Client
quip
Category
Oral care, oscillating brush
Year
2023
Scope
Industrial design, product strategy, form development, CMF
Channel
Retail & DTC
Constraint
No powered toothbrush brand carries both oscillating and sonic. Everyone picks a lane. Research showed consumers split roughly fifty-fifty between the two, which meant a sonic-only portfolio was missing half the market.
Entering the other half is not a matter of adding a product. quip's whole range was sonic, and an oscillating brush has a different mechanism, a different head and a different set of construction rules. The problem was designing one that still reads as quip rather than as another company's brush with a quip logo on it.
Decision
The decision was which parts of quip's language could survive a change of mechanism. Every brush in the portfolio was sonic, and an oscillating one had to read as quip without borrowing anything that only made sense for sonic. The answer was the metal faceplate. quip had made metal its own in toothbrush design, and carrying it onto Rev ties the new architecture to the rest of the range at a glance.
The faceplate then had to do more than signal the family. It carries the branding and the most important part of the experience: the button. Complexity stays low with a single slot-shaped button that cycles through power levels. Because it is the only break in the metal faceplate, there is one opening to seal instead of several, which makes the brush more durable.
The mechanism was the other cost. An oscillating drive is fundamentally different from the sonic motors in every other quip brush, and it is larger. The form language of the neck, the refill head, the oscillating head and the bristle layout all had to accommodate that larger mechanism. The faceplate does its work at the other end of the brush.
Finish
Molded water-resistant body with a contrasting metal faceplate, replaceable oscillating head. Black and silver, white and blue.
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