• Happy Holidays from Cafepharma! To allow its staff to spend holiday time with their families, the Cafepharma Message Boards will be switched to read-only from 6:00 PM Eastern time on Tuesday, December 24 until 10:00 PM Eastern time on Wednesday, December 25. During this time, all posts will be available for view. However, no one will be able to make new posts during this time.


What's the deal with Thommen?

Quote
Anonymous said:
The people who were blow out made some decent money and they thought their "tenure" was secure as well. Nobel has you believin" all is well on the homefront. What is interesting is this guy admits he made more money last year than this year, but he is OK with that! Way to go! Its good that you are so ambitious that you accept a pay cut each year, great job Nobel Corporate in hiring super ambitious sales reps! Maybe in 5 years if things continue as they are you will be making minimum wage! Lets keep our fingers crossed.
Click to expand...

Dumb ass, if the rep is 87K year to date then that means he will make 150 plus and that isn't bad for a down yr.
 


















Thommen is a Straumann clone company started about 7 years ago. They have about 15 reps through out the US. There is a new national sales manager who came from Nobel. Its unclear if this manager was let go or left Nobel for the Thommen position. It would seem unlikely he would leave a large player like Nobel to manage less than 15 sales people for a much smaller company. Of the reps at Thommen one rep does the vast majority of the total business. Sales are flat, the company does not have a highly differentiated product, and sells primarily as a lower cost alternative to the Straumann line of implants. Without any implant knowledge, and/or industry contacts this is a tough company to be successful with. Most of the reps have a high degree of dental experience and at best those reps are treading water. Without industry experience, i.e. contacts and a book of business from Straumann the sale is a difficult one. Thommen is not a major player in the implant market. As far as is this a good play for getting started in dental implants, if one was between jobs I would say why not. But experience with a major player in the implant field is what one needs for a future in implants. There are major players who hire from outside dental. I would rather wait and find a position with a big implant company if possible. All implant experience is not equal.
 






When they first hit the market their pricing was very competitive. Then they gradually worked up the cost. Now for a Dr. to switch from Nobel, Astra or any of the big ones is stupid. You are looking at about a $50 diff. with a product that can't deliver. Second, they do not have bone level, cad cam or any other door opener products. Stay where you are. Right now they have several reps ready for the chopping block on their way out according to a friend who just left. Hope the offer wasn't on the east coast?
 






I am starting a company that provides dental implant prosthetics at a fraction of the cost...similar to Implant direct.

Nobel Biocare active and replace select
Straumann bone level and tissue level
Zimmer
Astra
3I Certain

The problem is.....I can't find what companies still hold patents on their prosthetics.

any help would be greatly appreciated reps!
 






You may want to start by hiring a patent lawyer, and doing some research. By the way, there are a boatload of companies making restorative components that fit on Straumann, Nobel and Zimmer. Blue Sky Bio, Southern Implants, Implant Direct, the list goes on and on. Don't even bother with the manufacturing, just buy the parts from one of the existing clone companies and resell them under your own brand name. Or, maybe hire one of the clone companies contract milling companies in Southern California. Problem is two fold-first there is no money in prosthetics. Second, the large companies won't warranty their implants if a Dr places a third party component on top of it. Sounds like a great business plan though. Very original idea.
 






Anonymous said:
I am starting a company that provides dental implant prosthetics at a fraction of the cost...similar to Implant direct.

Nobel Biocare active and replace select
Straumann bone level and tissue level
Zimmer
Astra
3I Certain

The problem is.....I can't find what companies still hold patents on their prosthetics.

any help would be greatly appreciated reps!
Click to expand...

Why on earth would you want to do that? Take a hammer and start hitting yourself in the head until neither sounds like a good idea anymore. Ok? Do you know who Jerry Niznick is? Every time he sells an implant company, he takes the $$$, founds another company and begins making knockoff's so that when his non-compete clause is up, he's ready to undercut the last sucker who bought his last company. Guess what? ID was just sold to Danaher. You can figure it out from there. Try inventing something instead. See a need, fill a need. Ain't no need in 3rd party abutments.
 






