The Economics of Everyday Things
00:10:34 · S5, S6, Zachary Crockett
[00:10:34] S5: Who knew Walmart Business could help a bustling school district stay on budget? Principal Lewis knew. He uses Walmart Business to easily get the items his elementary school needs. [00:10:42] S6: Our tax exempt status works online and in store. And with our tight budgets, they have everything we need at prices I love. [00:10:48] S5: Expense management tools help him stay on top of what he's spending. [00:10:51] S6: I keep track of hundreds of things every day. Jenny, get out of there. Thankfully, Walmart Business lets me keep track of all our expenses in one place. Aaron, don't need that. Michael? Uh-uh. [00:11:00] S5: It's Walmart, built for your business. Who knew? Eligible organizations. Additional terms apply. [00:11:09] S2: Walk down the oral care aisle at a drugstore, and you'll find dozens of different toothpaste formulas. Some extol therapeutic advantages, like extra cavity protection. Others promise cosmetic benefits, like whitening. There are toothpastes in all different flavors, toothpastes for kids, toothpastes for people with sensitive teeth. There's Max Clean, Max Fresh, Double Fresh, Triple Action, Sparkling White, Optic White, Optic White Renewal, on and on and on. Many of these variations are sold by Colgate, and they all come across the desk of Sergio Leite.
00:11:09 · Zachary Crockett, Sergio Leite
[00:11:09] S2: Walk down the oral care aisle at a drugstore, and you'll find dozens of different toothpaste formulas. Some extol therapeutic advantages, like extra cavity protection. Others promise cosmetic benefits, like whitening. There are toothpastes in all different flavors, toothpastes for kids, toothpastes for people with sensitive teeth. There's Max Clean, Max Fresh, Double Fresh, Triple Action, Sparkling White, Optic White, Optic White Renewal, on and on and on. Many of these variations are sold by Colgate, and they all come across the desk of Sergio Leite. [00:11:49] S7: We have our flagship toothpaste, the red box of Colgate, very good minty profile. Then we have our multi benefit toothpaste. We have whitening, we have sensitivity toothpaste, we have one that is a young crowd favorite called MaxFresh, that's refreshing bad breath type of toothpaste, so get you ready to enjoy life. [00:12:13] S2: Leite is Colgate's global head of research and development for oral care products. He oversees a team that comes up with Colgate's toothpaste formulas. Regardless of all the fancy variations on the market, he says most toothpastes come down to a few key ingredients.
00:12:13 · Zachary Crockett, Sergio Leite
[00:12:13] S2: Leite is Colgate's global head of research and development for oral care products. He oversees a team that comes up with Colgate's toothpaste formulas. Regardless of all the fancy variations on the market, he says most toothpastes come down to a few key ingredients. [00:12:31] S7: You have something to clean your teeth, an abrasive. You have your active ingredient, the fluoride. You also have a surfactant, a detergent, that helps you do the nice foaming in your mouth and reach hard areas. We have one thing that we call a binder, like xanthan gum, carrageenan. So, these are components that when they met the liquid, they form the gel you see, right? That's why toothpaste has that jelly appearance, if you will, that kind of a semi solid. And last but not least, you'll get the flavor and colors. There are other details, but these are the core things you need to make a toothpaste. [00:13:10] S2: There's a complex process behind each one of these components. For instance, the abrasive material might be calcium carbonate, a natural mineral that Colgate sources from mines in The US, Brazil, and Italy. It's crushed up into a fine powder and shipped to Colgate's factories in giant bags. And it has to be just the right amount of graininess. [00:13:33] S7: You cannot go through abrasive. Right? You don't want a sand in your mouth. So we measure RDA, radioactive dentin abrasion.
00:13:33 · Sergio Leite, Zachary Crockett, Stefan Habif
[00:13:33] S7: You cannot go through abrasive. Right? You don't want a sand in your mouth. So we measure RDA, radioactive dentin abrasion. [00:13:42] S2: With RDA testing, toothpaste companies examine the amount of tooth structure that's worn away by toothpaste. The abrasive has to be strong enough to provide a scrubbing effect, but not so intense that it destroys your teeth. There's also a science to producing a toothpaste with just the right amount of foaminess. Again, here's Stefan Habif, Colgate's chief technology officer, who also works on these formulations. [00:14:08] S3: You could have a very compact foam like a lather, and it will give you a different experience than an open airy foam. So we adjust the level and the agent that we use to have very different experiences when you use the product. So we really have some expertise on the sensory, the slight differences that don't seem to be very big, but make a big difference in the consumer perception. [00:14:37] S2: One thing that consumers are very sensitive to is toothpaste flavoring. Colgate has a whole team of flavorists on staff who carefully select just the right amount of mintiness to add to a formula. The flavoring agents are often mixed with sensates, chemicals that produce a cooling or warming effect in the mouth. [00:14:57] S3: The freshness obviously is what people look for when they want to have the sense that their mouth is clean. It comes from the act of cleaning, but it comes also from the sensates that are present in the flavor.
00:14:57 · Stefan Habif, Zachary Crockett, Sergio Leite
[00:14:57] S3: The freshness obviously is what people look for when they want to have the sense that their mouth is clean. It comes from the act of cleaning, but it comes also from the sensates that are present in the flavor. [00:15:11] S2: In America, many of the most popular toothpastes have a minty flavor, but that's not the case in other parts of the world. [00:15:19] S3: Flavors really link to the kind of food that you like in the different regions. In some cases, people want to feel similar taste in their toothpaste that they have in the flavor of their food. [00:15:33] S7: Let's say India, where we have a big presence, the flavors are what we call more spicy. So imagine there is a little bit more clove oil in the flavor, more anise. You still get that undertone of mint, but you have other notes which are much more critical. China, we have flavors that are more, what we call, more oral perfume. They feel more floral, more jasmine. [00:16:00] S2: Flavor also has to be adjusted for kids. [00:16:04] S7: Kids tend to resist. You cannot give a too spicy, too minty flavor. The kids won't brush. So you have to tone down a little bit the flavor so the kids will be able to brush. [00:16:17] S2: Once all of the ingredients in a toothpaste are dialed in, they're mixed together in giant factories. Colgate has production facilities all over the world, in The US, Mexico, Brazil, India, and China.
00:16:17 · Zachary Crockett, Sergio Leite
[00:16:17] S2: Once all of the ingredients in a toothpaste are dialed in, they're mixed together in giant factories. Colgate has production facilities all over the world, in The US, Mexico, Brazil, India, and China. [00:16:30] S7: In the production area, you will feel the nice minty smell of the toothpaste. You can imagine large containers, large warehouses where the raw materials and packaging material are there, so you have liquid, powders, the flavors, the colors. Those components are blended, go through pumps and pipes, through our finishing lines, which are normally separated from the mixers by massive buildings. And that's where it's filled in the tubes that we receive at home. [00:17:02] S2: For a plain white toothpaste, the product is dispensed from a nozzle into an open tube, and the tube is sealed at the end. But multicolored toothpaste that comes out of the tube in stripes, that's a special feat of modern engineering. [00:17:18] S7: I worked many years on that in my life. That same nozzle, instead of carrying one color of toothpaste, it has multiple channels inside, separated by a wall. You run, let's say, green color. In other channels, the blue color. In other channels, the white color. And then the filling machine is able to fill at the same time those colors in the tube. We fill, and immediately that toothpaste has to stand still. It cannot be runny. It cannot move around. So you close the tube, you get your stripes inside.