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Corporate Profile: Dentaurum Benjamin Lund, Editor, Orthotown Magazine

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Dentaurum USA General Manager Craig Beach		 Dentaurum's strong bond with the orthodontic market and unique ortho appliance options look to catapult this long-standing dental company into the next century.

by Benjamin Lund, Editor, Orthotown Magazine

For more than 120 years, Germany-based Dentaurum and its international subsidiaries have been recognized as innovators in the manufacturing of reliable products for dentists, orthodontists and dental technicians all over the world. The company's current claim to fame is its tomas TAD system and its recent venture into the self-ligating bracket market. Orthotown Magazine recently interviewed Dentaurum USA General Manager Craig Beach to understand more about Dentaurum's history, the company's current and future orthodontic innovations and its involvement in the U.S. market.

Craig Beach with Dentaurum CEO Mark Pace (far right), and the tomas manufacturing team.


Craig, tell me a little about yourself. What are your responsibilities at Dentaurum? What did you do before taking your current position with the company?
Beach: Prior to working for Dentaurum, I worked as the financial reporting manager for SKF, a $9 billion international bearing manufacturer. I enjoyed it there, but I wanted to work with a smaller company where I could provide more daily input and be more actively involved in operational and strategic decision making for the company. Dentaurum fit this plan perfectly as it is a smaller, family-owned German company, but still has a long tradition of making innovative, quality products and maintaining high ethical and environmental standards. Over the years with Dentaurum, I gained more experience in sales and worked very closely with the management team. In late 2004, I accepted the position of national sales manager, and became general manager in 2007.

My main challenge and responsibility, as general manager of the U.S., has been to ensure that Dentaurum continues growing and developing in the U.S. market. Even though much of my activity takes place from our headquarters in Newtown, Pennsylvania, I have made it a high priority to continue actively selling in the field and discussing products with our customers on a regular basis. I truly enjoy talking with doctors, lab owners and staff members, and hearing the feedback about our products first-hand. Many have said that it is tough to leave the ortho industry, because orthodontics gets into your blood, and I agree. I have developed a great passion for this industry.

How would you explain Dentaurum to an orthodontist meeting you for the first time?
Beach: Dentaurum is a worldwide dental company that covers an impressive range of dental applications and focuses on providing innovative, precisely engineered, high-quality products to the market at a fair pricing level. Just focusing on orthodontics, we cover one of the widest ranges of applications and products for all possible areas of expertise. Whether it is TADs, instruments, fixed and removable lab appliances, brackets, buccal tubes, wires or bands, we offer the most complete array of products to the market. We even supply lingual orthodontics with our "Magic" bracket, and have the only colored ceramic brackets available on the market. Many customers know about the quality of our products, but they assume we must be priced like a BMW or Mercedes, simply because we are a company with German engineering and manufacturing standards. Instead, many doctors find that they can actually upgrade the quality of their products and yet still realize cost savings through Dentaurum.
Since Dentaurum's formation in Pforzheim, Germany in 1886, it has had a long and profitable history in dentistry. How has Dentaurum been able to stay competitive in the dental and orthodontic markets for so long?
Beach: As a family-owned company, our decisions on product investment and R&D are not driven by stock price or shareholders, but rather by the principles and foundation that have guided us for 122 years. We try to listen closely to the market, so we can react quickly and effectively to the changing demands of the industry. Furthermore, Dentaurum exports to more than 130 countries, which provides great stability for the company when economies of scale begin to struggle or pose challenges.
Dentaurum Headquarters in Germany

Can you please explain Dentaurum's current business philosophy?
Beach: Dentaurum operates with a mind set of, "Core: competence — from the root to the crown," which basically states that our goal is to provide the industry with the most innovative, precisely engineered and high-quality products available for treating everything from the root to the crown of the tooth. We achieve this goal in the market through a focus on quality, knowledge, service and innovation. Whether a doctor is looking for dental products and equipment, implants, ceramics, prosthetics or orthodontic products, Dentaurum covers the entire spectrum. We believe we have the widest range of dental products of any single manufacturer worldwide! Furthermore, we are also highly specialized in providing biocompatible products to the industry, and we are the only company offering 100 percent nickel-free/titanium brackets, buccal tubes, wires and RPEs to the market.