Hopefully this helps..................the majority of the people responding are spoiled-rotten top three implant company reps with pre-established territories who simply maintain and make decent money. It is insane to talk about how the only good implant experience is top 3 company experience.....are you kidding me? You guys and girls hang free plasmas and pay opinion leaders with other surgeon friends to maintain your business and would be like a deer caught in headlights if you were put in a situation to sell. Have you never studied and researched "sales" or had a good interview? It is pretty easy to convince someone that you are a better sales rep when you have had success at a smaller implant company with much less market share.The best experience selling implants is with these smaller companies. What would be more impressive as a manager interviewing: a candidate that worked for Nobel and had good numbers in a territory that has been established for ten years or the Thommen rep that has good numbers and continually chips away at the Nobel and Straumann rep. That Thommen rep (who apparently no one has heard of) sounds a little more impressive considering he or she is building a company that apparently no one has heard of. Sounds like more of a sales rep as opposed to the previosly mentioned customer service rep (or TV hanger/bagel queen).
To give you a great straight forward answer, yes, Thommen is a great company to work for. They sell a great product and personally, I am pretty aggressively chipping away at these top companies and have stolen 3 great accounts from them in a short period. And guess what, I see about 10-12 docs per day and they usually DO NOT like the Straumann and Nobel reps. Remember this: this is a customer service industry and relationship building with the doctors. It is ridiculous to act like it is just too tough to gain business from the larger companies. Yes, you have to be a good sales rep and yes, you have to bust your ass. You can also make much better money at a company like Thommen as well as better benefits and great people to work with.
 






Thommen is a good company to work for. They have brought on two new area VP's with a ton of implant and business experience. Thommen has a great product and are now in the cad/cam arena. They have a bone level implant now for anterior indications. Their connection is mechanically the strongest connection I've seen. They have FDA approval for 3week integration on a single unit. They are priced correctly. They are taking larger accounts away from the competition now because of their offering. They may be small but have product that's worth fighting for. They are not a clone of Straumann. The connection, thread depth, thread pitch and implant body is different. The only similarity is the surface technology. Yes Thommen has strong roots with Straumman. 85% of Thommen at the beginning was Straumann people. Head of R&D pres etc... But the original design is from HA-TI implant company that they bought. HA-TI dates back to the early 80's. They had the first internal connection on an implant. The 3mm internal hex that Niznick cloned and patented in the U.S.
 












Anonymous said:
Thommen is a good company to work for. They have brought on two new area VP's with a ton of implant and business experience. Thommen has a great product and are now in the cad/cam arena. They have a bone level implant now for anterior indications. Their connection is mechanically the strongest connection I've seen. They have FDA approval for 3week integration on a single unit. They are priced correctly. They are taking larger accounts away from the competition now because of their offering. They may be small but have product that's worth fighting for. They are not a clone of Straumann. The connection, thread depth, thread pitch and implant body is different. The only similarity is the surface technology. Yes Thommen has strong roots with Straumman. 85% of Thommen at the beginning was Straumann people. Head of R&D pres etc... But the original design is from HA-TI implant company that they bought. HA-TI dates back to the early 80's. They had the first internal connection on an implant. The 3mm internal hex that Niznick cloned and patented in the U.S.
Click to expand...

The Core-Vent in 1982 was an internal hex while the Screw-Vent in 1986 brought the first internal hex, conical connection to the market. Niznick got a patent on both. Do you think that if his Screw-Vent patent was not valid, Calcite, 3i, Frident, BioHorizons and Straumann to name a few, would have taken a license?
 
























The place is where good reps and good doctors go to kill their credibility. Their science was state of the art in 2001. Small screw, small share, small ...well, you know.
 
























"Thommen has the WORST implant to abutment connection leakage in the industry. It's science, you can't argue it."

Yes I can.

So What, who cares ?

Want to match paychecks ?

Didn't think so. Don't forget another box of tinfoil for your new hat, and mom just shouted down the stairs, she wants you to mow the lawn and then shave her back again.
 






Top Bottom
Back
Quote