Creating a niche with dental chair upholstery

A little drilling into the dental chair market can fill a void in your business.

Upholstery Journal | June 2008

by Janet Preus

With the price of a new dental chair hovering around $15,000, reupholstering for $3,000 to $5,000 is an attractive alternative for most dentists.

Dr. Jim Frush, who practiced dentistry for 45 years before retiring to his Minnesota lake home, bought newly refurbished dental chairs once, and reupholstered his chairs twice.

Using Dr. Frush as the model, the typical dentist has three chairs in his office. Over the course of a career, every dentist would reupholster at least six to nine chairs, and some dentists will reupholster more often. Others, of course, just start over and renovate completely.

“A lot of guys like the brand new, high-tech stuff and they’re trading up all the time,” Dr. Frush says. “If equipment needs to be reupholstered, they just buy new. However, most dentists would rather reupholster.”

Dental chair upholstery is steady work for those who do it, and for those who don’t, it can be a rewarding new market to tap into.

The dental niche

“It’s not high volume,” says Rich Tice, who owns Vinyl Crafters in Walkersville, Md. “You can only sell to a dentist, so upholsterers have to market something that’s going to compete.”

Tice started in automotive upholstery and says the transition to dental chairs just made sense for him.

“It probably lends itself better to someone who is familiar with mechanical and electrical things, and moveable parts,”he says. “You’re going to be getting into that with some of those chairs.”

When he started dental chair reupholstery, Tice had just moved to a new location and wanted to apply his automotive upholstery skills to a different market. When his own dentist asked him to recover a chair, it was the beginning of a new career. For the past 19 years, Tice has specialized in upholstery for medical products, frequently working on site—and over weekends—to accommodate scheduling concerns in a busy dental practice.

Patterns and practice

Tice does some upholstery work in his shop. Because he knows the chairs and has templates, he can make all the soft upholstered parts in his shop and have the customer assemble it.

“If I know the brand, model and color, and it has the style of upholstery that is removable from the frame, then I can make it up and send it to them,” he says.

In some cases, the upholstered parts are screwed onto the frame, snapped to the frame, or fastened with Velcro.

“They don’t have to do anything until they get my upholstery,” Tice says. “Then they can unsnap or unscrew, take it apart and put it back together.” Tice says that he’s saved a lot of time using this method.

Ralph Van Praag and his wife, who is a retired dentist, own Upholstery Packages & Services in Arden, N.C., and do nothing but dental chair upholstery.

“I know the dental chairs,” Ralph Van Praag says. “We have all the set patterns for all the different models. I know almost all the models for the nine major manufacturers.” He has 11 employees and is scheduled six months to one year in advance.

“On Tuesday, I have 17 chairs going out of here, and that’s not the only shipping going out next week,” Van Praag says. “We’re the largest upholsterer, aside from the original manufacturers.”

Van Praag works in the factory and on site, traveling throughout specific areas of the Southeast.

Van Praag, who is located near Ashville, N.C., says it also helps to operate in a larger metropolitan area, particularly if you are able to service a large area of job sites. His company has repeat customers, and only markets itself online or at dental trade shows.

New fabrics

Fabrics for dental chair upholstery must measure up to some rigorous standards. Regular soap and water will keep the upholstery in good condition, but dental offices must use powerful antimicrobial cleaning agents.

“Upholstery has to be able to handle this new germicide that can kill spores, because they’re so difficult to kill,” Dr. Frush says. “That stuff is super caustic, and it will stain the vinyl slightly over years of use.”

Fortunately, companies who are well aware of these requirements have produced new fabrics that are up to the challenge. There are several different options to present to customers.

Ultraleather. Ultraleather by Ultrafabrics LLC was developed to withstand the harsh cleaning agents demanded of upholstery in a medical environment, and maintain a soft hand.

“Our products can be disinfected with bleach,” says Danielle O’Kane, sales manager for specialty fabrics at Ultrafabrics. “You can clean our products with soap and water, Fantastik and disinfectant solutions.”

