Excellence in Cosmetic Dentistry Concepts & Solutions

Dec. 22nd 2010

shanghai

OUr story in China continues. The official opening of our studio in Shanghai will be in the week of February 21 st. We plan on a grand opening and have invited a number of journalists to join us in Shanghai. We further have started talk to obtain licenses for Wenzhou and Chengdu. 2 tier cities but with incredible potential. Our goal is to open before the summer.This week we also started a new advertising campaign in luxury magazines. The january issue just came out (Harper Bazaar magazine).The initial days are very promising. A good number of inquiries and a good number of appointments already set.

Dec. 15th 2010

Hong Kong and Beijing

On my way to Beijing today. Just visited the Hong Kong studio that is off to another great start in December. Evelyne is with me and is assisting in training new dentists hired in Hong Kong- Today she will witness two placements and assist if needed. Since we changed our model - it has become much easier to keep the quality up as we have to worry about few denitst doing a lot of cases versus a lot of dentist doing few cases. Our studio dentist follow a strict regimen which limits mistakes. Tommorrow I am going to see the new facility we are building in Beijing. This new faciliity will house all of our design and technical staff and will make room for milling machines We intend to start milling versus pressing in China towards the middle of next year. Another facility is dedicated to train dentist and smile consultants to staff our future studio's in China. China never seizes to amaze me. Everytime I look at the numbers and the potenital I get more excited. Our product is so right for this market. A vast rising middle and upper class with traditionally very bad teeth and a coutnry where beauty has become a status symbol. I could not have dreamed up a better market. Tonight I have dinner with a potential partner for the city of Wenzhou.

Dec. 14th 2010

Progres

Recently i received an e mail from an investor asking me whether the blog was a yearly blog. So here i am rushing to the deadline to make sure it doesn,t take a year. But he is right and i apologize. However there was a lot of news and excitement to cover. Our change from exclusive b to b to a holding hand approach b to c has been an fantastic turnaround for the company. In the direct model we became a completely integrated businnes. From chair in (anything to do with getting new customers to our studios) to chair out (anything to do with design to production to placement) we control everything. The extra margin has predominantly resulted in a superioir product which nobody matches today. Our process is now fully digital from design to millimg ,even the placement trays are digitally printed using our 3 d printers. Controlling the marketing is key to our businnes. Our product resolves so many issues for millions of people ,they just need to be told about it. Since our last blog taipei opened, Hong Kong (most succesfull to date) opened. shanghai is under construction for opening after chinese new year.Munchen openend this month and will officially start in consolidation from the first of January. Partners have been found and leases have been signed for studios in Brussels , Milan and Rome in Italy. All these openings will happen towards the end of the March quarters. we have added both operational staff as well as online marketing experts (90% of our leads are generated online.

Feb. 15th 2010

Milling

Very important day last week friday. We got delivery of our state of the art milling machine. It is a machine that is using 5 axis Ultrasonic milling. The incredible advantages for us are the reduced amount of steps needed to get to a perfect veneer. What we design with our software comes out of the machine. No more ovens, no more pressing, no more manual adjusting etc. This machine will add to both our quality as our output capacity. We are getting training in this week with a view to be able to start our first milling production in 30 days. Besides that exciting news from Taiwan. We were able to close our B to C partnership with Taiwan and will be going over there to start training on March 3rd. The Tsai family is opening the first Glamsmile center on March 10 th. Adding to this excitement is that on the same trip we make a stop in Hong Kong to witness the opening of our brand new Glamsmile clinic on March 1 st together with our partner David Lok.

Dec. 18th 2009

asia trip

3 asia stops. The first one in Taipei. An interested partner. Hidens. Hidens has 3 clinics in Taipei and wants to start franchising their concept in Taiwan with 50 franchise partners in 2010. Very interesting. Hidens joined us in Beijing where they looked at our concept store. We are currently negotiating a partner license for Taiwan. They would like to open a similar store as the Beijing store in Taipei, potentially converting one of their facilities. Second stop was Beijing. As always things are progressing nicely in Bejing - we had a visit of a potential franchisee for Korea. He will join us early January for a demo in Belgium. I think he would make a great partner. Third stop in Asia was Hong KOng. We had previously tested the B to C model in Hong Kong. We have now decided to open up a company owned practice in Hong Kong, as well as continue to work with partner dentists in Hong Kong. Results for the B to C model were extemely encouraging.