Dentist 'builds a better mousetrap'

Dr. Dan Fischer just wanted to build a better mousetrap — or, in the case of this founder and chief executive officer of Ultradent Products Inc., a better dental office.

Ultradent manufactures more than 500 materials, devices and instruments, selling them to dentists, veterinary labs and teaching universities around the world.

But the company started when Fischer, a practicing dentist in the 1970s, decided he could make better dental products than the ones he was using in his practice.

Keeping his day job, he developed products at night, often testing them on himself, until he could form a company. Ultradent, which operated out of the family kitchen in those early days, now employs more than 700 people in 110 countries — more than 600 of them at a state-of-the-art headquarters in South Jordan.

In addition to continual innovation in its dental tips, syringes and treatment materials, the company has adopted creative marketing strategies. Ultradent does mass sampling that allows dentists and their staffs to test Ultradent products for free, distributes directly to U.S. dentists, trains professionals in the use of Ultradent products at company headquarters and sends company officials to lecture at dozens of schools nationwide.

The company also is able to tightly control everything about its products, because it is highly "vertically integrated," doing everything from research and development to manufacturing and marketing.