Growth investor Beaubridge has completed a second financing for Smilepod, a walk-in dental hygiene business, injecting £1.2 million to fund the rollout of more outlets.

Growth investor Beaubridge has completed a second financing for Smilepod, a walk-in dental hygiene business, injecting £1.2 million to fund the rollout of more outlets.

Smilepod is a dentist chain that offers cleaning, whitening and straightening services while using the drop-in model of a hairdresser or beauty parlour. The first studio opened in 2009 in Covent Garden, London, and two further outlets in the City, near Bank Underground station, and Canada Place, has since been launched.

The business’s co-founder and managing director Mike Hutter aims to open one new studio each quarter to be located in major employment areas. The company says the business had total sales of £225,000 last year, rising to about £800,000 this year.

Smilepod’s fundraising, which has been made under the Enterprise Investment Scheme, now totals £1.75 million after Beaubridge first backed the company with £550,000 in January this year.

Peter Buckley, partner at Beaubridge comments, ‘Smilepod has a strong management team in place and is a business that is challenging and transforming the traditional experience of visiting a dentist.  Customers want access to treatments for clean, white, straight teeth in locations and at times that are convenient to them, at affordable prices and performed by friendly professional dentists.’  

Beaubridge invests in small and medium-sized companies, committing £20 million or less across a wide variety of sectors, focusing to date on financial services, healthcare, communications, property and retail. It has invested in 16 different companies since 2005 and it has made four exits.