Dental Tribune Asia Pacific Edition No.5, 2017

Dental Tribune Asia Paciﬁ c Edition | 5/2017 BUSINESS 09 4 5 Fig. 4: The TIVOLY factory in China.—Fig. 5: TIVOLY’s ‘surgical’ smartphone kit. gies are developing simultaneously. Thus, it is evident that there are many factors that may inﬂ uence the future. All of these can be viewed as opportunities and that is why medicine is the ﬁ eld of the future. Mr Fontaine, could you tell us about FFDM? Fontaine: FFDM, with its THOMAS brand, is a French com- pany that has been active in the dental ﬁ eld for over 70 years, along with the companies NICHROMI- NOX, Anthogyr and MICRO-MEGA. This seniority explains our strong international presence. We are present in over 65 countries with our own brands and/or under the trademarks of our distributors, and more than 80 per cent of our an- nual turnover comes from exports. The ﬁ rst dental products produced by FFDM were milling cutters in 1946, sold under our THOMAS brand or private labels (under our clients’ brands). Our THOMAS range was then expanded through the manufacture and sale of con- ventional endodontic ﬁ les, market- ing Gonon extraction kits, etc. Parallel to developing in the dental industry, FFDM has ex- panded its knowledge base into the industrial area through the design, production and sale of cutting tools and assembly solutions, also under the THOMAS trademark, and the design, manufacture and sale of machinery and assembly solutions under the Pneumat trademark. Today, we are recognised as a major and essential partner. Getting back to the dental ﬁ eld, we have designed dental implant drills for about 20 years. This activ- ity has been a strong lever for our company’s growth. We currently work with some 50 implant com- panies across the world, many of which are very well known, demon- strating our expertise and quality products in this domain. We have more than doubled our turnover in the past decade, owing to a highly sustainable investment and devel- opment policy. More recently, we have invested over 10 per cent of our annual turnover. We now have an assemblage of modern, high- performance machines at our disposal. We will continue follow- ing this approach in the future, so we can provide our clients with an even better service. Now, we have a stakeholder that is a family-managed manufacturer just like FFDM has been since it was founded. It was surprising to dis- cover the similarity of the indus- trial paths that the TIVOLY group and FFDM have taken. We are now part of a group that employs over 500 members of staff, with com- mercial and manufacturing plants in many countries, spanning three continents. Jamy Tivoly, the grand- son of the founder, was recently honoured with a distinguished na- tional award in recognition of his remarkable industrial career. How do you see the future, and what are your plans? Fontaine: Currently, our implant drills are sold exclusively to implan- tology companies. The drills are made according to speciﬁ cations from these companies (we are sub- contractors; our brand name never appears on the instruments). We in- tend to offer a range of standard drills to be sold under our THOMAS trademark with our own CE mark- ing. The aim is to sell these directly to distributors and practitioners to boost the THOMAS brand and give it greater visibility. With standard drills, another advantage for inter- ested implantology companies would be that they would not have to take care of the CE marking them- selves, as this would be an addi- tional service we would offer them. We plan to strengthen our tech- nical and regulatory services to help our clients with their new products throughout all the stages of regis- tration. We also intend extending our product ranges (mainly the en- dodontic range) so we can provide complete solutions to our clients. We also have our sights set on other markets, like cutting tools for the ancillary orthopaedic seg- ment. We have strengthened our collaboration with well-known dentists to gain greater visibility on the market. We have achieved this in the past with Prof. Machtou with immense success. Online sales is also an area we are looking into. Through integra- tion into TIVOLY, which guarantees committed and transparent man- agement, we now have the ﬁ nancial capacity to implement all of our de- velopment projects, both industrial and commercial. TIVOLY’s commer- cial and industrial sites in Europe, Asia and North America will give us access to facilities that are closer to our clients and to our markets. Thank you very much for the inter- view. Combining your respective expertise should enable you to achieve even greater things. We hope you enjoy many successes together. 6 7 8 Fig. 6: Plastic moulding of root canal instruments.—Fig. 7: Implant drills being cleaned.—Fig. 8: Drilling into metal with a TIVOLY drill.

Dental Tribune Asia Pacific Edition No.5, 2017

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