Top-to-Bottom Makeover Propels Lab to Growth

Since 2008, Concord Dental Lab, Westford, MA, has grown from a four-person analog laboratory to an 18-person digital lab with an annual sales volume that’s five times what it was 11 years ago. Here’s the full story.

When Bob Farago purchased Concord Dental Laboratory in the early 1990s, he focused on what he did best: quality restorations and the kind of service he had grown accustomed to while working in-house with Dr. Lloyd Miller earlier in his career. But like many lab owners who spent their lives at the bench, he discouraged his son, Mike Farago, from following in his footsteps so Mike pursued a degree in business.

But in 2008, Mike was drawn in; he was working as a small business consultant when he approached his father about the potential he saw with CAD/CAM, urging him to consider the technology as a way to grow his four-person laboratory. Bob, then a self-proclaimed...