|  Forget private banking, mechanical watches and cuckoo clocks – Switzerland’s next great export is set to be gleaming white teeth.
At least, that’s the promise of the glamorous Abivardi sisters, Haleh and Golnar, who last month opened what they claim is Europe’s largest private dental clinic – bang in the middle of London’s Mayfair, surrounded by luxury boutiques and hotels, impenetrably discreet beauty salons and the offices of Vogue magazine. So, surely these orthodontic entrepreneurs are concerned only with the sort of Oscar night-grade cosmetic dentistry that involves face-whitening prices? Not at all, insist the Abivardis, flashing the sort of teeth that could only have resulted from a lifetime’s avoidance of Swiss chocolate, if not ceramic veneers. “It used to be that you only went to the dentist if you had toothache,” explains Haleh, the elder sister, “but that’s changed. Healthy teeth are central to wellbeing, while beautiful teeth are foundational to social confidence.” She insists that the remedial and the aesthetically pleasing need not be mutually exclusive– or as the Swiss Smile booklet brightly puts it, “good oral care equals success”. Behind the carefully flossed philosophy is a serious business model for a franchised, branded product. It’s basically Starbucks with fluoride – a consumer-friendly dentistry brand that the Abivardis hope to roll out across Europe and beyond. Central to their plan is the relaxed walk-in model adopted in November 2003 when the sisters launched the first Swiss Smile clinic, underneath their native Zürich’s main railway station to lure time-strapped business people. Not only did the Zürich clinic open 365 days a year, it opened from 7am to 9 pm on weekdays. Low prices at Swiss Smile clinics are offset by the high volume of patients, which can run to an astonishing 400 a day.  Originally practising dentists at their own clinic outside Zürich, both sisters vowed to return to the city of their upbringing to shake up the stuffy attitude to cosmetic dentistry that prevailed among their mostly male colleagues. Not only did they make no distinction between regular “health” dentistry and cosmetic treatments, they renamed patients “guests” and greeted them like luxury hotel visitors rather than quivering patients awaiting root-canal work at a medical facility. Indeed, instead of sterile white walls and lab coats, the clinic was kitted out to resemble an enormous underground aquarium.
The sisters enticed the huge number of dentists required to staff the dawn-til-dusk practice by offering a canny mix of profit sharing and interesting work, including referrals of difficult cases from Zürich’s university. Many specialists were happy to quit the administrative burden of running an independent clinic for a situation in which they were still technically self-employed, renting space from the Abivardi sisters in return for a steady stream of referrals. Success was immediate – long queues formed after just one newspaper ad, and this in a country with one dentist to every 400 inhabitants – and the clinic was quickly followed by a second one close by, a third in St Moritz, and a children’s clinic. Noting a steady stream of Britons visiting their Zürich clinic on the way to skiing vacations, the sisters discovered that by contrast there is just one dentist per 2,500 inhabitants in London, and that dentistry is in a state of crisis in the UK, strung out between a decrepit state system and hundreds of undifferentiated, expensive private clinics.  The sisters plan to follow the Mayfair clinic with further sites in London’s West End and financial districts, plus global expansion to destinations such as Spain, Greece, Austria and Dubai. They have trademarked the Swiss Smile logo, developed their own 3D software by which to communicate very clear information to patients about what treatments are being offered and why (instead of showing patients blurred X-rays), and created a range of branded retail products ranging from herbal toothpaste to soft-bristle brushes, all packaged more like luxury goods than toiletries.
Experiencing rapid sales growth over the last four years, the Abivardis appointed a proper board and a chief financial officer, ex-Swiss banker Andre Sulser. By selling a small, undisclosed slither of equity to the bank, they were able to raise enough to fund the London expansion. Predicted sales this year are €24.4m, doubling the 2006 figure, with the London clinic forecast to more than double sales again next year. Hanging on to the majority of the equity but rewarding key personnel with small stakes, the sisters won the 2007 Veuve Clicquot Business Woman of the Year award and have already set their sites on a global roll-out of the franchise, possibly funded at a later stage by an IPO.  Undoubtedly enhancing the venture is the worldwide perception of Swiss brand value. The whole notion of tooth bleaching has long been the preserve of Hollywood starlets and sparkling US newsroom anchors, provoking queasiness in European circles if for no other reason than its traditionally high cost. Signs suggest that this is about to change, and with prices tumbling and demand soaring, Swiss Smile says it wants to demystify what it even claims can be a “natural” process graded to suit the individual. For the London clinic’s first two months, the price for bleaching will be £175 (€260) instead of the normal £350 – many London clinics charge a minimum of £500 for the same service.
The other powerful process at work is the end of state-funded dentistry outside of strongholds such as Scandinavia and Germany. The UK is a prime example; for over a decade now the state-funded UK dental sector has collapsed, but without any corresponding initiatives from private clinics to consolidate the sector and offer transparency and branding on a scale large enough to bring prices down, thereby stimulating demand and making private dentistry more acceptable.  Inevitably, patients have been neglecting basic dentistry and then flying abroad when faced with major treatments that would otherwise cost thousands of euros. According to health tourist website Reva Health Network, the most popular global destinations for dental work are Thailand and Mexico, while the hotspots in Europe are Poland, Hungary and Turkey, all aided by the boom in budget airlines. The website estimates that more than a million Europeans travel every year for dental care. The downside for consumers is that the quality of treatment is still a gamble, and there is little recourse if something goes wrong.
This is precisely where the Abivardi sisters spy a major business opportunity, not competing head-to-head with very low-cost providers in Budapest but targeting buoyant economies where large populations are used to paying relatively high prices for private dental care – but usually through gritted teeth. |