought of products he could make.
“I wanted to know what companies were making and what these stores were buying from them,” Nanda said. “It was inspiration for me, I wanted to do better.”
He scored his first big U.S. deal selling 180,000 toothbrush six-packs to City of Commerce-based 99 Cents Only Stores.
That opened doors with buyers at Wal-Mart, Walgreens, Target and other stores.
It took Dr. Fresh several months to a few years to win over buyers at Walgreens, Target and Wal-Mart, according to operations director Bansal. The company sells its products directly to stores and doesn’t use distributors, he said.
“It took us a long time to get into those stores, to build those relationships,” Bansal said.
Came to OC
Within a few years Nanda said he was looking for office and warehouse space in Orange County. At his Buena Park office, he continues to invent products and meet with buyers.
Last month, Dr. Fresh was a finalist for the 2007 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
Nanda said he’s planning to take his company public in 2009 and is working with consultants. The goal is to grow the company to $100 million in yearly sales within a few years, he said.
“It’s been a journey. I know everybody says that, but it’s true,” he said. “This was my American dream.”
