AN INTERVIEW WITH MALCOLM MURTON PARTNER AT PRIDE DENTAL LABORATORY IN BEDFORD Leave a comment
Today we interviewed Malcolm Murton from Pride Dental Laboratory in Bedford. Malcolm trained as a Dental Technician at Guys Hopsital in the late 90’s and worked there for 14 years before starting his own dental laboratory business.
Malcolm, it is a pleasure to interview you and I am so pleased to see your business grow over the years into something quite special. It seems a life time ago since we worked on the same floor as each other in Guys Tower by London Bridge. In my random interview style, let me ask you some really deep questions and mix in a few random fun ones.
Thank you Matt, you’ve not done too badly yourself! Its a pleasure to feature in your first edition as editor and I’m sure the Dental Technician will go from strength to strength under your leadership.
You clearly have a passion for your profession. Over the past few years we have seen a lot of unhappiness within our profession what do you think are the main pain points for dental technicians and labs these days?
I think the biggest problem is the lack of young people coming into the profession. There’s probably a few reasons causing that, the main ones being length of basic training courses and skills required compared to the relatively low starting and long term salary prospects. There are plenty of other careers with similar or shorter training programs with better immediate and long term salary prospects. Traditionally dental labs also have a reputation for being dusty and dirty environments.
After leaving school in 1996 I spent a year in a crown and bridge lab that charged £32.50 for an NHS bonded crown, 24 years later there are a lot of labs who have been forced to charge less than this despite the huge increase in costs during this time. I’ve heard several lab owners say they make a loss on NHS work to pick up their clients private work but personally I don’t believe we should be in a situation where there are loss leaders when the products are hand made custom appliances. If the cheaper end of the market was able to charge more I believe the whole market could charge more creating greater profit that could be spent on higher wages and better working conditions.
Dentistry has taken a big kicking from covid19 and whilst the private sector appears to be largely up and running again it’s looking more difficult for the NHS labs. I believe the NHS side of our profession has been broken for many years and I really hope with the contract changes being made in the NHS and lobbying from the DLA ,there can be a brighter future for dental laboratories providing work to the NHS.
Covid19 has been a huge blow for the global economy not to mention the whole of the dental team. How was business going before March and what are your thoughts about the next 12 months?
Prior to Covid19 business was going great! We are a small lab, 5 of us in total and over recent years have been in the very fortunate position of turning away work to make sure we don’t become over busy and drop quality. We’ve always been aware that we’ve had a few good years which probably wouldn’t go on forever and felt that our model of being a small lab with low overheads would hopefully help us to weather a storm relatively unscathed. We didn’t expect to sit at home in our garden for 3 months though!
We’ve invested heavily over the last few years purchasing a building and fitting out a brand new lab. 2020 for us was going to be a consolidation year with the business and we were planning on spending some much needed funds on our house. Plans obviously change but the initial signs after reopening are positive, in June we achieved 50% of our regular turn over and July is looking like 75%, hopefully this will keep building. It appears unfortunately the country will head into a recession so predicting market conditions with possible further covid outbreaks too will be difficult but our goal now for the coming 12 months will be to get through with all of our team intact and all of our overheads, material and staffing costs covered. Anything over that will be a bonus but for sure I feel that being a small business right now will help us.
What has been your greatest achievement as a Dental Technician?
My biggest achievement is definitely our business. I am very proud of the lab we have created, the team of people that I work with, the working conditions we have and of all of the work that we produce in our lab. Every member of our team works 4 days per week (32 hrs) and i’m not aware of another UK lab that offers their whole team such a good work life balance.
Sara and I worked so hard in the beginning, regularly doing 100 hr plus a week so looking at what we have achieved now is very rewarding.
And professionally, who have you been most inspired or influenced by?
I think the people who have influenced me most in my career are people I have worked with.
Rowland Gardener gave me my first real job as a trainee in the School of dental technology at Guy’s hospital, his passion and enthusiasm for dental technology was very clear and some of that rubbed off on me.
Jeff Brookshaw was my first boss after qualifying in the Prosthetics production lab at Guy’s, many of Jeff’s ethics and techniques have stayed with me today.
Matt Wilde is someone I met about 7 years ago whilst working together at Byrnes dental laboratory in Oxford. At the time I felt I was making nice dentures that unfortunately looked like dentures. Matt re-motivated me and set me on a path of trying to make dentures that look like natural teeth and gums. Fast forward 7 years and i’m now very fortunate to work with Matt at Pride Dental Laboratory.
Social media in particular Facebook has been a great source of inspiration. There are so many talented technicians around the world that have inspired me with their work but I think for truly natural looking dentures Richard Greenlees from New Zealand is the greatest inspiration… Check him out on Facebook!
A few quick fire fun questions!
Give us an interesting fact about you.
I was taught to juggle by an Olympic bronze medalist… In sailing not juggling 🙂
What’s the best and worst vehicle (I know you love motorbikes) you have owned?
I guess the best vehicle I’ve owned is my current motorbike a Honda Fireblade and whilst it was great fun at the time probably the worst vehicle was my first motorbike a Kawasaki AR50. Cars wise my first car was a Volvo C30 D5 which was great fun but I now own two Citroen Spactoruer vans, practical but not exactly exciting.
How many pets do you have?
Two black Labradors Sam and Jimmy who come to the lab with us every day.
Do you support a Football team, if so who?
I used to support Ipswich (my home town) and Arsenal when I lived in London but these days I don’t really have time for football. Motorbike racing is more my sport.
If you had a choice between two superpowers, being invisible or flying, which would you choose and why?
Flying, I hate getting stuck in traffic!
Back to the serious questions…
What type of lab work do you most enjoy?
Any case where I know we’re really going to make a difference to the patients life. We do some oncology and paediatric work and we’re fortunate to use a lot of photos with our cases so seeing how new dentures or restorations can transform a patients smile and seeing happiness in their eyes when the case is fitted is very rewarding.
What is your least favourite part of being a lab owner?
I don’t like it when cases aren’t going smoothly, this could be for any reason like poor information or clinical work to making a mistake in the lab (we all make them) or simply the patient just changing their mind. All of this stuff causes stress and I probably let it affect me more than I should!
Are you embracing the digital technology we have available to us? Tell us a bit about that.
Yes! We invested in our first lab scanner nearly 8 years ago and definitely couldn’t be without digital. For many years we used it solely in the crown and bridge to design metal frameworks but now with a switch to chair side digital dentistry we are receiving ever increasing numbers of intra oral scan cases for which we print our own models in house with our Asiga printer. Digital is rapidly growing into the removable denture market also and we regularly use it to design and print temporary bases, implant stents internal chrome strengtheners for implant dentures and Ti frameworks for hybrid bridges. The quality of our end product is extremely important to us which means we will not use digital in any areas where a compromise to our end product will be made. Digital denture materials are improving all the time however our opinion is they are currently not a match in strength or aesthetic properties when compared to conventional techniques, so currently our use of digital in removal prosthetics is limited.
Finally, if you had one bit of advice for any technician thinking about starting their own lab, what would that be?
Be prepared to work hard, build a great team around you and don’t undercharge! Is that three bits of advice?
