Regional dental depots: selling nationwide and across Europe
Many dental depots were born and grew up in one province or region. They know the practices one by one, deliver with their own van and have agents who visit every week. It is a solid model, but it has a boundary: the area they can cover.
Going beyond that boundary with the traditional model is expensive. You need an agent in the new area, sometimes a warehouse or a branch, and years to build relationships. That is why many regional depots stay where they are, even when their home market stops growing.
A dental marketplace lets you cross that boundary in another way. Your catalogue becomes visible to practices across the country, and abroad too, in eight languages. A dentist in another region finds you when searching for a product, orders and pays online.
You keep doing what you do best: preparing the order from your warehouse. The dashboard generates the courier label, and where the platform already has an agreement with a courier, as in Italy with BRT, you do not need your own shipping contract.
Your home area does not change. Your existing customers keep receiving your usual service, deliveries by van and visits from your agents. The marketplace is an addition, and brings orders from places you do not reach today.
It works especially well for two types of products. Those you specialise in, which a distant practice struggles to find nearby. And frequently reordered consumables, where a satisfying first order becomes a series of reorders.
Getting started requires no investment: the first 180 days come with no subscription fee, and the catalogue is uploaded from your Excel price list. No branch to open, no agent to sign up before knowing whether the new area responds.
In all honesty, an order from far away does not have the value of a relationship built over twenty years, and results come with time: Oralzon is in its launch phase. But every order from outside your area is revenue that the traditional model would not have brought.
The practical tip is to start with the part of your catalogue that sets you apart: the categories where you are strongest, with complete product pages. That is where a distant practice has a reason to choose you.
If you want to see how your depot would look to a practice in another region, you can explore the vendor dashboard in a demo store, without signing up.
In short: a regional depot is strong in its own area but expanding with agents and branches is expensive, a dental marketplace makes the catalogue visible nationwide and abroad, the home area keeps being served as always, it pays to start with specialist categories and frequently reordered materials, and getting started requires neither branches nor new agents.