Colgate to Rival P&G with Teeth Whitening System

Colgate-Palmolive Co. will try to take a bite out of rival Procter & Gamble’s lead in the fast-growing at-home teeth-whitening market with its own entry-a gel that costs less than half the price ($14.99) of competing Crest’s Whitestrips. The system comes out more than a year after P&G introduced Crest Whitestrips in stores.

The New York-based company today launches Colgate Simply White, a gel that whitens teeth in two weeks-the same amount of time as Whitestrips-using a tooth-whitening system that brushes on to individual teeth like nail polish. Simply White uses similar technology to Colgate’s Total, a whitening toothpaste-a copolymer that keeps the whitening agent on the teeth. The gel is left on the teeth for 30 minutes twice a day.

P&G has sold about 10 million packages of Whitestrips, helping drive its earnings and sales growth, in the two years since it was launched in dentists’ offices and on the internet, said Don Tassone, a P&G spokesman. Whitestrips was a rare product because Cincinnati-based P&G was ahead of Colgate to the market, analysts said.

“That’s quite a change for Colgate, which had been outracing Procter to the market for new oral care products for the last five years,” said David Kolpak, consumer products analyst at Victory Capital Management, a P&G shareholder.

Colgate’s research has found that price and difficulty in use have still kept most consumers away from home whitening products. Only 3.4% of U.S. households use whitening systems, said Ian Cook, president of Colgate North America, in an interview with Reuters. “We waited until we had developed a product that, in terms of its price point and in terms of its ease of use, would allow people to comply with the full two-week program,” Mr. Cook said.

Teeth-whitening products, whether toothpaste, chewing gums or more permanent systems, have grown as aging baby boomers have become more concerned with looking young and healthy, analysts said. “I think there’s no doubt that whitening products are among the fastest-growing personal care and toiletry items on the market today,” Mr. Kolpak said.

Simply White will be initially launched in the U.S. and then the rest of North America, with global expansion to follow, Mr. Cook said.