$1.3bn smile on American faces

IN THE Austin Powers movies, American audiences always roar with laughter when Mike Myers' British comic character emerges from the Seventies with horrible, crooked, yellow teeth.

America's obsession with perfectly aligned and pretty teeth is the stuff of such cultural bias that in the same way Europeans joke about overweight Americans, US tourists to Britain frequently speak of their horror at the bad teeth peering out from behind so many British lips.

In the US, a pretty mouth is big business. Straightening teeth with braces and puffing lips with silicon injections are commonplace, not just in Hollywood, but across America.

The latest trend in the search for the perfect pucker is teeth whitening. Consumer-products giant Procter & Gamble recently launched Crest Whitestrips, which are designed to bleach teeth 10 times whiter than traditional toothpaste does. P&G expects $200m (£139m) in sales in the first year from the strips, which cost $44 a box. Home bleaching kits from Den-Mat, the maker of Rembrandt Whitening dental products, also cost about $50 for a mouthpiece and a small supply of whitening gel.

The business in brighter smiles, estimated at $1.3bn last year, is growing so fast that several companies have opened chains of teeth-whitening centres, where patients are charged $300 or more for treatments that clean and bleach pearly whites to a shine.

The teeth-whitening chains are styled after laser eye surgery centres, but have a big advantage over eye surgery in that the procedure is not as complicated. Dentists say it is safe. Sensitive teeth and gums are the most common side effect.

BriteSmile, the first publicly held company to open a chain of teeth-whitening centres in the US, recorded a triple-digit revenue gain to $12.3m in the third quarter, though start-up costs for the young company are high and profitability is still at least a quarter away, it said.

Analysts estimate the market could rise to $4bn in the next decade. Demographics are working in the industry's favour. Ageing baby boomers, who have the most disposable income, also have ageing teeth, discoloured by years of wear and tear; coffee, wine or tobacco stains.

'My daughter said to me, Dad, your teeth are yellow and when I looked in the mirror I was shocked to see she was right. My teeth had become very discoloured,' said Tim Roche. Since then the 44-year-old Washington professional has spent 20 minutes several nights a week with his teeth encased in a small plastic tray moulded to the shape of his mouth and filled with whitening gel. He said the results have been noticeable. Coffee stains have disappeared and his teeth are several shades lighter. 'Unlike some of the other signs of ageing, this one was something I could do something about,' he laughed.