Dentaurum has recently seen some interesting growth in orthodontics with tomas temporary anchorage devices. Why has the tomas pin become one of the more popular TADs among orthodontists?
Beach: When we first launched tomas (which stands for "temporary orthodontic micro anchorage system") in 2004, there were very few orthodontists using TADs. In fact only about two or three companies were actively selling TADs in the U.S. market. However, over the past four years, TADs have exploded in a very big way in the United States. It is not uncommon today to see one or two TADs in many orthodontic patients for various treatment techniques such as intrusion, molar protraction and distalization, en-masse retraction, canted occlusal plane, midline shifts, etc. At first, many doctors expressed concern that their patients would be afraid of TADs, but many teenagers have actually shown excitement about trying them and have even showed them off to their friends after placement. TADs have now become a staple product for most orthodontists and provide an exciting new addition to the armamentarium of any orthodontic practice.
There are two main reasons why tomas has become a market leader in the TAD market. First, we are still the only company that offers a complete support package for the product. We offer handbooks, seminars, knowledgeable reps, a TAD Web site, and we recently launched the only TAD auxiliary kit available on the market! From the very beginning, we have strived to be "your complete anchorage resource," and we offer the greatest level of support available instead of simply selling doctors a starter kit and wishing them good luck.

Secondly, many orthodontists have found that our universal cross-slot head design is the most versatile design on the market, allowing more treatment alternatives than any other TAD design. This design, with the patented undercut, allows for simple ligation with light curing composite. Many other companies need four to five different head designs to achieve what a single tomas pin can accomplish. From an inventory standpoint, this is a very attractive benefit of our TAD design.
tomas TAD

Another key benefit to our cross-slot design is the ability to choose between direct or indirect anchorage at anytime. This provides about 30 percent more alternatives for treatment compared to most designs with a round hole or hook design that simply focuses on a "pulling" mechanic with elastics or coil springs. Other TAD designs require the doctor to manually tie the steel wire into the slot or round hole, which can be a very tedious process, can cause future complications with patient comfort and also can become unstable. With the tomas pin, you simply lay the wire into the cross-slot, put a drop of flowable LC composite on the head and cure. To remove or change the stabilization wire, you simply take a Weingart plier and gently squeeze the LC composite, which allows it to crack or crumble right off. This undercut also provides a nice area for using elastics, powerchain or coil springs, if direct anchorage is preferred. Simple, versatile and low-profile is how many doctors describe the tomas head design.

How did Dentaurum start developing orthodontic implants?
Beach: Dentaurum began developing the tomas system because of our philosophy of offering complete systems to the dental professional. We actively search for possibilities for interdisciplinary treatment to be able to use and cross-pollinate our expertise in orthodontics, implantology, prosthetics and ceramics. Starting with our experience in dental implants we wanted to bridge the gap and introduce a product that brings the advantages of implants to orthodontics. We approached several orthodontists and implantologists with our ideas, and then began with prototype palatinal implants in 1996. However, we soon found that these implants had severe restrictions in orthodontics, so we then began developing a "micro-implant" design, which was not as invasive and could be loaded immediately. In collaboration with practitioners and professionals in both orthodontics and oral surgery we were able to perfect our design and develop a product that answers both the concerns of the orthodontists and the oral surgeons. By 2003, our final product had been perfected and we officially introduced the tomas pin to the market in 2004. Because of our experience in implantology, we were well aware of the importance of the sterilization process and reducing any contamination on the TAD, and that is why we were the first company to offer gamma-sterilized TADs. As you can see, we prefer not to rush the launch of any of our products without first completing extensive testing on the quality & design of the product. We believe that the tomas pin is one of the only TADs to be completely designed "by the orthodontist, for the orthodontist."

