Oregon, how do your prices compare to other labs in the area, not mail order lab work but your local competition.
Most Drs Ive met want a reasonable priced crown, not a cheap one, and not a super high priced one. The cheap crn producers will ge alot of crappy Drs but no remakes because they will seat everything. The super high end Drs need alot of hand holding and butt kissing. Neither one of those are for me.
Have you invested the 15 grand for your own pressing system? IMO, a lab today wont survive if they dont have a system to do pressed crns both singles and bridges and pom and press to zr. I personally use Dale to mill copings or bridges,when I have a call for it. Im not going to invest in a milling system anytime soon.
The way I see it the big labs and overseas labs cant compete with me.
They dont go to the office and do shade cks or look at those anteriers that just dont look quite right when the Dr cant explan it over the phone.
They dont pick up a ptr in the evening and have it back the next day to wax those crns under a partial.
They dont turn those crns around in 3 days for the patient thats "going out of town".
This is a hard business we are in!!
I was going to hang it up 12 yrs ago. I had a full time waxer, metal finisher model/delivery person, 2 after hour piece workers, and a parttime person to do office and billing.
It was my most difficult time in lab business. Either so much work that we had screwups or not enough to pay bills and taxes and constant bitching from employees and the difficulty of finding and keeping quality employees that wanted to work.
So over a time, I fired everybody!
Now its just me and my wife. She does the billing and model work and pickups and I do everyting else.
Im making more money now then I ever did before. We do between 40 to 60 units a week. But I had to change my system. I work by the week now. I trim dies and wax pfms Mon. Invest pfms tues and wax all ceramic. Finish metal on wed and press. Thurs finish and opague and try to start building.
Finish building on Fri and start grinding, and 2nd bakes and glaze on Sat.
My wife delivers all the weeks work on Mon AM so the Drs seldom call looking for cases.
I work ALOT of hours, but with half the stress.
In my opinion small labs rule!!!!!!
Good Luck, Al
PS: the milling technology isnt going to change things too much thats just for production, What we have to be prepared for is digital impressions.