---
title: "Oral Care Brand 'Shenban' Secures ByteDance Funding: Targeting Gum, Mouthwash Goes FMCG"
description: "A widely circulated article once claimed that chewing gum sales declined due to mobile payments eliminating the need for change. Now, mouthwash is emerging as a new challenger in the breath-freshening category. Shenban, an oral care brand founded in 2018, recently completed its A2 round of financing led by ByteDance, following a $10 million A+ round just a month prior. The brand's mouthwash line achieved over 100 million yuan in sales within 80 days of launch, redefining the category as a fast-moving consumer good."
author: "秦淮"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2021-03-16"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/oral-care-brand-shenban-secures-bytedance-funding-targeting-gum-mouthwas-0654bd27/"
markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/oral-care-brand-shenban-secures-bytedance-funding-targeting-gum-mouthwas-0654bd27.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Ct9UiWoRLDscaxY7jKr6Qg"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E5%8F%A3%E8%85%94%E6%8A%A4%E7%90%86%E5%93%81%E7%89%8C-%E5%8F%82%E5%8D%8A-%E8%8E%B7%E5%AD%97%E8%8A%82%E8%B7%B3%E5%8A%A8%E8%9E%8D%E8%B5%84-%E5%AF%B9%E6%A0%87%E5%8F%A3%E9%A6%99%E7%B3%96-%E6%BC%B1%E5%8F%A3%E6%B0%B4%E5%BF%AB%E6%B6%88%E5%8C%96-0654bd27.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/oral-care-brand-shenban-secures-bytedance-funding-targeting-gum-mouthwas-0654bd27/"
usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt"
---

# Oral Care Brand 'Shenban' Secures ByteDance Funding: Targeting Gum, Mouthwash Goes FMCG

> A widely circulated article once claimed that chewing gum sales declined due to mobile payments eliminating the need for change. Now, mouthwash is emerging as a new challenger in the breath-freshening category. Shenban, an oral care brand founded in 2018, recently completed its A2 round of financing led by ByteDance, following a $10 million A+ round just a month prior. The brand's mouthwash line achieved over 100 million yuan in sales within 80 days of launch, redefining the category as a fast-moving consumer good.

