India-born has got the world on a string

Hard as it is to imagine today, Dr Fresh was once an irregular flosser. He owned a company that made toothbrushes but took string in hand on...

Hard as it is to imagine today, Dr Fresh was once an irregular flosser. He owned a company that made toothbrushes but took string in hand only when something stuck in his teeth. Then he got braces to close a gap in front. He began to feel unsettled, ‘‘not really fresh in the morning.’’ His dentist urged daily flossing. With that, Dr Fresh achieved not just morning freshness but a higher plane of dental awareness: When it comes to one’s teeth, he realized, ‘‘there’s always something stuck.’’ ‘‘Believe me or not,’’ he said, ‘‘my life changed after flossing.’’

Flossing was a crucial step toward personal transformation: From bewildered immigrant to oral-hygiene wizard, owner of 38 dental patents and worldwide provider of a billion yards of floss a year, including all of the label floss for Target and Wal-Mart. Dr Fresh’s story is classically American and refreshingly global, a tale of obsession, immigration and rebirth set against the oral hygiene industry.

He arrived in Southern California in 1998, an Indian named Puneet Nanda with big hopes for his puny toothbrush company, Dr Fresh Inc ‘‘What I wanted to do,’’ he said, ‘‘was revolutionise the oral hygiene industry in this country.’’ Since then, his privately held company has moved from an apartment to a 55,000-square-foot Buena Park warehouse in the Los Angeles area with space for 30 million toothbrushes and a research laboratory.

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Sales, he said, have gone from almost nothing to $20 million a year and rising.

Dr Fresh Inc remains a pipsqueak compared to Proctor & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson. Yet the company requires two mottos to contain its owner’s aspirations: ‘‘the brand America loves’’ and ‘‘worldwide toothbrush king.’’ He employs a thousand people in India and China making toothbrushes, mouthwash and dental floss. His 64 employees are the new southern California work force: Indians, Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, Mexicans. ‘‘Day and night you can talk to him about toothbrushes and he’ll still be talking,’’ said his friend, Harshad Mody, an Indian music promoter.

Indeed, after arriving in America, the Indian immigrant did almost nothing but tinker with toothbrushes, study their manufacture and analyze the US marketing and distribution. He had scant room for a personal life; he took no vacation. His mind percolated with ideas for oral-care products. One of his proudest moments came when he embedded a red light in a toothbrush and set it to blink for a minute. The product — the Firefly — gets kids to brush until the light goes out.

It is now Target’s best-selling toothbrush. He followed it with a line of dental travel-packs, mouthwash, even a dog toothpaste to fight canine halitosis.

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‘‘The chicken and poultry flavour is hot,’’ he said. From his base in Buena Park, he strove, through innovation, to become America’s toothbrush guru. Finally, in his own mind, he became his brand — Dr Fresh, oral hygiene crusader. Today, employees, buyers, friends, father, brothers all call him Dr Fresh. So does his wife. Peering from behind his glasses, with hunched posture and the gap in his front teeth that never closed, he said ‘‘I don’t know when I am Puneet Nanda any more. All I do is live, drink, eat, think as Dr Fresh.’’ Dr Fresh grew up in New Delhi, where his father ran a small toothbrush company called Denton. — LAT-WP