How the Cu Sisters Built a Multi-Million Dollar Brand Reinventing Oral Care with COCOLAB

By Jennifer Redondo 

COCOLAB was founded by sisters Dr. Chrystle Cu and Catherine Cu. Dr. Chrystle Cu, a dentist, is passionate about enhancing oral care products. Catherine Cu, an artist, contributes her design expertise to the business. Together, they have revolutionized flossing, making it a more enjoyable, motivating, and rewarding experience through products that restore oral health and promote overall well-being.

The Cu sisters, of Chinese-Filipino American heritage, draw inspiration from their background for some of their products like their lychee breeze toothpaste. Their family history is rooted in immigration and entrepreneurship: all four of their grandparents immigrated to the Philippines, and their parents subsequently immigrated to the United States. Their mother, a dentist, and their father, an entrepreneur, established a dental practice in the Bay Area, California, a venture that profoundly influenced the Cu sisters' life path. For further details on their COCOLAB journey, please continue reading below.

1. Tell us about yourselves. 

Chrystle Cu: I'm a dentist from the San Francisco Bay Area, now living, working, and raising my family in Orange County, California. My sister and I created our brand COCOLAB, best known for Cocofloss, because we wanted to flip the script on oral care and make it something that people craved. At COCOLAB we believe your smile is the launchpad for your entire life, and that great habits start with joy, not dread. 

Catherine Cu: I'm Chrystle’s sister. We grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, and we’re now based in Southern California. I started my career in finance and made my way to entrepreneurship. Cocofloss was born out of an art startup. I was building a platform for commissioning original art, but I couldn't find any buyers. I had just given up on my art startup, when Chrystle asked me to look into the dental floss market with her. 

At COCOLAB Chrystle focuses on identifying opportunities where there's a need for better oral care products and designing products.  I focus on the art, design, and the branding. Together, we figure out how to make high performance products that spark joy. 

I’m someone who loves animals and the ocean, so sustainability is another big priority for us at COCOLAB. While it’s hard to be truly sustainable in CPG, we’re always thinking about how we can do less harm as a brand. And our goal is to keep doing better. 

2. What’s your tie to the Philippines? 

Chrystle Cu: Our parents are Filipinos, both born in Metro Manila. Our grandparents are Chinese from Fujian province. Growing up, “home” referred to the Philippines. We grew up in a family where Chinese, Filipino, and Bay Area culture collided into our unique identity. Philippine Hokkien, Tagalog and English were all spoken in our home and among our extended family. 

3. Growing up and practicing dentistry in the Bay Area, California, what were some of the common things you saw in Filipino patients?

Chrystle Cu: The first word that comes to mind is, “bungi,” and I say that with both fond familiarity and sadness about this being a reality. “Bungi” means toothless or missing a tooth, and it’s among the most common chief concerns from my Filipino patients. Unfortunately, many Filipinos are missing teeth – anywhere from a single tooth to all teeth lost. I was told by all of my Filipino patients that back home, they were told that having their teeth pulled was the only solution to a big cavity or toothache. In a way, it’s expected, because we Filipinos do have a fondness for sweets! And regular access to proper dental care is difficult in many parts of the Philippines. Having worked in volunteer dental clinics in the Philippines myself, I understand the challenges and am likewise guilty of pulling teeth that under other circumstances could have been restored and saved.

4. COCOLAB started out as Cocofloss. Tell us how Cocofloss was born? 

Chrystle Cu: I followed my mother’s footsteps into dentistry. She had a small family practice in downtown San Mateo that she and my dad built in 1986. When I graduated dental school at the height of the global financial crisis in 2008, I played it safe and built a practice for myself out of an empty operatory that my mom never used. 

I started out by seeing my friends and family, and eventually through word of mouth, I built a bustling practice with a months-long wait list for appointments. My style of dentistry involved understanding my patients’ motivations for seeing me, aligning treatment plans with their goals, and spending extra time with them on oral health and prevention education. 

