In 2018, Ultradent Products will celebrate 40 years in the dental industry. Beginning as a small, family run business, the company now boasts more than 1,000 employees at its 460,000-square-foot facility in South Jordan, Utah, in addition to other offices and subsidiaries in Asia, Europe, Australia, and South America. It also offers more than 1,600 dental products worldwide.
“Looking back on the last 40 years, I’m overwhelmed with gratitude for the sacrifice and hard work put in by so many people, whether it be my own family, our fabulous Ultradent employees, or the leaders in dentistry who championed us from the beginning and along the way in this wonderful endeavor,” said Dan Fischer, DDS, founder and CEO of Ultradent Products.
“The time has truly flown by, and it’s amazing to look back on the progress we’ve made since our humble beginnings at the kitchen table of my home,” Fischer said. “I often say that companies are not made of concrete, glass, and steel. They’re made of people, and people serving people is what business is all about.”
Fischer began Ultradent when he set out to achieve predictable, rapid, and profound hemostasis in the mouth. He believed that if he could come up with a product that met that criteria, he would not only save dentists time and money by allowing them to work more efficiently, he would also enable them to produce higher quality, more accurate impressions.
Fischer began experimenting with different chemistries at his small dental practice in Salt Lake City. By 1978, he had invented and patented Ultradent’s first product, Astringedent hemostatic. That same year, he founded Ultradent Products to market and sell his invention from a 40- by 60-foot metal hay barn on his property. The company now researches, designs, manufactures, packages, and ships 95% of what it sells in its South Jordan facility. It also exports 70% of its products to more than 100 countries.
“We believe in staying in touch with our products. The more one outsources, the more one delegates shipping, or production, or R&D to other parts of the world, the more one loses touch with what has made them who they are,” Fischer said.
Furthermore, Ultradent supports and donates products to humanitarian efforts locally, nationally, and internationally, including the Crown Council and Sealants for Smiles. It also founded and sponsors its own 501c3 organization, the Diversity Foundation, committed to preventing hate crimes and intolerance by supporting more than 50 students pursuing higher education as undergraduates and graduates.
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