Hi Beatrice,
Thanks you for agreeing to answer our questions! DentalTechTips is very excited about the 2018 edition of Panthera’s Mastercup competition.
To start, let’s have you tell me a little about yourself and your role at Panthera.
I co-founded Panthera Dental in 2012 with my brother. My role with Panthera is VP Marketing & Customer Experience. I am a daughter of a dental technician and I was literally born in the industry. I joined the dental world in 2006 with another company that was sold to Nobel Biocare in 2009 and I left that company in 2011.
With Panthera, I take care of everything related to marketing and communication. I also focus on our customer experience and how they conduct their business with us. This means training the customer service representatives and ensuring high standards and responses. I also work in project development and support our sales team.
Can we get a little background on the inspiration for the Mastercup competition? Who’s idea was it, and how did it all come about?
It was my idea. I wanted to find a way to give away something, but not with a random contest. I told myself that a challenge like this could be a nice window for us to show the industry that we care. We believe in our customer and we want to help them grow their own business by using our products.
What excites you most about the competition?
I am always thrilled to see who will register, some famous technicians and some unknown ones. I hope this year we will have some young technicians that will try to compete against the more experienced guys. I also hope to see more women joining in the contest.
Panthera has really positioned itself as a leader in the implant bars category. How do you expect the Mastercup competition to affect everyone’s perception of Panthera?
I think what has helped us most in the last 5 years for us to achieve our position in the industry is the fact that we listen to our customers. To further elaborate, I want to emphasise that 3 of our main products have been developed in partnership with 3 of our best customers. We are not here to force our customers to think our way, we want to think their way but using our know-how. The Mastercup is a reflection of this, the idea is to share the knowledge, we are proud of what we do and we want to share. With the Mastercup it is a nice platform to help the profession by showing to a wide audience how to complete a nice denture over implant bars.
The first Mastercup was launched last year, how would you gauge the success of the previous competition? Did it meet or exceed expectations?
It has exceeded what I was hoping in all my dreams. Not only have we had multiple registrations but we had very good registrations. There were some amazing presentations to choose from. The best part of the contest is the one I didn’t plan. Some of the participants (not even the winner) have used their Mastercup cases to make a full years plan of lectures around the USA to share with people how they made their case. That mean that the Mastercup has helped some technicians make a living from participating in a contest. This is just amazing!
What is Panthera’s vision for future competitions?
I hope to make it bigger, to attract more people outside North America, we even had a participant from France last year, I want more participants from around the world. Who knows, maybe in the future, Mastercup will have some regional contests.
Is there anything done differently for this year’s competition as opposed to last year?
This year will be similar to last year but way bigger! Prizes have doubled, we have strong partners and we want to make this event something solid. I think this year will be the opportunity to show to the industry that this is a serious contest and not just a “marketing trick”. It is a legitimate contest that we want to show gives back to the industry. This is why I made it free to participate and it will stay like that.
Partnering with Abutment Direct, Straumann, Ivoclar and LMT for this competition must have been quite an effort to co-ordinate. Were there any major challenges that stood out? Are there any other industry leaders that Panthera would like to, or already have in mind for the future to partner with?
It was not that hard since last year’s contest was a very good success. I have to admit it was even easy in some ways. All of our partners are more than happy to be on board because they have the same thinking as we do to share the knowledge with our industry.
In an effort to keep the competition manageable, it’s understandable that participation numbers need to be limited, if there is a greater demand in the future, would Panthera consider opening the competition up to a wider audience? What would that look like?
I am not closed to the idea, but we will see.
The main prize includes a trip to Quebec City. What would you, as a native of Quebec recommend for sights and activities that the potential winner should see/do to have a wonderful experience?
Quebec City is the oldest city in North America, with over 400 years of history. The city offers an amazing architecture, just walking the street is an attraction by itself. The boardwalk in front of the Castle Frontenac offers an amazing view of the St-Lawrence River. The name Quebec comes from the native culture meaning “Where the river narrows”, this creates the unique aspect of the city built on top of a cliff. Quebec is known for it’s high gastronomy cuisine, and french speaking in North America. Within 40 minutes of downtown you can be in pure wilderness and come back in the evening for a very Quebec style dinner.
Tell us about Panthera. A general statement:
You know I could write an amazing “marketing statement” about Panthera but I will keep it simple, we do quality for real and we care about our customers.
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Read our news story on Panthera’s 2018 edition of Mastercup registration Here