It didn’t take long for me to completely run out of time and space to treat my own patients, to the point that I became totally overwhelmed by the amount of dentistry I had to do to keep my patients healthy. While I worked on honing my craft and getting better at what I did as a dentist, easy math told me it was going to be impossible to keep up with our own patients in the little dental practice we had. Moreover, over half of the cavities I filled involved areas in between the teeth. Between the inability to keep up with my patients’ need for dental hygiene maintenance procedures and filling their cavities, I became totally obsessed with prevention, especially in interdental areas. Only a minority of my patients flossed daily, and it was seen as more of a chore than a treat. That’s when I realized floss needed a complete makeover. I needed to create something that worked better – that actually removed plaque from between teeth – and that would be something people would actually want to use. 

I began tinkering with my ideas and materials in 2012 or so, but struggled to find time to work on the project because my hands were most often literally tied up doing dentistry. I got a lucky break when my sister Cat quit her job in 2014 to start a company, failed, and finally decided to help me look at my floss problem with me. In 2015 we officially launched our first product, Cocofloss, and we’ve been working on our brand and company ever since. 

5. How did you come up with the first product, Cocofloss?

Chrystle Cu: My ideas stemmed from problems that I was seeing in my dental practice. Despite all my best efforts to educate and encourage, the majority of patients were decidedly unwilling to floss. Weirdly, many of these same patients were willing to try coconut oil pulling, a practice that takes 20 minutes a day, because Gwyneth Paltrow was doing it – which made it cool! Flossing takes a minute max, but it wasn’t cool at all. Since coconut oil has natural antimicrobial properties, we decided to add it to our textured, loofah-like woven floss. With both scrub and slip, Cocofloss is extremely satisfying to use. 

We also launched Cocofloss in a variety of fun scents from the get-go. In my dental practice, I liked to surprise and delight my patients in little ways, like with a cute menu of 18 different dental polish flavors they could choose from. I stocked unusual flavors like Fruit Punch, Orange Dreamsicle, and Chocolate Mint. Going to the dentist can be scary for many people, but my patients lit up with a grin when they saw the menu. We made sure to carry this over into Cocofloss, making the product surprisingly delightful, giftable, and even collectible. 

6. When did you rebrand to COCOLAB? 

Chrystle Cu: This year we rebranded to COCOLAB. Over the course of this year, we are transitioning over to COCOLAB. We started out with just the floss, then in 2021, we launched the toothbrush. In 2023, we launched our toothpaste. We have more products on the way. 

7. Can you share more about your branding? 

Chrystle Cu: Our very colorful palette comes from our tropical roots, and being that we are California based, we wanted that to shine through. 

Catherine Cu: Our goal has always been to reinvent flossing. Most people dread it. We wanted the opposite — a tropical vacation. We took inspiration from sunscreens that evoke vacation memories, and we launched our line with our flagship Fresh Coconut scent.

As for the name Cocofloss, we wanted something catchy and personable — a brand people could connect with. Back then, it was just the two of us trading names on Slack. In the end, it came down to a game of rock-paper-scissors and a quick poll of friends. Cocofloss stuck. We loved that people could Cocofloss — not just floss.

8. At what point did you decide to branch out beyond floss?  

Chrystle Cu: From the very beginning, we always wanted to have the whole suite of products. We started this company from our apartment and it took all of our resources to make one product to start. When we were working on the floss, we realized that there was a gap that needed to be filled. It was unintentional but we ended up focusing on floss first. We needed to get into the consumer's hearts and minds, to get into their routine to get them interested.  

9. What advice did your parents give you around career choices? 

Catherine Cu: Our parents are immigrants. They came to the U.S. with little, worked hard, and gave us the best education they could. They also made it clear—we’d need to stand on our own and build our own foundation. In high school, I told my dad I wanted to be an artist. He said: make money first. Then you can make an impact, then you can create all the art you want.

