What’s your name and your role in the company?

My name is Christopher Vielhaber, and together with my wife Kathrin we are the founders and directors of Pictodent Dental Lab. I take care of the administrative side of the business and provide customer service, while Kathrin works as our Dental Technician.

Tell us about your business

We manufacture fixed dental restorations such as porcelain crowns, bridges and implants for private dental practices. After a tooth preparation, the dentist takes an impression which we pour up in die stone. That plaster model is then scanned using a 3D scanner, and a tooth is designed using CAD software. Our design then gets milled from a solid block and sintered at around 1500°C.

To match the character of your existing teeth with all their small stains and effects, we stain and glaze the crown or manually layer porcelain on top of it, so it looks and feels like a natural tooth.

What drove you to start the business?

Kathrin is a trained Dental Technician with a Master Craftsman diploma and has been a ceramist for most of her career, working for other labs. We knew that her work was getting good feedback from the dentists, and we wanted to give a try to starting our own business. We knew that it was going to be risky, as we had to start from scratch with zero contacts, but it has paid off and our small business is thriving.

Why did you choose The Accountancy Partnership?

I felt that I didn’t get value for money with our old accountants and was therefore looking for alternatives.

Would you recommend The Accountancy Partnership?

Yes, everything has been great so far.

What do you have planned for your business in the future?

Currently we are looking to invest in our own milling machinery, in order to create more value in-house. Business is going strong and we may hire staff at some point. We have also just started to offer digital smile designs, where we can include a portrait photo of the patient or even a 3D scan of the patient’s head in our CAD software. It’s great for the patient to see how their smile could look like after treatment with a predictable outcome!

If you are a dentist looking for a quality dental lab, please do get in touch via chris@pictodent.co.uk, or view the website.