The Next US Dental Laboratory Industry

There's always a lot of great technical talk here, but I would love to participate in some conversation about the trends taking place in the industry and how they affect us.

I started Dale Dental 12 years ago as a way for labs to get access to the restorations they needed to grow their business. To me however, Dale was always about more than the restorations or the cad/cam or anything else like that. Dale was about a paradigm shift in the way labs work. I believed then, as I do now, that labs needed to focus more on what they make, rather than how they make. I grew up in the old dental lab industry where technicians had to focus on the "how to make" things like the ratios and mixing of powder and water for accurate models or how to accurately cast alloys or get ceramics to fire just right.

Today, technology lets labs focus more on creating the value their doctors need for some of their cases. Understanding your labs strongest value proposition and being able to articulate that to attract the dentists that need and will pay for it is, and will always be, critical for success. I look forward to discussing what I see as a new business model. One where labs start to really identify their strengths and "double down" on them instead of trying to be everything to any doctor that will "call them for a pick up" and, one where labs use scanners linked to a Dale Dental type, to access what they need as opposed to focusing on how to make everything and running equipment.

Best to all Dave