The company says that Ultraleather, formulated with a biodegradable rayon backcloth composed of a wood bi-product, virtually duplicates the surface of genuine leather, but is more resistant to temperature changes. It tailors easily and offers a wide array of color choices.

Clearly, it’s not enough for a fabric to be tough. Dental patients expect comfort, and even ambience and luxury. O’Kane says that there is a big movement toward cosmetic dentistry, and some dentists are hiring designers to renovate their offices with a spa feel.

Tice has customers who have asked for Ultraleather, and he has used it for about three years. He says that it is very soft and comfortable.

MorCare. Available from Triden Distributors Ltd. and made by Morbern, MorCare uses a special finish for health care applications. This versatile upholstery fabric provides bacterial resistance and is treated to be antimicrobial. It has proven its durability under an exacting cleaning regimen and is available in an array of patterns and colors.

Naugahyde, Boltaflex. Richard Lomoth, Dental Comfort Ltd., Toronto, Ontario, says that the better vinyls hold up well. In addition to MorCare and Ultraleather, he named Beauty Guard from Naugahyde and Boltaflex from Omnova Solutions.

The future of cut and sew

Most marketable products offer a cost-effective alternative to the consumer to challenge the industry standard. Vacuum-formed upholstery for dental chairs is the inexpensive alternative some manufacturers are preferring to sewn upholstery.

Dental chair manufacturer A-dec does all the upholstery for its new chairs in house. June Lietz, product manager for dental chairs, stools and lights at A-dec, says that it has eight to 10 full-time employees sewing sets and pieces of upholstery, and the remainder of the 40 employees in the department work on the vacuum-formed styles. A-dec still uses a hand-assembled process with Ultraleather for sewn products, which make up about 50 percent of the company’s total chairs produced.

Green issues present an additional consideration. Although the new products, such as MorCare and UltraLeather offer an environmentally friendly replacement for PVC, the industry has not yet developed an alternative for thermal formable material.

“When a greener alternative is developed, we will research and test in the dental environment,” Lietz says.

Van Praag admits that the trend is moving towards vacuum forming, but he feels it’s still a few years off.

“Vacuum forming is easier and more cost-effective to make the upholstery for the dental chair,” he says. “Semi-skilled labor can just pull the vinyl over the chair.”

Tice has taken note of the trend away from steel and wood substructures for chairs, but he thinks the plastic formed chairs do not hold up as well.

“I’ve actually seen where they’re caving in towards the center, and they’re flexing and they break,” he says. “It’s cheaper for the manufacturer, and initially for the dentist. But they can’t just think about recovering, they have to think about that broken substrate.”

On the other hand, Tice says that he is still reupholstering wood and steel chairs that are 25 years old. Van Praag’s shop reupholsters older chairs, but cautions that the condition of the substrate for a traditional steel and frame-built model can be just as important as the cover. His shop works down to the frame replacement. He says that even if it’s the best vinyl in the world, the cover will last three to four years at the most, unless you replace the foam core, too, and some shops just don’t have the ability to purchase and cut the foam.

The opportunity to recover dental chairs remains available for upholsterers, and the ability to customize and use more comfortable fabrics will remain appealing for many clients. Adding dental chairs to your upholstery business can mean yet another challenging and rewarding way to turn a profit.

Janet Preus is a freelance editor and writer. She lives in St. Paul, Minn.

Comments

Comments are the opinion of individual posters and do not reflect the views of Upholstery Journal or Industrial Fabrics Association International.

• 

  Eliza Winters

  Jan 18, 2012
  5:51 pm CST

  Cosmetic Dentistry

  Thanks for the great idea. I am just starting a small practice in cosmetic dentistry. I think that this is a great idea to help alleviate some of my set up costs. Thanks for the great suggestion!

• 

  Jun

  Sep 27, 2010
  2:56 pm CDT

  Great Idea

  This is an excellent article for any small dental company. My friend recently opened up his own practice and couldn't afford buying brand new chairs. Thus he did exactly as the article mentioned and reuphostled them. They look great and nobody is the wiser!