Early last year (2021) in discussions with my friend Ian Matheson who is the managing director of Wrights, we decided to think about the possibility of launching a buying group associated with The Clinic & Academy.
Often dental suppliers have been historically resistant to buying groups because it puts too much power in the hands of the customer and too little power in the hands of the supplier, but Wrights have embraced this concept because that’s the type of company they are and have made it work extraordinarily well in different parts of the country.
Buying groups are of course not new and many, many people have started these and sorted them and tried to make them beneficial.
In discussion with Ian and based around models of other groups which already exist we were very keen to set up a collaborative buying group where everybody won.
And so, in our buying group which we’ve decided to ally with The Campbell Academy because it gives us greater reach around the country, everybody who is in the group gets an enhanced discount with Wrights and also huge discounts on some selected products.
You get to name a number of products per treatment room in your practice which get extraordinary amounts of discount.
This adds up to quite a package which is one that you can’t get if you’re not in the buying group.
The benefit therefore to the practice is massive as long as you sweat the asset.
The next thing you get though is a rebate paid by Wrights back into the buying group.
That rebate amounts to 5% of total spend.
We decided to start this small with 10 initial practices who would form ‘the committee’ or the board of the buying group because in my mind the place where this could go is quite extraordinary and the resources that it could provide are quite amazing.
So, with a little slow and steady start to get all the format right and it being ran by the amazing Rebecca Martin, who’s our marketing manager at the Clinic but in a former life was an accountant, we ran this as a pilot through the end of last year and into the start of this year.
So, the buying group rebate now generates £1,000 per month and we’re just steady at the minute.
We honestly believe that we could take this to between £5,000-£10,000 a month on the rebate without too much difficulty.
The board (the founding members) had a meeting on Thursday night before the Ed Clancy peer review and we all agreed that we would donate at least 20% of the buying group rebate to charity so after the peer review meeting £1,3000 went straight to the Ukrainian urgent appeal.
That still leaves a significant amount of money and maybe as a group we’ll decide to give more to good causes but what we’ve created now is a bit of a self-fluffing prophecy where like-minded people are involved in a buying group and the more they use it, the more they win and the more other people win and the more the supplier wins.
If we reach a level of £50,000 rebate a year what the hell will we spend it on?
We will book speakers to come to Nottingham who would never come, who are ludicrously expensive, we can have evenings with Inspirational speakers who are not from dentistry and we can invite all of the buying group plus other people who can pay to come who are not part of the group and donate their money to the charity fund too.
We can have social and psychologically helpful interactions with people which are funded through the group.
And so, here is the punchline.
We’re going to grow this group slowly and brilliantly so that it will work for a long time so there are now 10 more places open.
These are not founder-member places and not a position on the board but it’s a position for 10 practices to join the buying group and become part of this tribe and gain from the advantage of the discounts available but much more than that I think gain from the advantage of being part of a brilliant group who are also helping other people who are less fortunate than themselves.
So, if you’re interested in your practice being involved in this please email Rebecca@campbell-clinic.co.uk or hit reply to this blog.
Blog Post Number - 3036
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