On October 13, 2025, the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded for the theory of creative destruction — the idea that outdated systems must collapse to make room for better ones.
If you’ve run a dental lab in the past decade, you know this wasn’t just academic. You lived it.
And if you’re still here? You’re not just lucky. You’re a survivor. And now, you have the opportunity to become a builder of what’s next.
U.S. dental labs have declined from over 17,500 to fewer than 6,500. That’s a 60%+ collapse. Entire families exited the business. Master technicians retired early. Entire regions went dark.
But here’s what never declined:
This isn’t the end. This is the biggest opportunity in decades.
For years, dental professionals feared that chairside milling and digital dentistry would replace labs. It didn’t.
The true disruption came from within.
Labs didn’t fall behind because of technology — they fell behind because of fragmented systems, manual workflows, and communication gaps that slowed down delivery and eroded profit margins.
The labs that survived didn’t just buy new equipment — they reengineered how work flowed.
They automated repetitive steps, centralized their data, and streamlined every handoff from dentist to delivery.
They replaced manual chaos with digital clarity.
Think about why people trust Amazon.
Every order is visible. Every delivery is predictable. Every experience feels seamless.
That same logic now defines the next generation of dental labs.
Labs that offer transparency, consistency, and speed are winning new business — not because they’re the biggest, but because they’re the most reliable.
They’ve learned that predictability builds trust, and trust fuels referrals.
That’s how modern labs grow — even when others are cutting back.
The top labs today don’t guess.
They run their operations with real-time visibility, automated workflows, and AI-supported quality control — ensuring every case flows seamlessly from scan to delivery.
Here’s how they’re putting the Amazon mindset into practice:
Each of these systems reduces friction, improves accuracy, and protects profitability.
You don’t need to be the largest lab in the country to scale profitably.
You just need systems that make growth sustainable.
Start with this mindset shift:
Labs that embrace these principles are seeing higher margins, faster turnaround times, and more consistent referrals — even in a shrinking industry.
This isn’t just survival. It’s strategy.
The market is growing again — just not in the same way it used to.
Labs that adapt now will define the next decade of dentistry.
If you’ve weathered the storm, you’ve already proven your resilience.
Now it’s time to turn that resilience into momentum, structure, and scale.
The future belongs to the labs that move smarter — where work truly flows.
Paolo Kalaw
Founder & CEO, EviSmart
Paolo Kalaw leads EviSmart — an AI-powered dental automation platform with operations in Vancouver, Manila, and Seoul. He built EviSmart to help labs move beyond survival and into systemized scale — combining design, automation, and lab-first tools to power the modern dental economy. He believes the lab of the future is built on clarity, trust, and speed — and that the builders who embrace this will own the next decade.
