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Corporate Profile: Keating Dental Arts by Thomas Giacobbi, DDS, Editorial Director, Dentaltown Magazine

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by Thomas Giacobbi, DDS, Editorial Director, Dentaltown Magazine

Employees at Keating and dentists who use the lab are all part of the same team, working together for the good of the patient.

Keating Dental Arts, established in 2002, is a long-time supporter of Dentaltown, so this is likely not the first time you've been introduced to the lab or its owner on our pages. Keating strives to add value to dental practices by offering friendly, knowledgeable and reliable service, it has always been about quality and relationships, not quantity.

The night before I sat down with Shaun Keating, owner of Keating Dental Arts, he was at a baseball game with his wife Shannon and two sons, Kyle and Travis. Why is that a significant part of our corporate profile this month? Because it is classic Shaun, a lifetime sports fan and a guy with a strong competitive spirit. He took pride in coaching his son's football and baseball teams when they were younger and when he started Keating Dental Arts 12 years ago, it was a team concept from the start. His lab is organized into teams based on department and he is a competitor that does not like to accept second place. In fact, he recently made a stand on behalf of other smaller dental labs spending nearly a million dollars in legal fees to allow the free use of the word bruxer. Here is the abridged version of our interview:

What's the difference working with a remote lab versus a local lab?
Keating: Absolutely nothing. With technology, we can do things just as well and just as fast from a distance.

One of the things labs can do well is to provide consultations on a new case. Do dentists utilize this option enough in your experience?
Keating: Not as much as they should. It's a service dentists don't realize the benefits they can get from it. I see more crown-and-bridge cases in a month than most dentists see in their lifetime.

How have you adapted to the new choices for restorative materials that are out there?
Keating: Very slowly. We like to really evaluate the product before we make any decisions about if we're going to offer it.

CAD/CAM dentistry is hot. What do you think of the digital impressioning technology available today?
Keating: It's unbelievable. I just love the way I can get a file e-mailed to me and to be able to do this dentistry. I've had a few dentists who have gotten into it who had a few issues here and there with impressions and distortions and it goes away because it's so magnified it makes you practice good dentistry. You really need to put your thinking cap on in those first few months of getting it dialed in - it's just huge after that. The consistency and accuracy is what gets me more excited than anything. Remakes almost go away. It's going to fit for sure. Function is going to be there - and aesthetics, that's what we're known for. There's something really exciting about that.

Is the PFM dead man walking?
Keating: I don't think so. I think it's here to stay for awhile. There's always going to be a lot of dentists who are going to want to use a PFM.

The KDZ Bruxer name is a million-dollar name.
Why is that?
Keating: In early 2013, we won the lawsuit brought against us by Glidewell over our use of the name "KDZ Bruxer," which Glidewell claimed was an infringement on their "BruxZir" product name. While the litigation was enormously stressful and costly for us, we believe that success is demonstrated by the challenges and obstacles you overcome. It really fortified us as a company - a family. More importantly, we are now able to refocus all our efforts on our business and supporting our loyal customers.

What are the three members in the KDZ line of materials?
Keating: We have the KDZ Ultra, which is probably my favorite product in my company. It's a zirconia substructure. We have our own zirconia made for us by a special company, all FDA-approved. It's top of the line. And the Ultra is where we will do the substructure just like a PFM frame and then we build porcelain upon it. The KDZ Max is a zirconia substructure that we press e.max on top. Then our KDZ Bruxer is full contour monolithic zirconia crowns.

Your lab has adapted to changing technology. Tell me about the addition of the Roland milling units.
Keating: Roland made my life so easy and less stressful. It is such a great product and has the reliability and consistency of a Honda. The precision is second to none and it just made me embrace the CAD/CAM technology more than ever. I'm really excited to be partnered with Roland and going into the future with CAD/CAM technology.

Your wife and two sons have been an integral part of your lab ever since you started. How is that an advantage for you?
Keating: My wife comes in a few times a week, helps out in human resources to keep us all in line and she's great. It's awesome, I love it. I love having it to where I say, "Your name's on the building, guys." Travis does all our CAD/CAM stuff, all our designs and he's been our number one guy from the beginning. He's taken on a management role in that area, helping drive the digital part of Keating and Kyle's taken a big step in helping out all the marketing and with the website and he's driving something new where we're going to be selling different CAD/CAM machines and maybe some scanners for dentists - a division of Keating Dental Arts called Keating Digital.

Some labs have the potential to be 100-percent machines. Is that an appropriate goal in your opinion?
Keating: No, not for us. A lot of guys will go that road and that's fine, but for us it'll never be that way. I'm always going to have the best people working for me, because you're going to need that to work with the dentists on the phone and treatment plan. I always want to be a hub for technicians that want to come work for me, and I have a couple hundred people on application that want to work for me still to this day.

With marketing and getting new dentists as clients, is it important to have them try you as a referral from an existing client?
Keating: Referrals are great because they come from one of their peers whom they trust. They usually give us a better shot when they come with a referral.

We're big on dentists trying us out, but let's get on the phone and work your preferences up. How do you like your occlusion? How do you like your occlusal staining? Contacts, emergence profiles, etc. We work up a profile with the dentist and try it out for 30, 60, 90 days, and when a dentist really does that at the beginning, we can set the foundation for long-term success. As a company owner, I want to hear the good and bad. Call me, because it helps us to adjust or note what you want the same or different for next time.


You have a monthly meeting with your staff. What do you tell them at the end of your monthly meetings?
Keating: I say to them, "Make this restoration as if it's going to go into your own mouth" and also "Every restoration that we make could show up online - like on Dentaltown.com!"

What's unique about the Dentaltown dentist as a lab client?
Keating: They're really top-notch, technically. Dentaltown dentists are on the cutting-edge of technology; they're always looking at updates; they're always having input. There are, of course, dentists who don't go on Dentaltown who still provide me with great work. But more often than not, almost every Dentaltown dentist who has tried me - either by referral or because they've seen something that's been posted online - it's a dream come true when I get dentists from Dentaltown.

What advice would you give a dentist that is establishing a relationship with a new dental lab?
Keating: It really is important to have the dentist and the lab work close together from the very beginning. The doctors that do get it - they're the ones that embrace the dental lab and really want to talk about treatment planning. We both work for the patient, you know? So we work to provide the highest level of service to our customers - no project is considered finished until our customers - and their patients - are happy. If you're a good lab, you feel that way.

You worked at other labs before starting this one. What are some of the lessons you learned from those experiences?
Keating: I worked at a lab that grew from 50 people to 1,500 people during the time I was there. It's about the people, which I think labs forget when they grow too large.

I remember my humble beginnings and this lawsuit really put things in perspective. If we didn't prevail, it would have been very devastating for us as a company. We were lucky we had the resources to fight this battle. We were proud to be at the face of it and by doing so, represent all of the other small laboratories in the U.S.

I've learned we're only as good as what we're doing today. Dentists are part of the family, our employees are part of the family, and we all work for the patient. If we remember this, we'll be successful.

To view the video of Dentaltown's full interview with Shaun Keating, please visit http://www.dentaltown.com/keating
Dentaltown Magazine
September 2025
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