The PRO-Craft Story

Video Transcript

A Man and his Surfboard

I was at a swap meet once with my dad in Azusa, the Azusa drive-in theater, and here was this surfboard that this guy was selling and I talked him into letting me earn the money for it and he bought it for me and my brother, Jeff. We were only 16 years old, my brother was like 12, and we would get a couple other guys and go get donuts and go surfing. You gotta figure out how to get the wave, only one guy's gonna get it, and it might be 15 guys that are trying to get it, so it was very competitive and it was a sport. I always had a place where I can go throughout my lifetime where if I'm having difficulties or challenges and I just need to get away from it, I go to this one place, just kinda unwind and forget about things for a while, be a kid again. Just to be a kid again.

 Too Much Surfing

So, I've always been drawn towards competition. I like it, I like to go head-to-head and compete, but I knew nothing about dental technology, that came later, 100 percent, it was because of my dad.

Greg was always the aggressive one. He's the one that organizes everything and gets everybody to join and Greg was always a leader. He pushed himself to go to the next step, the next step, always the next step.

It started off probably 'cause I was surfing too much and my dad said, "Hey, I'm gonna see if I can talk him in and going and looking at this thing." And I think my dad thought I'd be interested because I like building stuff and doing model work and...

He liked to build things. He liked to do the small intricate things, so I knew that if he ever got involved in a dental lab, that he'd do well.

I think he put two and two together all on his own. And he just thought, "Man, I think he'd be good at it." One Saturday, he said, "Hey, I got a friend, Ed Shatara," was his name. Ed needed some help at the time. "And he works for this lab in Covina here. You want to go check it out?" I knew nothing about it, but I said, "Sure." So, Saturday morning, we got up and went over to see Ed. And Ed showed me around. And Ed told me, he says, "Look," he says, "If you go to this trade school," that he went to, "You come back, I'll give you a job." I walked out of there with my dad, said, "Hey, I'm gonna open a dental lab."

PRO-Craft Dental Lab's Garage Days

I had a rental house that happened to be empty at the time and we decided that'd be a good place to start and it wasn't very far from where we lived. And we started the lab in the garage.

A lot of work started coming in. The dentists saw the value in what we were doing. And so we just exploded.

They worked there for a year, year and a half, before they went and rented their own shop and set their dental lab up in another building.

We felt like we really were a business then. And it was legit. Eventually, I moved down to Murrieta to be closer to home. We bought the building we're in presently. It's state-of-the-art and we moved into it, modified it. And so we've been here since 2005.

A Dental Lab Family

My son started working for us.

I started working here at 14 years old with an opportunity from my dad to buy my first car and work here to pay off that first car.

He'd come to work at the lab and wouldn't take a single dime home. (laughs) Every single penny had to go to pay that car off. And he paid about 25,000 for that car, which for a 15-year-old kid is like a million dollars, right? Now he's here today and he's helping me in a big way.

It's been great to work with him in a professional aspect, to learn from him, but then also to be able to spend time with him as a father and to be able to have father-son experiences here is a really great thing and something that I will appreciate for probably the remainder of my life.

The PRO-Craft Dental Laboratory Difference

We once did the lab work for Dennis Rodman. He came to the dental office to get his veneers, but he was in a wedding gown.

We have special techniques that we use on the posterior crowns that is different than anywhere else, and it really makes our crowns stand out, it makes them look very special. On our anterior work, most labs do some type of porcelain layering, but we do a special technique that was developed here, micro layering, and it really gives our cases a very unique look.

Teeth have layers and we put all these different colors inside there that makes teeth look natural. And I simulate that with porcelain and stain.

A thing that I hear back from our customers all the time is that our crowns actually look like a natural tooth. Our goal has never been to make crowns. We don't wanna make crowns, we make teeth.  Most people just paint the glaze on, give it to you, and it's done it, it doesn't look like a natural surface. When you mechanically polish and go in there and do those things, it looks like a tooth, and that's what we're doing.

Our work stands out above other work. When you put PRO-Craft's work on the table and you put other people's work on there, you can tell, I can, as a technician, I can just see and look and be like, "Yeah, that's our stuff right there."

Each individual crown is different. Each smile that we create is particularly designed for that specific patient and there's not another one like it.

I really love that the restorations that we create are going into somebody's mouth and making their lives better overall.

Behind every case that we do, there's a person.

When somebody has full-mouth reconstruction or all of their aesthetic zone done, all the stuff that matters the most, and you can go in there and you can change all that, and you can give them the smile that they want or that they need, they walk away a different person.

From restoring self-confidence through a beautiful smile to enjoying Thanksgiving dinner without a painful bite, to protecting your teeth during a very important football game, these are all things that improve customers' lives.

Dental Lab Teamwork

I'm very fortunate to be able to come every single day and work with this dedicated group of the team leaders, the main guys. It's hard to find that kind of crew. After 40-something years, I can only think of maybe a handful of guys that would have fit the bill for this kind of a position and most of 'em are still here now.

I've watched him get married and have watched the kids all being born, and now I'm watching grandkids being born.

When my kids are older and they come in, I hope that they feel the magic that I would feel when I'd come into the lab.

I think Greg, he's probably one of the hardest working people I've ever met. He's very passionate about what he does.

He's been a mentor, he's taught me how to build porcelain, my work ethic, I've learned from him.

Anything I've ever needed, any problems I've ever had, he's been there. I've worked in a lot of places and this is the first place that I felt as comfortable, that I belonged.

You don't get to a position of success without great people behind you. Each of them has their own particular skill and artistry about them. The work that's done is so highly specialized, machines will never, in the rest of my lifetime for sure, be able to duplicate what a talented individual can do to create an anterior tooth.

 National Dental Lab: The Best of the Best

We work with the best technology we could possibly get our hands on, from the mills, to our ovens, our sintering furnaces, the tools, the materials that we use, and even the people that we work with, we're always looking for the best.

We're always tinkering with it and approving it and modifying the way we do something to make it more efficient.

PRO-Craft has always prided itself on being cutting edge and always ahead of the pack and focusing on the next big thing and our customers can expect that going forward and for the duration of the existence of PRO-Craft.