Most practice owners do not overspend on supplies because they are careless. They overspend because ordering is one of those tasks that runs on autopilot. The same items get reordered at the same cadence, often from the same supplier, and the spend rarely gets a second look unless something feels obviously wrong.
That habit is worth interrupting. One of our co-founders recently sat down to place a routine round of office supply orders and started wondering what fellow DSN members were ordering on a similar bi-weekly and monthly basis. Even with a procurement platform in place to compare pricing across suppliers, the bigger question was harder to answer: how many comparable products were being overlooked simply because no one knew the alternative existed, or because habit had quietly settled the decision long ago.
It is easy to find the lowest price on a specific SKU using software. It is much less obvious to find the equivalent item that delivers similar results at a meaningfully better price. So the question became a simple one. Are practices stepping over dollars to pick up pennies? Maybe. But reframed around percentage saved rather than raw dollars, the juice often turns out to be worth the squeeze.
How the Data Was Pulled
To get a real answer rather than a hunch, we looked at a sample of actual ordering data: an export of items DSN members purchased over a recent two-month window through one procurement platform (Zen One).
A few caveats keep this honest. The window was kept short to keep the analysis simple. The data only reflects members who use that one platform, and the majority of members still order directly through supplier portals. If all of that purchasing were visible, the story would almost certainly be more dramatic. Even so, this is a useful start, and the focus stayed deliberately on consumables that have little to no effect on patient outcomes. Think infection control and PPE, the unglamorous categories that quietly add up.
Three findings stood out.
Finding 1: CaviWipes Dominate, but Alternatives Exist
The single most ordered brand item by volume was CaviWipes, and by an enormous margin. The ratio was roughly 3 to 250 in favor of CaviWipes, at an average price of about $10.62 per can.
There is no house brand equivalent to CaviWipes, but there are alternatives worth evaluating. Optim, for example, uses Accelerated Hydrogen Peroxide rather than the quaternary ammonium and alcohol chemistry in CaviWipes. Switching to that alternative could save roughly 41 percent.
The choice is ultimately yours, and it deserves real research before any change. Some practices prefer the alternative for reasons beyond price, including lower toxicity concerns and gentler effects on upholstery. Others stay with the market leader because brand strength is a hard thing to shake. The point is not which product wins. The point is that a category this dominant in a practice’s spend deserves a deliberate comparison rather than a default reorder.
Finding 2: A House Brand Glove Going Almost Entirely Ignored
The second most ordered product was a branded latex exam glove infused with lanolin and vitamin E, at an average price of about $10.47 per box of 100.
The house brand equivalent available through a DSN vendor partner runs about 23 percent less. The ordering ratio for that alternative? Zero to 440. That is not a typo. Across the sample, there were zero orders for the comparable house brand glove.
That is the cleanest example of habit overriding economics. A comparable product sat available at a 23 percent discount, and it went completely unselected. Switching to the house brand equivalent could save roughly 23 percent with no meaningful change to the clinical experience.
Finding 3: A 40 Percent Price Spread on the Same Nitrile Gloves
The third most ordered category was nitrile gloves. Members bought them from a range of suppliers, and the price for a box of 300 ranged from about $8.95 to $14.95.
That is a 40 percent difference for what is effectively the same product. Given the volume of nitrile gloves a practice moves through, that spread is cumulatively significant across the broader DSN community. It is the kind of gap that never feels urgent on any single order but compounds quietly over a year.
Percentage, Not Pennies
The instinct to dismiss these numbers is understandable. A few dollars on a can of wipes or a box of gloves does not feel like a problem worth solving.
That instinct is exactly what lets the cost drift. Industry benchmarks generally put healthy supply spending at roughly 5 to 7 percent of collections, yet many practices quietly run above that without realizing it. The reason is rarely one bad decision. It is a long series of small allowances: a category that creeps up because no one owns ordering discipline, a default reorder that never gets re-examined, a 40 percent price spread that no one is watching.
Reframing the conversation around percentage saved rather than dollars saved changes the math. A 23 to 41 percent reduction on a high-volume consumable is not pennies. Multiplied across a full year of ordering, it is a real contribution to the bottom line, and it is one of the few overhead levers a practice can pull without touching patient care.
The Case for a Procurement System
If there is one practical takeaway, it is this: track your spend and compare pricing across vendors with a real system rather than memory and habit.
A procurement platform makes the lowest SKU price easy to see, and it creates the visibility needed to notice when a category is drifting or when a comparable alternative is being ignored. There are several worth evaluating, and members tend to gravitate toward a handful of them, including Method, Dentira, and Zen One. The specific tool matters less than the discipline it enables.
Where DSN Members Actually Buy
For context, here are some of the distributors DSN members purchase from most often, in no particular order:
- Henry Schein
- Darby
- Frontier
- DC Dental
- Dental City
- DDS Dental Supply
- Atlanta Dental
- Supply Doc
- Purelife
DSN maintains formularies with nearly all of these partners, and where a formulary does not yet exist, one is in the works. That negotiated pricing is part of what membership is built to unlock.
The Bigger Picture
Supply spending is a small example of a much larger principle. Practices rarely get into financial trouble through one dramatic mistake. They drift, one unexamined habit at a time, until the gap between how the business feels and how it actually performs becomes expensive.
The fix is visibility. Look at the categories that run on autopilot, compare what you are paying against what is available, and decide deliberately rather than by default. Whether the lever is consumables, vendor formularies, or the broader efficiency picture across the practice, the practices that win are the ones willing to ask whether the reorder still makes sense.
Take the Next Step
Curious where your own numbers stack up, or unsure which procurement approach actually fits your practice? Let’s talk. Book a call with DSN and we will look at where your practice might be leaving money on the table, from consumables and vendor formularies to the bigger overhead picture.
For more practical breakdowns like this one, explore the DSN blog, and learn how a DSN membership gives practice owners access to negotiated vendor pricing, operations manuals, and a community of high performing dentists.
For your success,
The DSN Team
