Dandy

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It is still too early for me to give my review. Sometimes it takes longer for a lab to get "calibrated" to what a doctor expects. I don't think any lab ever is going to meet my unreasonable expectations (hehehe),but it's the ones that fight, scratch and claw to get there that I want to work with. Dandy seems to be trying VERY hard to get there when I say I have a problem, but I have only completed 3-4 cases with them in a months time. The problem is, what happens when I don't write eight page prescriptions with specific and detailed instructions, materials, diagnostic photos... what about the "average" first molar zirc crown. What kind of quality am I going to get when I "go through the motions" a little bit.

But as for a business model, it's pretty awesome. Everything you do is run through their online portal. "Don't have a good computer in your office with a reliable way to get on the online portal???, great!, here's this $2-3000 dollar screamer of a laptop included with the scanner."

The main problem I foresee is that they obviously are going after the Glubwell $99 market. For a lot of the dentists in high patient flow/insurance/production oriented practices, this is PERFECT. For me, I would like for some of the great technicians that do truly superior work on here to offer to subcontract with them and charge MORE than your normal fee, tell them this, and tell them to tell the dentist this. The convenience of the portal keeping all photos and scans with the case would make it well worth it. There should be an option to do a high-end boutique crown that the dang technician is going to get PAID enough to take their time with it and go above and beyond.

I once had a ceramist offer to send me a colored pencil rendition with every crown of what porcelain and stain he used to "build" his beautiful work. The lab that he worked for got bought out and that lab got bought out again and is now a part of NDX. I don't know where he ended up.

With the digital work flow, a similar level of "sharing" your work with the other party (dentist to lab AND lab to dentist) is possible. Why don't they "put the technician in the room with the patient" digitally, all the tools are there to do it.

I want Dandy to be able to do both the Glubwell 99 and the I-work-with-4-5-doctors-only-lab 399 custom crown. I may want to do a few 99ers a year. I definitely do multiple 2-3-4-even $500 crowns, inlays, onlays, etc. a month. To do that they are going to have to attract better labs to their "platform."

Why use them as the middle man if you are locked into the bulk production market, why not just use a bulk production market lab directly?
 
Affinity

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Interesting take, glad to hear a dentists view. What determines whether or not to prescribe the $500 or the $99? Are you giving the patient a choice? What are you looking for or expecting in the higher priced crowns? Are they immaculately conceived?
 
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Interesting take, glad to hear a dentists view. What determines whether or not to prescribe the $500 or the $99? Are you giving the patient a choice? What are you looking for or expecting in the higher priced crowns? Are they immaculately conceived?
Pt. finances for the $99 end of the spectrum. Very rare. For the other end (which also doesn't really happen that frequently),it is usually something exotic layered on top of me being a super-anal perfectionist and a bit of an a-hole :). I laugh when I get the bill on those and say, I made them earn the $500 on this one.

Think 5-7x the lab bill for the Dr's bare minimum and ask yourself how many pt's are getting $2500 crowns... maybe 20 in my thirteen years? Those are usually some sort of retrofit to existing partial with semi-precision C-rest type Frankenstein-crowns.
 
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Just looked in my delivery que, have a $417 gold, a $358 gold and a few ~$200 PF-HNs and a pile of 170-190 Zircs, The $2-300 Zirc would be milled wax try-in, custom lab shade, green state try-in w/ or w/o cutback type which is also rare, so 90% of what I do is $170-220 probably (most Zircs and PFMs) and then there's the damn gold crowns. I didn't charge the pt. near enough for the $417 gold crown. One of the reasons I want to try some milled Au58 crowns and see if getting the alloy from a consistent source helps any.

Not sure of what the policy of posting lab fees is on here. We're all screwed anyway once the corporate dental offices take over so I don't personally care who knows fees.
 
