After quietly raising a series A round led by VMG Partners last year, Cocolab, the company behind cult-favorite Cocofloss, is handing the management reins from its dentist co-founder to a seasoned consumer executive as it sets out to become a much bigger oral care business.

Taken together, the investment and leadership change mark a significant step for Cocolab as it looks to accelerate growth beyond the rabid fan base it built around Cocofloss. The task of guiding that growth falls to Gayle Tait, a board director at E.l.f. Beauty and former managing director of L’Oréal’s more than $400 million United Kingdom and Ireland business who went on to hold senior roles at Google and resale technology company Trove. Her goal over the next three to five years is to turn Cocolab from a brand loved by a passionate group of consumers to one known by millions.

With her arrival, Chrystle Cu, a dentist who launched Cocolab with her sister Catherine in 2015, is stepping out of the CEO role and concentrating on product development and relationships with the dental professional community. Catherine’s responsibilities span brand, creative and sustainability.

 “We’ve reached a real inflection point,” says Cu. “We spent the last several years proving people want what we built. Now we’re scaling it. We’re deepening our retail partnerships, broadening the assortment and reaching new consumers through continued innovation across the portfolio. This next stage needs someone who’s scaled businesses through and beyond this phase. We are planning to grow together and build a generational brand.”

Tait says, “I’m a consumer marketer at heart. I really miss consumer. [The E.l.f. board] just reinforced to me that my heart was always really in consumer products.” She adds, “We are going to be a trifecta working together to grow this business. They have achieved so much with no business training, no MBA and that’s a very rare achievement…The ambition isn’t simply to sell a lot more floss. It’s to build one of the defining brands in oral wellness.”

Cocolab represents VMG’s first oral care investment, and VMG represents Cocolab’s first institutional investor. Cocolab declined to disclose the size of the series A round in which VMG was the sole participant. Before VMG’s minority investment, the company raised money from friends and family. A filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission shows that a Cocofloss friends-and-family investment vehicle raised $1.1 million in 2023.

VMG Partners, which closed its sixth and largest consumer fund at $1 billion last year, targets companies with $10 million-plus in revenue and makes investments of $10 million to $200 million, according to its website. The firm has an extensive track record of backing beauty and personal care brands, with recent investments in The Doux, Tone, Snif and Vacation. Its exits include K18, Drunk Elephant and The Honey Pot Co.

VMG’s minority investment last summer preceded Cocolab’s rollout to all Target stores this year, expanding its retail footprint beyond existing distribution at CVS, Amazon, Walmart online and through direct-to-consumer. More retail distribution is on the horizon, and strengthening its presence on TikTok Shop is another priority. The company currently has about 16,600 followers and nearly 215,000 likes on TikTok.

“The ambition isn’t simply to sell a lot more floss. It’s to build one of the defining brands in oral wellness.”

Cocolab landed on the 2026 Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest-growing private companies with three-year revenue growth of nearly 200%. Last year, the company rebranded as Cocolab to reflect its vision beyond floss. Its DTC assortment now encompasses floss, toothbrushes, nano-hydroxyapatite toothpaste, interdental brushes and tongue cleaners, with individual products generally priced from $8 to $25. While the company is exploring other areas of oral care, Cocofloss remains its main focus, with exclusive flavors and multipacks fueling what Tait calls a collectability element.

VMG’s investment in Cocolab and Tait’s appointment as CEO come as oral care has been transforming from a staid drugstore staple dominated by conglomerates into a bonafide wellness subcategory that demands its own daily ritualization and a magnet for premium, better-for-you brands. Future Market Insights projects the global oral care market will advance at an annual rate of 5.1% to go from $58.2 billion in 2026 to nearly $96 billion by 2036. Premiumization, mounting consumer understanding that oral health and the oral microbiome have significant implications for overall health and the use of GLP-1 medications have been growth propellents.

The rush of recent oral care brand entrants includes Evenmouth, Akla, Arame, Perlae and Bastet. The insurgents are ramping up innovation in the category, extending it beyond toothpaste, mouthwash, floss and toothbrushes, with Nathan & Sons offering remineralizing gum, Rose Code selling a brush-on gum treatment, Köppen featuring lip balm and remineralizing breath mints, Smile Plus marketing a  Zyn-style pouch with teeth-whitening benefits, and Loob addressing dry mouth with a product it calls a “mouth lubricant.”

Investor interest is increasing, too. Probiotic oral care brand SuperTeeth raised $3 million in seed funding this year, Dayly secured backing from Morrison Seger Venture Capital Partners and Evenmouth attracted investors including executives from Colgate-Palmolive and AG1. Notable exits have been part of investors’ calculations in entering the oral care arena. In 2020, Colgate-Palmolive acquired Hello for $351 million, Church & Dwight purchased TheraBreath in 2021 for $580 million, and Essor Group acquired Boka in 2024.

 Tait says, “Oral health is under the microscope more and more, and people are going to be looking for exciting brands that go beyond the basic brands that we’ve grown up with.” Cu says, “I love it, and it’s about time.”