and with straight smile solutions straightsmouthsolutions.com and today i want to
talk about another hybrid dtc option called quip aligners i don't even know if that's what's called
q-u-i-p i didn't know anything about this until about an hour ago um and usually i'm pretty up and
on it on various stuff with the direct consumer industry uh before you listen to the rest of this
video i would recommend you go to a video i posted last week it was posted on june 1st 2022 about
like my predictions in 2022 on dtc aligners and the dtc aligner industry it's about a 30 minute
long video so i'm not going to reinvent the wheel here or repeat stuff that i said in that video
i definitely talked about the difference between full dtc and hybrid dtc aligners
and um you should definitely check that out before you listen to this video
otherwise this video may not make sense but um based the reason this even got on my radar is i
was on some of these doctor-facing facebook groups you know where dentists complain about things
and uh the quip aligners came up i guess somebody had gotten a letter or an email about the quip
aligners and they were wondering if they should join the network and they were asking opinions
and there was a lot of opinions so based on what i saw in that letter and based on what i saw on
their website it seems to me it's a very similar business model to candid the new candid slash
smile direct club partner network not straight smile direct club two totally different things
price wise function wise workflow wise operations wise to me it seemed like the
very similar business model now if you do work for quip um you if i say anything erroneously you as
always as on any of my videos if you work for the company that i am reviewing
i have tried to reach out to you i did send an email this morning i did message a few people
who seemed like they were like in c suite roles um on linkedin no responses yet so i always try first
and i give you guys an opportunity to explain your product so i'm just gonna wait for you guys to
reach out to me if i said anything erroneously i'd be more than glad um to remake this um
i still think if you listen to my video i posted last week on june 1st i think
there's still room for this type of industry it this whole hybrid dtc thing you know that
does actually have x-rays and an actual office visit and actual dentist is evaluating the patient
but the patients are just looking for less office visits or no office visits
or attachment lists aligners um i still think that there's space for that i still think it's a
great business model i've been directly and indirectly involved in it in the past and i i
have a great time with it um creating networks and everything like that so i'm excited um
obviously it's no surprise that i'm not a fan of candid at all after some of the things they've
done to me in the last few months so anyone that wants to pee compete with candid go for it
so i'm on team quip and team smile direct club partner network right now once you piss me off
you're not on you're not on my good side so great quip great smile direct club partner network let
me help you out i hope you succeed so anyways that's pretty much all i got to say it basically
seems like the same thing that i described in my video on june 1st so just listen to that
i wish them all the luck um 250 dollars it sounds like it's it's the cost if you want
to join or the benefit if you join the partner network for scanning a patient taking the records
so i mean that seems relatively reasonable i think it's higher i don't know what candid pays but i
think it's higher than um what smile direct club is paying for their partner network but i might be
wrong although i feel like smile direct club's partner network has significantly more power
because of the the brand name um and i think your number of referrals would probably be i
just think i don't know would be a lot higher so it seems to me if i'm assuming most of these
have a exclusivity clause when you sign up for their partner networks i doubt you can be a
a scan center for candid and small direct clubs so something you have to pick one obviously
i have never read their um provider agreement obviously you're gonna have to sign some type of
um terms of service provider agreement um some type of prep professional clause where basically
they're indemnifying you and they're creating you as a scan shop and in there it's gonna say what
responsibility you have you know what's your liability what's your responsibility um i
don't know if you're doing if you're approving the clint checks the quote-unquote clinchex
or if there's if they have licensed dentists in each state like smile direct club does um don't
know i have no idea how that works they don't say that at all in the instructions so if they don't
and it's you that's doing it then you obviously have significantly more liability than you would
with smile direct club partner network where as far as i can tell again i have not read their
their paperwork um it seems like the liability would be super low um liability for candid in my
opinion would be higher based on what they told me again my opinion so um anyways but i mean
obviously read everything before you sign up for it the one thing i did kind of like about quip and
again it's very similar to small direct club and that they do have they started out first i believe
as almost like a distribution channel for various oral hygiene products so they had their own like
toothbrushes and other things and i think that's how they started and they moved on to a liners
whereas that's opposite how smile direct club started they started with the liners and they
moved more into retail intangibles so um you know which comes first the chicken or the egg i don't
know which one's gonna work who's gonna survive i think smell dark club definitely has six years
seven years seven eight years oh my goodness we started in 2014 eight years heads up i mean
obviously i'd never heard of quip aligners the name means nothing i've never heard of quip so um
it's gonna take a long time to become a recognized brand but hey exciting i heard
they got a huge cash infusion this year someone told me 150 million or something like that i don't
know if that's true but if so good for them um anyways i mean i still think that there's a lot
of opportunity in this space so that's pretty much all i'm going to say and i wish them best of luck
and if you guys want me to re-re-tape this with more information you're more than welcome
to reach out to me and schedule a meeting straightsmilesolutions.com all right thanks