Orthodontic supplies platform seeing growth with new partnerships
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Indianapolis-based Orthodontic Details has announced a collaboration with several major orthodontic suppliers to boost its online procurement platform.
Details’ platform is designed to serve as a one-stop shop for orthodontic practices to find the supplies they need. The company is partnering with suppliers such as 3M Oral Care, Franklin-based G&H Orthodontics, Dynaflex and more, and says the collaboration would benefit both practices and suppliers.
In an interview with Inside INdiana Business, co-founder and President Nick Wangler said the goal is to make life easier for all involved in the orthodontics industry.
“In orthodontics, it’s very different than other healthcare industries, specifically dental, where there are a handful of distributors that almost every practice orders from,” Wangler said. “In orthodontics, those same distributors don’t have a stranglehold on the market. They are very active and successful and a lot of practices use them. But a typical practice is ordering from 10 to 20 suppliers every single month, which means that they’re going to 10 to 20 different places to submit orders.”
Wangler said the Details platform gives practices one place to submit their orders to the same suppliers, and the collaboration with the new suppliers makes it easier for the company to onboard new customers.
Details was founded in 2017 by Wangler and Indianapolis orthodontist Dr. Jeff Biggs to create what they called an “Amazon for orthodontists.”
The company created an e-commerce marketplace that quickly saw more than a dozen suppliers listing products and more than 200 practices making purchases. But Wangler said they found a need to pivot to focus specifically on the needs of practices by creating software that creates the best way to order orthodontic supplies.
“One of the things we found was that the practice is, by and large, already know who they want to order from for most supplies,” he said. “And so rather than cramming an e-commerce website that was publicly available with pricing open on an e-commerce website, which for a typical practice, they may only need 10% of everything we have in that marketplace, we decided to just focus on making sure each practice had 100% of what it is that they typically order.”
Details then switched to a Software-as-a-Service platform in which a practice pays a subscription fee and can find everything that they typically order. Wangler said that meant the company didn’t need to initially worry about collaborating with suppliers because the practices were informing them of what they needed to order.
“Then over time as we’ve grown, the suppliers have started coming to us,” he said. “And so rather than us trying to chase both sides at once, this allowed us to build the market share, which of course is super attractive to the suppliers, with orthodontic practices, so that the suppliers then realize that there was an opportunity here, and now we’re actively collaborating with them.”
Details launched its new platform 13 months ago and has gone from zero to 85 practices as users and about a dozen suppliers. Earlier this month, supplier Wild Smiles announced Details as the exclusive ordering solution for its customers.
The company currently has 11 employees, most of which work in Indiana. While he didn’t provide specific numbers, Wangler said revenue growth has been “awesome.”
“We quickly landed on a pricing model that worked really well where we can save practices more money on their supplies than we even cost every month,” he said. “But of course a Software-as-a-Service pricing model is super attractive to investors, super attractive to capital partners. And so we’ve been really happy with that growth from zero to 85 practices and the revenue that goes along with that.”
Details has also found partners with other technology companies such as Grin, a virtual care platform that allows dentists and orthodontists to provide care for patients remotely.
“I feel lucky to work in an industry where fellow technology companies, vendors, and suppliers alike are open to new ideas,” Biggs said in written remarks. “The less time a practice spends on the administrative side of ordering, the more time they can spend clinically. That gives us as orthodontists the ability to take on more patients, while still delivering outstanding patient outcomes.”
Looking forward, Wangler said the goal is to continue grow Details’ market share in orthodontics.
“The short term goal is for us to build that supply side of the market as rapidly and quickly and successfully as we have the orthodontic side, which is then going to open up new ways to collaborate with suppliers as well as the practices,” he said. “And so we view ourselves as really a place that can make life easy and profitable for the suppliers, but also make life easy and find ways for the practices to save money as well.”