Bringing smiles to the world: Dental equipment maker honored

WOODINVILLE — Most dentistry is performed in an office, but sometimes patients can only be reached by elephant.

That’s where Aseptico comes in.

The south Snohomish County company makes portable dental equipment — drills, lights and even dental chairs — that can be transported into jungles, deserts or the wilds of Alaska.

Customers include humanitarian organizations such as Dentists Without Borders and Missions of Mercy. Another major customer is the U.S. military, which can account for 20 percent to 25 percent of annual sales.

“We started making portable dental equipment for friends of my dad, primarily through his church, and before long we realized the military needed equipment, too,” said Glenn Kazen, Aseptico’s president. “It’s kind of funny way how it happened — my dad was just trying to do something nice and it turned into a commercial success.”

Aseptico also manufactures electric motors for dental surgery. While most dentists — at least in the U.S. — still use drills powered by air compressors, electric motors are becoming more popular.

“The industry is trending toward electric motors, and that’s an area where we are the U.S. specialist in doing this,” Kazen said.

The company is growing its international sales, regularly shipping to 70 countries. Aseptico received a President’s “E” Award for Exports in May for making a significant contribution to the expansion of U.S. exports. It was the only company in the state this year to win one of these awards.

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross praised the company in a letter for its flexible international sales model tailored to individual markets, including its legally compliant sales to Iran.

Aseptico employs 120 people at the plant at 8333 216th St SE in Woodinville. The company is privately held and does not release sales data. Chief Financial Officer Paul Jackson said the company had sales less than $100 million last year.

Glenn Kazen’s father, Douglas Kazen, started the company in 1975 to produce dental consumables such as fluoride and epinephrine, which is used to shrink gums away from teeth. Douglas Kazen died in 2012, but his wife, Edyie Kazen, 81, still works on the factory floor in packaging.

“I’m here at 5:30 every morning,” Edyie Kazen said. “I like it. It’s home.”

Her family sat around the kitchen table planning the company. Their children, Glenn Kazen and Linda Murdoch, were teenagers at the time. They each put $1,000 in the venture, money they had made cleaning Edyie Kazen’s beauty salons.

Edyie Kazen said she’s amazed at how much Aseptico has grown.

“Every time I walk in here I think, ‘Oh my goodness, if you saw the little place where we started,’” Edyie Kazen said.

Aseptico took off in the 1980s after making the first portable dental equipment. Shane Hohnstein, who was a neigbhorhood friend of Glenn’s, helped design the equipment. Hohnstein continues to work at Aseptico.

Photos show Aseptico’s dental equipment being carried on the backs of elephants in Thailand and used in makeshift clinics in Haiti and Nicaragua.

Schools, prisons and nursing homes also are institutions that use portable dental equipment.

“As the community around us is aging and it’s more difficult to transport nursing home patients or hospital-bound patients to the dentist, our mobile and portable equipment allow that level of care to be brought into the facility,” said Stefan Gefter, the company’s director of international sales.

There will likely be more need for portable dental equipment the future.

“You have the refugee crisis in Europe and the Middle East, where people are in tent cities,” Gefter said. “Where are you going to set up a dental clinic in a tent city? Well the clinic can come to you.”

All branches of the military have become reliable customers for Aseptico, which makes equipment that can be transported to some of the most rugged areas of the world.

Aseptico started buying electric motors 30 years ago and started making its own about 25 years ago. Early dentists used electrical motors, but the equipment went out of favor because water used during dental surgeries would short out the equipment, or, worse, shock dentists and the patients.

In more recent years, electrical equipment has been used for drills and other dental equipment with casings that prevent shorts. Electrical dental drills give dentists more control over speed and torque. All of Aseptico’s motors are made at its plant, about a quarter mile south of the Maltby Cafe.

“There’s nobody else that I know of in our industry who makes their motors in the U.S. — winding them, putting the magnet inside — that’s all done here,” said Jackson, Aseptico’s chief financial officer.

Aseptico also is an original equipment manufacturer, meaning that it produces dental equipment that is sold to other organizations that resell the equipment under other brand names.

When the military is buying, the company produces about half portable dental equipment and about half electric motors for dental equipment. In other years, portable equipment equals about 35 percent to 40 percent of the product.

Aseptico would like to see sales divided equally between what is sold to the military, sold under other companies’ brand names and sold under its own brand name nationally and internationally.

“It never seems to work out that way,” Glenn Kazen said.

This article has been altered since it was first posted to remove a quotation involving the company’s business relationships with other firms. Since the relationships were immaterial to the rest of the story, The Herald has removed the quotation.