There was once a widely circulated article titled: "Chewing Gum, the Loner of the Times." Its main argument was that the advent of mobile payments caused chewing gum sales to decline year after year. Without the need for change and with no spare time, chewing gum, once the preferred add-on item, lost its scenario, and sales suffered.
Of course, today's discussion is not about why chewing gum sales are declining, but rather that **chewing gum, as a solution for fresh breath, is facing new challenges.** And this challenger is a category we previously paid little attention to—mouthwash.
In the past, mouthwash was used by certain groups or in specific scenarios, but now it is rapidly penetrating the market and becoming a daily, high-frequency FMCG product.
Undoubtedly, behind this shift are innovative consumer brands driving the change.
**Recently, the oral care brand "Shenban," founded in 2018, completed its A2 round of financing, with ByteDance as the investor. This marks Shenban's second round of financing within just one month, following a $10 million A+ round led by Plum Ventures, Sinovation Ventures, and Qingliu Capital the previous month.**
This clearly shows the capital market's recognition of Shenban and its attention to the oral care market.
Just before the Chinese New Year, New Distribution had the privilege of an in-depth conversation with **Mr. Zhang Yi, co-founder of Shenban.** Shenban launched its mouthwash series in October 2020, and within the second month, monthly sales exceeded 50 million yuan. Within 80 days of launch, sales surpassed 100 million yuan. Currently, it ranks first in its category on e-commerce platforms such as Taobao, Tmall, and Pinduoduo.
Such a hit product—you would hardly imagine it coming from a bottle of mouthwash. This article discusses how Shenban understands this category that was previously rarely explored, their market strategy logic, and their market judgment.
**-01-**
**Redefining Mouthwash**
Shenban was founded in 2018, initially focusing on the toothpaste category. Its innovative "Little Sun" series toothpaste has sold over 5 million units online to date.
Then in October 2020, Shenban launched its mouthwash series. Within just 80 days, sales exceeded 100 million yuan, surpassing the established brand "Listerine." According to Zhang Yi, Listerine's online sales are currently only about a quarter of Shenban's.
Why has Shenban been able to achieve such massive sales so quickly? Or why has this category shown such explosive growth?
From a broader industry perspective, the core lies in two aspects: **1. Category demand dividend; 2. Category redefinition.**
Zhang Yi told New Distribution that from the perspective of deep oral care, according to external public data, **in developed countries such as Western Europe and the United States, the penetration rate of the mouthwash category exceeds 30%-40%, while in China, it may be less than 3%.**
In the U.S. market, non-toothpaste oral care products account for 50% of consumer spending on oral care, but in China, this figure is only 2%. The 48% gap between these two represents the enormous growth potential for oral care products beyond toothpaste, such as mouthwash.
Zhang Yi believes that as national income rises, consumers' awareness of oral care will gradually strengthen. In the past, oral care might have simply meant brushing teeth twice a day. But once consumers try mouthwash and have a positive experience and social feedback, they will increase their choice and frequency of use.
Zhang Yi emphasized that this process is irreversible. For example, penetration might go from 3% to 6%, but once it reaches 6%, it won't drop; it will only rise. However, given China's massive population base, even an increase from 3% to 6% would bring a considerable incremental market size. **And as user habits form, the penetration rate of mouthwash will gradually approach that of toothpaste, eventually becoming a mass consumer product with popularity on par with toothpaste.**
Of course, there is another important driving force that must be mentioned. The prolonged wearing of masks during the pandemic has heightened people's awareness of oral health, which has also propelled the mouthwash category to high growth and accelerated user penetration.
This is precisely the **category demand dividend.**
Additionally, from past experience, some foreign brands' mouthwashes have a strong medicinal taste. Many brands position their mouthwash as a quasi-medical product: if your mouth has problems, here's a "medicine." Although the problem is solved, the pungent taste stimulates your taste buds and oral cavity, leaving an unpleasant experience.
Shenban's mouthwash, on the other hand, is not positioned as a medicinal product to "treat" oral problems. Instead, in Shenban's positioning, mouthwash should be an FMCG product that appears frequently in users' daily lives, offering a pleasant experience through fresh fruit and beverage flavors. Positive feedback from friends in social settings encourages users to develop high-frequency usage habits.
Therefore, **Shenban's mouthwash anchors its consumption scenarios in two main categories: first, after meals; second, social interactions.**
Whether dining out with heavy-flavored foods or after meals in the office, more and more consumers are paying attention to oral cleanliness. In the past, oral cleaning might have been simple tooth brushing, but now it can be achieved more conveniently through mouthwash. In social situations, whether on a date or meeting a client, instant cleaning can effectively avoid unnecessary embarrassment.
**-02-**
**Operational Methodology Behind 100 Million Sales in 80 Days**
The above discusses Shenban's redefinition of the category, which is a directional judgment and decision. The next step is the operational methodology to achieve sales exceeding 100 million.
Zhang Yi told New Distribution that Shenban's founding team previously worked in mobile internet and smart hardware. Although the industries differ, they share common characteristics—understanding users, especially new users in the mobile internet era.
Zhang Yi summarized their operational methodology as: **Based on data analysis, produce high-quality content in-house, combine off-platform content distribution and celebrity/KOL collaborations, and multiply by strong product strength and differentiated positioning.**
**In the third quarter of 2020, Shenban assembled a team of over 20 people dedicated to information flow advertising, and applied this approach to the extreme. Focusing on social needs as the core content direction, from script directing to video editing to operations optimization to delivery monitoring, they fully controlled the process and iterated daily.
Zhang Yi recalled that on September 30, 2020, the day the mouthwash launched, Shenban simultaneously signed **Zhao Lusi, Mao Buyi, and Shen Mengchen** ,**three celebrity influencers, as well as many other KOLs,** to produce mouthwash video materials, quickly combining them and optimizing while running ads.
According to data, in November 2020, Shenban mouthwash ran 176 product promotion videos on Douyin, with a conversion rate of 23% and an overall repurchase rate of 25%.
On Xiaohongshu and Bilibili, Shenban deployed bottom-tier KOCs with around 10,000 followers, who shared review experiences and checked in at physical stores. Zhang Yi summarized, **"Information flow advertising, supplemented by KOL and celebrity seeding, multiplied by brand and product design, creates a multiplier effect that amplifies past benefits. Therefore, Shenban actually reaches a purely incremental market that traditional mouthwash has not touched."**
Zhang Yi continued, saying that Shenban's main users are currently aged 18-24. If this model runs for another five years, continuously acquiring new users aged 18-24, our share will continue to expand, and we will eventually firmly occupy the minds of both the main consumer group and the younger consumer group, becoming the absolute mainstream oral care brand in the market.
**-03-**
**Going Offline, Targeting Chewing Gum**
With clear consumption scenarios, Shenban also has its own approach and plans for going offline. First, in terms of product, Zhang Yi said, to better cater to offline channels, we will adjust the product form to better meet offline users' needs for lower unit price, lighter weight, and smaller usage for convenience.
At the same time, we will further adjust the product layout to make the products more FMCG-like. In the future, we will build a **"Shenban Oral Care Corner"** at convenience store and CS channel checkouts, so users can buy all the oral care products they want in one stop.
In this oral care corner, users can choose mouthwash and oral sprays. Grab-and-go, buy-and-use—these products offer users more choices and experiences beyond chewing gum.
In the past, mouthwash in convenience stores was often placed in the same area as shampoo and body wash. For a new brand like Shenban, this made it difficult to drive effective sales or build high-frequency awareness.
But if the product price is adjusted to the 10-20 yuan range and placed next to the checkout counter, positioned for higher-frequency scenarios, when consumers want fresh breath, their past choice was Wrigley's gum. Now, when they see a mouthwash with a sign saying "Rinse for three seconds for fresh breath," they are likely to try it and have a high probability of becoming repeat customers.
Zhang Yi emphasized that when we choose offline partners, we clearly convey to distributors: **Shenban is not a mouthwash that benchmarks against Listerine; Shenban benchmarks against chewing gum.** If the product is placed incorrectly and not in the right position, it's not a question of selling well or not; it's a difference between selling at all or not at all. Consumers might not even have the chance to know about it, let alone try it.
In the past, consumers might have thought chewing gum was cool, but now, more and more people around them consider it an uncouth behavior. Many beauty-conscious women have abandoned gums like Wrigley's and Extra to avoid developing masseter muscles from chewing.
To achieve the ultimate goal of fresh breath, Shenban provides consumers with a comprehensive solution: not just mouthwash and oral sprays, but also other products to be launched in the future, as well as more products and solutions.
Frankly speaking, behind all these tactics and strategies lies Shenban's deep-seated innovation and repositioning of the product concept, making the product completely FMCG-oriented rather than medicinal or slow-moving.
Zhang Yi finally mentioned, **After the new round of financing, Shenban will also establish an oral research institute, not limited to the above products, but focusing on meeting the comprehensive, all-scenario needs of Chinese people's oral care, to innovate and design better, more convenient, and more enjoyable solutions!**
Tips will be paid 400-2000 yuan upon adoption.


---

## Copyright and AI use

This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL.

Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671