Our Story

It all started with a bride, a box, and a boyhood idea. We’ll let Dean, one of our founders, tell you the story:

When I was boy, I used to run my finger down the side of the comb and hear the noise the teeth made. I always thought it would be cool if the comb could play a tune. Over the years I tried things like cutting combs with wire cutters—all that makes is a mangled comb.

Fast forward to 2014 when my oldest daughter was getting married. She and her sister designed this fabulous box to welcome wedding guests when they arrived from out of town. It had homemade cookies, a calligraphed guide of things to do in town, and other treats. I wanted in on the box, but they said no electronics, which is what I usually design.

By happy coincidence, this was around the time 3D printers were starting to take off, which meant I could finally make a musical comb. The wedding march was the perfect tune for the comb. The first time I played it, everyone smiled and the Here Combs the Bride musical comb was approved for the box! My pal Bob helped me print all the combs just in time for the wedding—thanks, Bob.

At the wedding gatherings, guests were happily playing the comb and afterwards people began asking me to create combs that played happy birthday, school fight songs, corporate jingles, and movie themes. That was the aha moment that these musical combs could make people smile, so I patented the musical comb and streamlined the process of tune to teeth. A few years later I met Greg, who is a product design and manufacturing master—he was the one who turned the comb into a quality manufacturable product. We founded SmileNow Design and this became our first product.

We’ve made lots of custom combs for friends and now that we have corporate clients, we can spread the smiles to lots more people, which makes us happy. Creating a product has also allowed us to produce our Old MacDonald musical comb, which we made to give to children at children’s hospitals. Seeing kids smile because of something we made makes us even more happy.