At your Service for all your Dental and Laboratory Supplies [Interview Transcript]

Ainsworth_Dental_Company_AU

Guest: David Smith
Presenter: Wayne Bucklar
Guest Bio: David Smith is the Director of Ainsworth Dental Company. It was founded in 1933 as a wholesale supplier of dental products and equipment. In its early years, the company marketed a small range of dental products from its home in Sydney’s inner south west. With a focus on quality products, Ainsworth Dental quickly developed an enviable reputation as a trusted and reliable partner for dental professionals.

Segment overview: In today’s Health Supplier Segment, we are presented with Ainsworth Dental Company‘s wide selection of products. Ainsworth Dental’s product range expanded to include waxes, gypsums, pumice, flasks and clamps, denture polishing products, and many other laboratory consumables. The company also developed Australia’s leading prophylaxis paste and several other products for the surgery environment. Today, Ainsworth Dental is one of the leading independent dental wholesalers in Australia.



Transcript

Health Professional Radio

Wayne Bucklar: You’re listening to Health Professional Radio. My name is Wayne Bucklar. Today my guest is David Smith. David is the director of Ainsworth Dental Company and we’re going to have a chat about what it is that his business does and what geographic footprint they service. David welcome to Health Professional Radio.

David Smith: Thanks so much.

W: David tell us a little bit about what footprint you service first of all. And then what it is that the Ainsworth Dental Company does?

D: Thank you, yes. Ainsworth Dental Company supplies dental consumables and we do sell across the whole of Australia and New Zealand with a certain number of customers overseas as well. We’ve been trading now for I think 83 years, so it’s a longest largest company. It’s very well-known and respected in the industry. And we supply generally, we supply products to the orthodontics industry for the manufacture and provision in essence of false teeth and dentures.

W: Okay. This is a specialist field and I guess like many people my age, dentists come from our childhood with a certain degree of phobia about them. What are the sorts of consumables that a dental practice uses?

D: They range widely from sort of compounds and other certified liquids and what have you for polishing … dentures and the final finishing of the materials. So very much more the aesthetical side right way through to the actual materials require, the critics require for the actual plates. And also then the products required actually for taking the impression within the mouth itself. So the impression tray, the chips that require to making the models are from which all of the dentures are actually then made from that model itself. So it’s a very, very large sort of range of different products, to say from the initial impression right way through to the final sort of complete and polishing of the actual denture itself.

W: Now is the art of making dentures dying off or are they becoming a less common feature of life these days?

D: To a sort of smaller extent, yes. With the advance of implants that has entered the market a little bit, the majority of people still go for dentures and there all certain applications where dentures are better than implants and vice versa. But the implant market certainly have a small effect on the denture market. Where the market has been affected more greatly is kind a breach, on certain kind a breach individual teeth being replaced that has been definitely been impacted by the implant market and also by camera as well, so computer edited design and manufacture. But when looking at the actual art of making dentures, that hasn’t changed for many, many years. It’s still very much a skill in the class that has been honed for a number of years by the actual laboratory and in many aspects the actual materials they used for actually manufacturing the denture it hasn’t changed for many years now. But could argue that it’s a dying breed but very, very, very slowly that it is changing but as I say it’s a craft that’s been developed over the years and I think it will here for many years to come still.

W: You’re listening to Health Professional Radio with Wayne Bucklar. I’m having a chat today with David Smith, director of Ainsworth Dental Company. And Ainsworth Dental Company are suppliers of a huge range of products used in the manufacturer of dentures and other prosthesis within the dental industry. Now David if you want to get across a message to clinicians who are listening, what is it about Ainsworth that makes you stand out?

D: I think two things really. The first is as far as the manufacturer of dentures is concerned and the lab consumables that we provide, it’s very much a tried and tested product that we have. As I said it’s been around for over 80 years now. As such, the clinicians have really grown up with the range, they can trust it, the forms and it does exactly what they need it to do. Which when dealing with something as sensitive as a denture, something that going into the mouth, it is absolutely paramount the accuracy is achieved and with that in mind, that’s one area that we’re used to excel in. The other area on the other sort of message that we try and get across that we’re not just purely focused on the laboratory consumables side. But we also have other products more in the clinical end of the market, that the actual dentures we use, anything from the paste that goes into your mouth and polishes your teeth at the end of the dental session, often used by the hygienist and a number of other sorts of applications and products that go into the mouth that is used sort of post-surgery. So for things like Reso-pac which is like a bandage for the mouth, if you’ve got a wound in the mouth, if you have an extraction or if you have sutures then this product will go in there. It’s like a bandage which then dissolves very slowly overtime. So one of the challenges we have is that because we’ve been around for such a long time, we’ve got such a good reputation in that consumable end in the market, it is also getting people to understand that we actually have a very strong presence in the other parts of the market as well which is rapidly evolving over time.

W: And is that the greatest misconception that you find or is there another misconception about your products and services that drives you not and keeps you awake at night?

D: I think it’s a puzzle of misconception which certain areas maybe. I think the greatest challenge for us is we’re always making to try and innovate and release new products to the market. And the dental market like many other markets, people do like using product that they’ve been using for long period of time and they’ve grow enough with and they’ve got used to. So when we’re actually developing new products, trying to get this to the market place and get people to adapt in change to new products, it’s always a challenge. So one of the things I always try and look at obviously also not just getting new products to market and looking at new innovation a better way of doing things but also looking at how we can actually get that into the market and get people trying it. It’s an age old problem that we’ve got and if anyone had any great idea as to how we can overcome that through sampling or whatever else, then I’d love to hear them.

W: David it’s been a pleasure to having a chat with you this morning. If you just joined us on Health Professional Radio, I’ve been chatting with David Smith from Ainsworth Dental Company and we have a transcript of this interview on our website and also an audio file at

www.hpr.fm. My name is Wayne Bucklar, this is Health Professional Radio.

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