10. What did your parents say when you quit your jobs to start your own company? 

Catherine Cu: Now we have this business, and somehow it holds all our values — art, wellness, the environment. Growing up in the Bay Area, we were surrounded by innovators and entrepreneurs. My parents were incredibly supportive when I quit my job in finance to start a company rooted in art. I moved back home for several years to get Cocofloss off the ground. Without that safety net — and the support of our extended family — we wouldn’t be here today.

11. When did you know it was time to sell the practice and pursue COCOLAB full time?

Catherine Cu:  About five years into building COCOLAB, I was diagnosed with a rare cancer. After this diagnosis, Chrystle made the decision to step away from dentistry to support me and our business full-time. It was a huge pivot: she had just purchased and renovated her dream dental practice in San Mateo. It took this life shock for Chrystle to know the time and decision was right to make the full leap into entrepreneurship. 

Chrystle Cu: Three years ago, I sold my practice in San Mateo. I am still a dentist, but I am now working full-time at COCOLAB with Catherine. I'm not practicing dentistry anymore, but I'm retaining my license.  

Chrystle Cu: I bought another dental practice in 2018 and I completely remodeled it. It was growing and I was having fun. Catherine wasn’t asking me for help so I thought she was doing great. I let her run Coco while I did dentistry. God had other plans. Cat really needed me with her in her personal life and at Coco. I made the really hard decision to sell my practice. Until this day, our mother still practices dentistry and she still works as an associate in the practice that I sold. 

12. How has starting your own business and building a brand changed your perspective? 

Catherine Cu: More than ten years into building COCOLAB, it’s amazing to see the ecosystem that’s formed — customers, suppliers, and partners from all over the world coming together around this vision. I love meeting our extended COCOLAB family, and I’m reminded every day how much business is about collaboration and teamwork. It truly takes a village.

When we started, the idea of selling luxury dental floss sounded bonkers. Now our products sit on the shelves at Erewhon, goop, and Anthropologie — and more people are flossing and brushing because of them. We’ve helped reshape oral care culture. For me, business has become a daily reminder to push past what seems possible, and to keep believing that anything is.

Chrystle Cu: I was fully expecting to be practicing dentistry into my 70s. Our mom is in her 70s now and she's still very excited to go into the dental office. I thought that was going to be me, too. I didn't expect this at all. I think we're just very lucky. It's one thing to come up with this crazy idea, but another for it to really come true. It was a lot of hard work, but there's also some luck involved too – timing, luck, finding the right people.

A lot of things had to go well to get us where we are now. I feel fortunate and I do believe that this brand has the opportunity to truly transform the way people feel about oral health. It has the potential to make oral health something that people actually care and get excited about. If we can do that, we'll be able to reduce the amount of dental pain and general affliction people experience. We hope that we can extend beyond our own markets, where we will see kids in the Philippines taking care of their teeth, too. I mentioned them because I do some volunteer work in the Philippines, where we go to rural areas to do dentistry for children. They really need it the most because their diets are not great. They put sugar on top of white rice. 

There's still a lot of education that needs to reach everyone. That has to start somewhere. I'm starting with the market that we know, which is the American consumer. We started with the millennial women, and now we're trying to reach out to Gen Z. If we can have people grow up caring about their smiles, we're moving human health in the right direction.

13. How did you decide to pursue an opportunity in the floss market? What market research did you do? What does your market research reveal about your target market? 

Chrystle Cu: We started with ourselves! It took a considerable amount of effort for me to convince Catherine to help me look into this problem because she was completely uninterested. She was grossed out and thought I was joking.  

Catherine Cu: At the time, I was working in tech — doing finance for a software company during the height of the boom. While Chrystle was dreaming of creating a new dental floss, I was excited about exploring  tech-enabled ideas. Then she got me to start flossing — for the first time at age 27! Before long, I found myself at cocktail hours and parties asking friends about their relationship with their teeth and flossing. What I discovered was a real cognitive dissonance: everyone knew they should be flossing, but most weren’t. Meanwhile, many of my friends were already dealing with gum surgeries, cavities, and other dental issues in their twenties — problems Chrystle believed could have been prevented with this simple habit. Experiencing that disconnect firsthand made me a believer. And that was ten years ago!