Affinity

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Keep it comin, we love the inside baseball. $170-190 is in the park for zirconia, gold is usually around 350, anything over 400 probaly has a big markup or a lot of gold content. Every case is different and I think youre paying a fair price if youre happy with the work. I wouldnt expect flawless work at that price but thats above production standards and prices and worth every penny if they are consistently beautiful and fit well. Would love to hear how much you get gouged for implant work!
 
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I actually just started working there recently, I started off in a Laboratory that wound up selling to one of those huge lab companies, then went to a mom and pop with about 15 employees. I can tell you this place has the technicians. I joined willingly and gladly. I don't understand the business aspects of it all but I am impressed with the attention to detail this place considers (way more so than either of the labs I worked in before.) I work remotely and I can say without a doubt this company treats its employees, dental techs and otherwise way better than I've experienced at the labs I physically worked at. The motto at both labs always just seemed to be "send it" regardless of the quality of work being shipped to the Dr. Each place has its good technicians but with every good tech there's a bad one, and the good ones are over worked trying to compensate for the poor quality of what was given to them to work on by the bad ones. Here, this doesn't seem to be the case. I'm a ceramist and designer, I hated getting cases from the people the bosses put in charge of designing because it was grind away all day just to get it to look like a tooth sometimes. Because it's digitised here every design has to be just right and just to the drs preferences. I feel like I've finally found a place that will show me the respect I deserve as a technician. I hope this doesn't sound super preachy as well. I don't know what lies ahead in the future here but I know I ran road runner style to this place from the previous lab I worked.
Thank you for the information into Dandy! I have already had my interview and will be taking a practical next week. The person that interviewed me told me some of the day to day. I would like to know more tho! Specifically about the day to day/work schedule, if you are still happy there, and how fully remote 3Shape works. Did they send you a computer with 3Shape on it?
 
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What gold percentage is the $417 gold crown? It’s difficult to draw conclusions from a single crown, really the average cost of a gold crown over a few months is more important simply because they can vary in size dramatically. I have an account that has a surcharge to patients for anything above 2 dwt’s.
 
npdynamite

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Thank you for the information into Dandy! I have already had my interview and will be taking a practical next week. The person that interviewed me told me some of the day to day. I would like to know more tho! Specifically about the day to day/work schedule, if you are still happy there, and how fully remote 3Shape works. Did they send you a computer with 3Shape on it?
Based on my interview with them I believe that you will be logging into a virtual computer hosted on amazons cloud. It took them multiple tries to get me the correct link/login so that I could do there "practical" I ended up having to put aside every night for a week to finally get on and have it work (once while trying to do my practical they had someone log in on top of me and boot me off)

During the practical I rejected 50-75% of the scans for various issues such as bad scans and such (they said to treat it as if they were real cases and I would have only accepted and done one or two of them without contacting the dr.) They never called back, I'm guessing they wanted someone who would have just proceeded with more of the cases.

As a side note, trying to design on a remote virtual computer was fairly nightmarish, especially when you add in that they very well might not have a library available that you are used to or even like at all.
 
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Seems like the business model could be a win. They potentially carry a lower overhead per “employee” with most of the cases being digital and remote design. They lock in practices by providing the scanner and a minimum recurring balance. Scan and send. What am I missing?
 
Affinity

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"what am i missing?"
The technicians to do the work. Last estimate I saw on bureau of labor statistics was around $30k dental techs in the US. That is around 1 tech for every 10k people.. They will have to start going after the chairside assistants before long. The business model only works if you have trained techs to do the work on a large scale, and maybe it is easier to train a cad monkey than an all around tech, but I think thats the weak spot. As I mentioned before, its easy to give out free scanners to get clients if you have millions in VC. Show me the profit.

In a few years the techs wont be needed, Crowns will be designed with help from AI and any adjustments will be made quickly with a slider like this software..

