‘It was such a no-brainer:’ Why viral TikTok oral-care company Nobs dropped its company name
When oral-care company Biom changed its name to Nobs earlier this month, dentist-turned-entrepreneur Ilon Choai was prepared for “a tsunami of confusion.” He warned the rest of the team and readied himself to spend the day sending measured replies from the customer service inbox.
But most people, it turned out, had the opposite reaction.
“The replies were like, ‘Finally, you guys figured it out!'” he said. “People were waiting for us to do this. We had no idea it was such a no-brainer.”
Nobs makes toothpaste tablets, a form factor that’s becoming a popular alternative to traditional tubes and paste. The fluoride-free product comes in a number of flavors including grape and vanilla, and markets itself as a formula that’s free of parabens, sulfates and artificial dyes. The brand grew quickly thanks to viral videos and significant influencer gifting of up to 20,000 jars a month that flooded FYPs with content. The company ended 2024 with 80% growth and sold more than 10,000 items via TikTok Shop, according to publicly available TikTok Shop data.
When it launched in 2022, the company was called Biom — a nod to the oral microbiome — and the tablets were called “Nobs,” an acronym for “No Bad Stuff.” But this October, Choai said it was time to drop Biom and go exclusively by Nobs in order to streamline the brand’s look and gain more awareness ahead of a forthcoming wholesale launch in 2026.
“The brand name really fell to the back, right? And so everyone just knew us as Nobs, and we saw it in the Google search terms, like everyone was searching ‘Nobs toothpaste tablets,'” he said. “We realized the no-B.S. aspect of the name encapsulated very much of the same stuff that we were trying to capture with Biom.”
Behind the scenes, though, undergoing a name change requires more than just new packaging. Nobs spent about a year sussing out intellectual property requirements, streamlining logos, and defining its brand look and feel — a process that many young bands have to undergo when their circumstances call for a change. Earlier this year, fellow oral care company Cocofloss changed its named to Cocolabs to allow for more product offerings. And open box marketplace Rebel, formerly known as Rebelstork, rebranded when it grew its catalog from baby gear to housewares.
Making the changes that make sense
Renee Miller, founder of the Los Angeles-based marketing firm The Miller Group, said it’s not unheard of for companies to have to rebrand themselves as they find their customer base. Sometimes that can be done with a logo change or new design — like Yankee Candle did this summer — but other times, a name change is necessary to communicate a new era. Just this week, Southeastern Grocers announced it is renaming itself The Winn-Dixie Company. to signal a renewed focus on its home state of Florida.
Miller said that, after a few years of operation, brand changes can be beneficial, as the company has the benefit of hindsight to know how people talk about their brand.
“When you have a lot of people who know you by one name, a lot of times it makes sense to change it to the same name as the brand,” she said. “It’s happened before, and it works to brands’ advantage.”
But Miller also said it’s important for companies not to expect that a new name or new look will supercharge sales. The process of rebranding requires significant resources, both financially and legally. Most importantly, she said, companies need to know the “why” behind their name change. “You need to have a clear direction,” she said.
Dropping Biom for brand clarity
Nobs didn’t share how much the rebrand cost. But co-founder and CEO Calvin Klaski said that a major part of the process involved clearing the intellectual property path to use the name Nobs, which applies to a number of other companies. “We spent a ton of time and money with our IP lawyers looking around the globe to make sure that, if we expanded into this country or this product category, we could do it,” he said.
“Even if you go to your IP attorneys and they’re like, ‘No one has it,’ there’s still like a 10% chance that someone’s gonna try to come after you. So it’s never risk-free when you start a brand.”
The next steps were rebuilding the brand’s infrastructure, including new emails, new social handles and a new website. It settled on “nobsroutine” for its domain and handles. At the same time, Nobs also needed new packaging. Choai, a hobbyist graphic designer who came up with original packaging and labeling, said he was “throwing spaghetti at the wall” and ended up with products that didn’t necessarily seem like they were from the same brand. This time around, he worked with a professional designer to help streamline the look and feel. The brand’s floss, for instance, used to be called “Silk,” but is now simply “Nobs expanding dental floss.”
While it dropped some names, fonts and design elements, Choai said the intention was to still keep colorful, bright products that stands out on a bathroom counter — or a retail shelf.
What’s next for Nobs
Still, every change comes with a downside or two: In this case, Nobs had trained customers to spot counterfeits by looking for the “Biom” logo in the corner of the label — fans of the brand on TikTok even made their own content about it.
Then, when it rolled out the rebrand, Nobs posted on social and made a note on its website. Some people on TikTok were concerned that the formula was changing as a result of the rebrand, but generally speaking, Choai said the feedback positive.
Due to the URL change, website traffic dipped a bit, and that caused a conversation drop, Klaski said. But the company anticipates making up for it with its new marketing plans for Q4 and into the coming year.
By and large, people are ready to call Nobs simply Nobs. “We expected this horrible wave of confusion, and it never came,” Choai said.
Looking ahead, Nobs is planning to market itself in more dentists’ offices, as well as places like hotels, with trial-sized tubes of six toothpaste tablets — which will also fuel more efficient gifting and seeding. However, the company does not plan to sell traditional tubes, except for its children’s toothpaste.
“I’ll never say never,” Choai said. “But not losing our edge and not falling into that homogeneity is what makes us different. We’re not going to do what everybody else does simply because everybody else does it.”