Chrystle Cu: People weren't investing the time. It was a low priority for people. We really distilled it into three core problems with existing floss. The first being, that people didn’t know that they’re supposed to be flossing. They don’t understand gum disease. The second being the insufficient efficacy of the existing products out there. Some flosses are too thin, slippery or flat. For floss to be effective, it has to actually remove plaque from your teeth. The third thing, there wasn't a brand that really spoke to people that got them excited. We tackled all three of these! We have more work to do on the education piece. We have a great product that works well, and it’s a brand that people can understand and it makes flossing fun and cool. 

14. What makes Coco Floss and your other products different from everything else that's out there?

Chrystle Cu: As far as the Coco Floss itself, it's a woven floss made with several hundred different filaments. It’s made from recycled water bottles and it's also coconut oil infused. Texture and the fibers themselves act like a net, they grab plaque and pull it off teeth. It’s like a loofah that scrubs plaque off teeth. It’s scrubby, soft, and it expands into the bigger spaces, but it can also fit into tighter contacts as well. It’s very flexible.

In 2021, we launched our toothbrush. It was designed to brush not just your teeth, but your gum line too because everyone's plaque is along the gum line and also behind your teeth. My observation was that most toothbrushes out there had bristles that were too hard to brush along the gum line or the heads of the toothbrushes were too chunky to reach behind teeth or some of these toothbrushes are angled away from these hard-to-reach areas making toothbrushing even harder. 

I wanted to design a brush that could brush along the gum line, reach these hard-to-reach areas. Our bristles have a combination of tall tapered bristles and shorter rounded bristles. It's a multi-layered design that makes it 16 times more effective at cleaning between your teeth compared to regular manual toothbrushes. Our toothbrushes are made from recycled oceanbound plastic that's collected from areas that lack formal waste management within 50 kilometers of the shoreline. It's primarily in Southeast Asia. We were able to repurpose this plastic into making this beautiful toothbrush.

Catherine Cu: We really dislike plastic — but in oral care, it’s hard to avoid. It’s a big problem, and one we all see firsthand when we walk along our beaches. As a brand, we’re doing our best to do less harm and to be part of the solution. Cocofloss is made with ~85% recycled polyester woven from post-consumer plastic that we sourced from recycled water bottles. Our toothbrush handles are made of recycled ocean-bound plastic. We’ve also committed to funding plastic cleanups around the world, partnering with organizations like Oceanworks, which works with local groups in Southeast Asia to collect, sort, and recycle plastic that would otherwise end up in our oceans.

15. Do you work with Filipino companies? 

Catherine Cu: I was just chatting with the founder of this Berlin-based plastic cleanup company called CleanHub. We talked about potentially creating a pilot project in the Philippines together. 

The Philippines is one of the few countries that actually makes producers pay for the plastic waste they create, with “extended producer responsibility.” This means that if you put plastic packaging into the market you have to fund the collection and recovery of that same volume of plastic. Though Manila has this infrastructure in place, in the provinces, the system remains lacking. I’d love to look into this one day. 

16. Is there a possibility that you’ll bring Filipino flavored toothpaste and floss to your product offerings? 

Catherine Cu: I would love to develop an ube, mango, or pandan flavored line of toothpaste and Cocofloss. That would be so delicious. 

Chrystle Cu: It would be so fun to incorporate the colors and flavors of halo-halo in a mixed Cocofloss gift set! 

17. Where can people find you and purchase your products? 

Chrystle Cu: I would say cocolab.com, Amazon, and Target.com. Eventually, we will be in the Target stores early next year. 

Catherine Cu: You can also follow up on social media:

Instagram:  @MeetCocolab 

TikTok: @MeetCocolab 

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Written by Jennifer Redondo

Co-Founder and Co-Author of In Her Purpose

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