Ordo’s Barty Walsh on TV inspiration, affordability and accidentally breaking America

The Discovery Channel is not exactly renowned for its high-grade programming. But alongside the likes of Naked and Afraid (two strangers are left in a remote location without food, water… or clothes) and Moonshiners (documenting the lives of people producing illegal alcohol in the Appalachian Mountains) sits How It’s Made. The latter is indirectly responsible for £30m oral hygiene brand Ordo.

“I was obsessed with it,” says Barty Walsh, Ordo’s co-founder. “Each episode explained how anything from ping pong balls to calculators are made. So, I knew I wanted to do something with consumer products.”

Walsh loves to talk. And swear. And poke fun at himself. “I’m not the smartest guy,” he laughs. “I’m not very good with numbers. I need to do a physical thing, something I can sell.”

But he’s serious when discussing oral care. “One in two people have some form of gum disease,” he says, citing NHS figures. “But dentists will tell you: brush properly for a few weeks with a good electric toothbrush, and you can reverse it.”

The next big thing

It was a mix of the UK’s oral hygiene issues and the “huge addressable market” that drew Walsh and his co-founder Jordan Kennedy towards the category. Ordo started out selling its electric toothbrushes DTC, thinking subscriptions would be “the next big thing”.

But “the lifetime value just wasn’t there”. So Ordo went direct to dentists, who sold its brushes to patients. The brand went from zero to 500 clinics in a few months. So “when we went to our first retailer, Boots, we had more credibility,” says Walsh. “We knew if we wanted to grow sustainably we needed to go into retail.”

That meant taking on the category’s two “massive incumbents”, Oral-B and Philips – despite proudly not being VC-backed. “We want to do it more sustainably. It’s f***ing hard. Then you get to that next level, where the bigger brands acknowledge you, but with a twitch of their pinkie finger they could abolish you.”

Ordo is now stocked in “pretty much every major retailer in the UK, most of the biggest retailers in the US, and in South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and Europe”. It’s bucking category Trends, too. Oral care is performing well, but much of its growth comes from sales value rather than volume. Ordo is an exception, with an impressive 89.3% growth in unit sales last year, according to The Grocer’s Top Products report 2025.

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Walsh thinks his brand is outperforming because “the big brands think mainly about what the other’s doing, rather than what the consumer actually wants”.

What they want most, he says, are affordable replacement heads and good battery life: “They don’t need a £300 electric brush with all the bells and whistles.”

Walsh also attributes Ordo’s growth to targeting consumers who have never had an electric toothbrush “because nothing has existed for them”. Until Ordo, he says, “anything half decent was too expensive for people used to spending £3-£4 on a manual brush. We’re offering a product for £30 that’s as good as some that sell for £70-£80. That’s why we’ve seen such growth.”

The brand’s focus on value inspired the launch of its Sonic Edge range in September. With an rsp of £14.99, it’s Ordo’s most affordable brush to date and 75% cheaper than its regular £59.99 Sonic Plus brushes.

“We’re bringing newness to the category, even though we know it’s never going to be a sexy one,” Walsh says. “Our biggest thing is innovation and making oral care more accessible. Our Sonic Edge has an rsp of £14.99 but sells on average for about £10 – for a fully rechargeable electric toothbrush using the same technology as our £60 brush. At £10, that’s unheard of.”

Electric avenue

That helps deliver the “biggest thing” for retailers, Walsh adds, which is “moving people from manual into electric”. Ordo encourages that move by making just one type of brush head across all ranges and selling them in more affordable single packs.

“We found when people go to the shop, too often they see 15 different heads and go: ‘F***, which one’s for my brush? I just wanna clean my teeth.’ So we want to keep it simple. But when we talk about accessibility, it’s difficult. There’s so much difference in what price points are accessible for people. I’d love to make a product as good as our Sonic Edge for a fiver. But it takes time.”

Walsh and Ordo are trying to help in other ways too. Having teamed up with soft toy maker Squishmallows to launch a range of electric toothbrushes, kids’ oral hygiene is top of the list. Tooth decay remains the most common reason for hospital admissions in children aged between five and nine, according to the NHS.

“That’s absolutely mental,” Walsh says. The brand works with the Dental Wellness Trust, and in August launched its Teeth of Tomorrow campaign, calling on the government to abolish the 20% VAT on children’s dental hygiene products.

“We’ve done studies, and some parents buy one toothbrush to share between them and their children because of the cost. Removing VAT will make it easier for parents to afford oral hygiene products,” he says. “It’s going alright. I wish it was going better. Hopefully I can use this platform to help. Just sign the bloody petition, this is such a great initiative. It’s a no-brainer.”

The Squishmallows partnership has not only led to a handful of “really cool, big licensing partnerships” coming this year, it also “propelled” Ordo into the US.

It’s almost comical hearing Walsh recount the story of how an initial trial in 700 CVS stores quickly snowballed into 5,000, and “from there we got 4,000 Walmarts. Then Target saw it and were like: ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’ So we launched with them. At the same time, Walgreens said: ‘Well, CVS have got it. We want it.’ So they’ve just launched us into 5,000 stores. We’ve gone from zero to more than 15,000 stores in the space of a year in America – without really trying!”

Although the UK is still a focus for Ordo – it’s targeting 6% of the homegrown electric dental market by 2028 – that US success has shifted its focus somewhat.

“A lot of challengers look to the US and wonder: Should we go? So, now, people ask: ‘How have you cracked America? What’s your secret?’ And I’m like: ‘Honestly, I don’t know!’ Sometimes it’s just being in the right place. We’re trying to make oral care into an emotive purchase. If there’s a reason someone hasn’t got an electric toothbrush, we want to figure out why.”