 
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They are in the software biz, nowhere in their resume does it talk about dentistry, only organizing orders with proprietary software. Or adding extensions to design software, I wonder what 3shape thinks about that? It basically sounds like they are trying to make the nationwide lab industry its bitch and use us as their technicians, while they skim off the top..
 
npdynamite

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Seems like the business model could be a win. They potentially carry a lower overhead per “employee” with most of the cases being digital and remote design. They lock in practices by providing the scanner and a minimum recurring balance. Scan and send. What am I missing?
Your missing the fact that they aren't a lab. They still need physical labs to do their work but if they were successful they would likely put many of the labs they are relying on out of business. There is no way they can pay all of their techs and the labs that are doing the work a reasonable wage while also giving all of there clients scanners and offering competitive pricing. They also have extremely little ability to control the quality of work across clients so inevitably they will end up with a poor reputation for both quality and consistency. This will mean they have to be competing with Glidewell type prices. Once again, this means they aren't going to be able to pay labs reasonably. So what labs are going to be dumb enough to do the physical fabrication for them? Or are they going to outsource to China? This is a losing business model, either for them, or if they are successful, for the industry.
 
Brett Hansen CDT

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Your missing the fact that they aren't a lab. They still need physical labs to do their work but if they were successful they would likely put many of the labs they are relying on out of business. There is no way they can pay all of their techs and the labs that are doing the work a reasonable wage while also giving all of there clients scanners and offering competitive pricing. They also have extremely little ability to control the quality of work across clients so inevitably they will end up with a poor reputation for both quality and consistency. This will mean they have to be competing with Glidewell type prices. Once again, this means they aren't going to be able to pay labs reasonably. So what labs are going to be dumb enough to do the physical fabrication for them? Or are they going to outsource to China? This is a losing business model, either for them, or if they are successful, for the industry.
This seems spot on to me. They contacted my lab several months back....I didn't return the call.
 
RDA

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It is still too early for me to give my review. Sometimes it takes longer for a lab to get "calibrated" to what a doctor expects. I don't think any lab ever is going to meet my unreasonable expectations (hehehe),but it's the ones that fight, scratch and claw to get there that I want to work with. Dandy seems to be trying VERY hard to get there when I say I have a problem, but I have only completed 3-4 cases with them in a months time. The problem is, what happens when I don't write eight page prescriptions with specific and detailed instructions, materials, diagnostic photos... what about the "average" first molar zirc crown. What kind of quality am I going to get when I "go through the motions" a little bit.

But as for a business model, it's pretty awesome. Everything you do is run through their online portal. "Don't have a good computer in your office with a reliable way to get on the online portal???, great!, here's this $2-3000 dollar screamer of a laptop included with the scanner."

The main problem I foresee is that they obviously are going after the Glubwell $99 market. For a lot of the dentists in high patient flow/insurance/production oriented practices, this is PERFECT. For me, I would like for some of the great technicians that do truly superior work on here to offer to subcontract with them and charge MORE than your normal fee, tell them this, and tell them to tell the dentist this. The convenience of the portal keeping all photos and scans with the case would make it well worth it. There should be an option to do a high-end boutique crown that the dang technician is going to get PAID enough to take their time with it and go above and beyond.

I once had a ceramist offer to send me a colored pencil rendition with every crown of what porcelain and stain he used to "build" his beautiful work. The lab that he worked for got bought out and that lab got bought out again and is now a part of NDX. I don't know where he ended up.

With the digital work flow, a similar level of "sharing" your work with the other party (dentist to lab AND lab to dentist) is possible. Why don't they "put the technician in the room with the patient" digitally, all the tools are there to do it.

I want Dandy to be able to do both the Glubwell 99 and the I-work-with-4-5-doctors-only-lab 399 custom crown. I may want to do a few 99ers a year. I definitely do multiple 2-3-4-even $500 crowns, inlays, onlays, etc. a month. To do that they are going to have to attract better labs to their "platform."

Why use them as the middle man if you are locked into the bulk production market, why not just use a bulk production market lab directly?
Are you associated with Dandy, in any form? I'm asking, because this sounds like an advertisement for their services.
 
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