On May 6th, 2022, SportingSmiles will be celebrating 13 years in the dental manufacturer industry. Opening in 2009, the number one online company for retainers has grown throughout the years and has since surpassed over one million smiling customers. The Wisconsin company has grown from manufacturing premium teeth retainers to night guards, custom teeth whitening trays, and athletic mouth guards.
Created by Evan McCarthy, who wanted to provide affordable dental products to people across the United States, SportingSmiles has grown immensely over the past few years. McCarthy invented the patented impression kit that allows anyone to take impressions of their teeth regardless of the shape and size of their mouth. McCarthy’s interest in dental products began when he was in middle school after his front four teeth were knocked out by the accidental swing of a baseball bat. Since then, he has looked for ways to provide better oral care to all.
While the year 2020 was a stressful time for many, SportingSmiles safely provided customers with dental products when all dentistry and orthodontic offices were closed due to the pandemic. By using the impression kit, customers were able to receive premium dental products at a fraction of the cost that their dentist would charge and all from the safety and comfort of their home.
“The last few years we’ve become very efficient in how we handle the entire process of sending out our impression kits, quality control, and we’ve made some huge advancements with our technology,” President and CEO Evan McCarthy said. “I remember, in the beginning, we were carrying boxes and boxes of impression kits up sets of stairs. It was a bit chaotic but we quickly outgrew our original building.”
In 2018, SportingSmiles moved into a new business building to accommodate the extreme growth the company was seeing. The update includes a massive warehouse to store the impressions, a state-of-the-art dental lab where the products are crafted, and a business office where the customer service team resides, along with the marketing offices. Making it possible was customers both old and new that continually chose SportingSmiles for their dental needs.
“We strive to make life-long relationships with our customers,” McCarthy said. “Our reordering process is easy. We have some customers that have been reordering with us since 2011 and we actually just received an impression kit from 2013. We still made the product for the customer too. We’re incredibly thankful for our customers as their dental needs have grown with us. At first, they ordered teeth retainers, and then some became interested in our night guards or teeth whitening trays. Others have ordered sports mouthguards for athletes. Some families all have a SportingSmiles product and we take that as a compliment to the value of our products.”
SportingSmiles has customers not only in America, and Canada but also serves up smiles in South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia. Customers across the globe can now opt to have their impressions digitally 3D scanned and uploaded to save on file for life. This advanced implementation was introduced in early 2021 for those who continue to reorder with SportingSmiles. Customers will be presented with even more new options according to SportingSmiles’ Director of Marketing, Seth Newman.
“We’ve been working toward many advancements for our customer experience,” Newman said. “The 3D digital scans are quite popular for returning customers and have simplified the process of reordering. It’s the safest way to store impressions and with just a few clicks, we can have an order processing for them. We are working on a few new tools to give customers a better experience when emailing or calling customer service. We have the plans in place, and shortly they will be rolled out to give the best care to our customers.”
