Last week, after two years of research and development, Gallinée launched a prebiotic toothpaste and prebiotic-probiotic ‘mouth and microbiome’ tablet supplement that slowly dissolved in the mouth over 15-20 minutes. The oral care range, designed to be used as a two-step ‘cleanse-and-care’ routine, was available on the company’s own-brand website in the UK, France and US and at the end of May would be available exclusively on Cult Beauty.
Marie Drago, founder of Gallinée, said: “For the moment, we are targeting mainly Gallinée consumers. This is interestingly due to the retail landscape. Oral care products are not yet seen widely as part of a beauty range, so, oral care sections are rare in beauty retailers. Cult Beauty is one of the few to have dedicated a full section to oral care.”
‘I’ve been obsessing about oral care since Gallinée was created’
Gallinée already had a broad range of microbiome-targeted beauty products, including a face vinegar, perfume-free cleansing bar and skin supplement, but the launch of its toothpaste and mouth and microbiome supplement marked its first move into oral care.
“I’ve been obsessing about oral care since Gallinée was created five years ago. We always had the aim of developing beauty products for the microbiome, so it made sense for us to go wherever you would find bacteria,” Drago told CosmeticsDesign-Europe.
“…Oral care was especially important as it is one of the most unloved microbiomes. Our current hygiene routines try to eradicate it twice a day. For me, it’s crazy,” she said. “If we look at the skin, the anti-bacterial mentality is changing very fast, so I expect the same thing to happen in oral care quite soon. It’s a massive opportunity for the microbiome brands.”
Drago said that Gallinée as a brand was centred on developing products that supported the body’s natural ecosystem, rather than erasing it, and so an oral care offering to accompany its existing skin care, scalp care, intimate care and the gut-skin axis products made sense.
“We really started from scratch on this, asking ourselves how best to support the oral ecosystem, and what formulation to create from there,” she said.
A toothpaste with unusual ingredients and a ‘slightly unusual’ supplement
Both products in the new oral care range were different to traditional offerings in the category, Drago said. The prebiotic toothpaste, for example, contained a blend of prebiotics and gentle polishing clays and powders – “ingredients that are not usually found in oral care products”. And this product took a while to finalise, she said, because Gallinée’s lab partner had never developed a toothpaste before, and it took time to source and approve the ingredients.
The dissolvable tablet-form supplement – made from a blend of prebiotics, probiotics, vitamin D3 and vitamin B8 and designed to diffuse in the mouth over 15-20 minutes – was also a very different format compared to traditional oral care products, and was “slightly unusual as a beauty routine” but made the most sense scientifically, Drago said.
“For the tablet, we had quite a journey. It started as a mouthwash, but when you aim to care for the oral microbiome, the most important factor is the time of contact. The mouth is a transit zone and you want active ingredients to have a bit of time to do their job. So, we decided to do the tablet that will diffuse ingredients in your mouth for 15-20 minutes.”
On Gallinée’s website, Drago said: “I think this product is just in a category all by itself: a very innovative tablet, full of prebiotics and probiotics, to care for your oral microbiome all around the clock.”