Austria: Schoenherr advises on the sale of the oral hygiene start-up Playbrush to the Sunstar Group

As a result, the companies' future partnership is aimed at creating a new smart prevention platform for personal care, and at becoming the world’s leading connected healthcare partner.

"With the sale of Playbrush's majority stake to Sunstar, the companies are taking an important step to further advance their vision of improved digital oral care. We are very proud that the shareholders of Playbrush have relied on our start-up exit expertise. We wish Playbrush and Sunstar much success and a great collaboration", said Thomas Kulnigg, Partner and Co-Head of Schoenherr's IP & Technology Practice Group.

Playbrush was founded by Paul Varga, Matthaeus Ittner and Tolulope Ogunsina. The technology start-up has offices in Vienna and London, and is the innovation leader in smart Oral Care in Europe and beyond. Since 2015 Playbrush has been developing and marketing smart toothbrushes and digital oral care subscriptions to revolutionise the way children, families and adults take care of their teeth. The latest invention is the Playbrush Smart One, a best-in-class smart toothbrush that provides intelligent feedback to improve the brushing performance of everyone. Since its inception, Playbrush has won multiple global prizes and was recently awarded an investment by the Google for Startups Black Founders Fund.

Founded in Japan in 1932 and now headquartered in Switzerland, Sunstar is one of the leading oral care companies in the world with its flagship brands G.U.M., Butler and Ora2. Over the past decades it has developed several distinctive businesses, and today Sunstar is a leading global company in the Oral & Body Care field, along with a major presence in the fields of Health & Beauty Care and Environment & Amenities. It is also a world-leader in the Safety Support & High Technology field. With more than 4,000 employees across the world, its products and services are distributed in more than 100 countries, with an annual turnover of around CHF 1.2bln (2020).

The Schoenherr team advising on the transaction was led by Thomas Kulnigg (partner) and further consisted of Clemens Gaugusch (attorney at law); Andreas Lengger (attorney at law); Marco Thorbauer (attorney at law); Dominik Tyrybon (associate); Teresa Waidmann (counsel); Volker Weiss (partner); and Nina Zafoschnig (associate).