$9 Billion To Zero: How SmileDirectClub Lost Everything

SmileDirectClub was everywhere. The purple boxes, the YouTube ads, the promise of straighter teeth for half the price without constantly visiting an orthodontist. For a while, it looked like one of the biggest direct-to-consumer success stories ever. Revenue exploded, the company expanded across the country, and by the time it went public in 2019, it was valued at nearly $9 billion. Four years later, it was bankrupt. This video looks at how SmileDirectClub tried to turn orthodontics into a product, why it spent hundreds of millions of dollars acquiring customers, and how its cheap, convenient model put it at war with dentists, regulators, and even some of its own customers. There were lawsuits across multiple states, customers allegedly pushed into NDAs to get refunds, complaints about injuries, a $2.8 billion lawsuit against NBC, and a mountain of debt backed by payments customers hadn’t even made yet. Then SmileDirectClub shut down almost overnight, leaving thousands of people mid-treatment while some were still expected to keep paying. It’s a strange story about what happens when a genuinely disruptive idea grows faster than the business underneath it.