What sort of education do you offer orthodontists considering placing TADs?
Beach: We recently became the only company on the market that is offering our seminars and education on TADs for free! These seminars are offered with experienced and excellent speakers like Dr. Sebastian Baumgaertel, Dr. Axel Bumann and others who offer a great deal of informative and interesting insight into TADs (Editor's note: visit www.tomasforum.com for more details on each speaker and a schedule of Dentaurum's upcoming free seminar dates). The only nominal fee that we charge is an optional materials fee for the hands-on segment of the seminar, which allows each doctor to place four TADs and the auxiliaries on a model. Attendees can then take this model back to their practices to use as a great patient consultation aide. Even if someone has attended other seminars, I would highly recommend attending one of our free seminars, as we have heard from many attendees that they are by far the most logical, step-by-step, scientifically based lectures available.

Self-ligating (SL) brackets have been one of the "hotter" products on the orthodontic market for the last few years, but Dentaurum has just now developed its own self-ligating bracket design. With other companies offering self-ligating brackets, why finally release these brackets now?
Beach: We estimate that SL brackets currently make up about 40 percent of the worldwide bracket market, and are still growing. This means that it is obviously a very important product segment for us, and has been a high priority of ours for quite some time now. We could have rushed a product to the market with an SL bracket more than two years ago, but we noticed that several other companies struggled with disappointing product launches due to quality problems, design issues, patent infringement issues, etc. We took our time to develop and fully test our self-ligating bracket, because we wanted to ensure that we came out with a design that is special and different, rather than simply developing another "me too" SL bracket.

What does Dentaurum's SL bracket system offer orthodontists and patients that other companies'
systems don't?
Beach: Even though SL brackets have been around for many years now, it is still very difficult to find an orthodontist who is completely satisfied with his/her SL bracket. Most of the complaints have centered around the quality of the door or clip design, or with the high-profile, uncomfortable size of the bracket. We tried to address these two concerns with the design of our Discovery SL bracket, and we feel that this bracket fills a huge gap in the SL market by providing the lowest-profile SL bracket available with a very easy, efficient and reliable clip design. More importantly, we are able to offer these significant advantages, while still saving the doctor 25 percent vs. the market-leading SL brackets. With all of these benefits, it has come as no surprise that our new product launch this year has exceeded our expectations and we look forward to great future success with this bracket.
discovery SL - Self-Ligating Bracket

For orthodontists currently using your products, what changes and/or improvements can they expect in the near future?
Beach: We are constantly looking for ways to improve and change our products for the better. We have recently improved all of our single-piece brackets by adding laser-etched identification markings into the base of each bracket. These markings are much more clear and easy to read vs. the standard markings or dyes that are used on the bracket tie-wings, and have been very well accepted by the market. Next, we have recently launched a new archwire that allows for 30 percent less friction when compared to other NiTi wires, which obviously provides a great advantage in the treatment with self-ligating brackets. Also, we are offering a mini buccal tube for the second molars that bonds so cleanly and perfectly to the mesial cusp that we can guarantee it will reduce your bond failure on the second molars or you get your money back. Many doctors began trying this tube only with partially erupted molars, and were so impressed with the results that they now use it on all their second molars.

What sort of new products and innovations are on the horizon for Dentaurum?
Beach: Currently, in orthodontics, the fastest growing product segments are TADs and self-ligating brackets. Therefore, it would be safe to assume that the market can look forward to some exciting and innovative new products in these two segments from Dentaurum. In the TAD segment, we are always looking to further improve our "complete system" and ensure that we continue to provide everything related to TADs from A to Z. We are currently developing some exciting, new auxiliaries and attachments that will make the orthodontists' jobs even easier in using TADs. In the self-ligating product segment, there continues to be growing demand for a ceramic version of our Discovery SL bracket, so that might be something to expect in the more distant future. However, no matter what happens, the market can depend on Dentaurum to continue producing innovative, high-quality and relevant products as we have done for the past 122 years and hope to do for the next 122 to come!
Orthotown Magazine
September 2025
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