Sibling duo, Claudine and Ned Restom, are on a mission to build one of Australia’s fastest-growing dental groups and fill a gap in regional dentistry.
The Australian dental market is worth around A$13 billion, with over 20,000 businesses across the country as of September 2025.
Despite this, there is still a short supply of dentists nationwide, particularly in regional areas.
There is currently a city-country divide as people in regional and remote areas have more difficulty acquiring dental care.
This is where Ned and Claudine’s business, Smile On, comes in.
Standing out
The company was first started as a single coastal clinic on Avoca Beach and has since expanded to close to 50 clinics.
As part of their business model, the siblings support practice owners to stay independent while benefiting from the support and resources that come with being part of something bigger.
“I've worked in regional areas, and I could see a model that regional areas will lack in a lot of support and quality dental care,” Ned tells Azzet.
“We teamed up with a lot of practices in those regional areas to create that model, to be able to support them clinically; that model works really well.”
Ned also says the partner model makes them unique and creates an environment where they don’t need to compete with other local dentists.
“We’re not setting up businesses; they are more like business partners,” he says.
“We bring in a lot of clinical services and develop their clinical skills.”
Both of the siblings bring their own unique backgrounds to the business, with Ned bringing the dental expertise and Claudine acting as the company’s general manager.
“Claudine deals with all the general management operations and all the back office team and redundancies, and I can focus on the clinical stuff and develop the clinicians in the local areas,” Ned says.
While it can be a juggling act to manage 500 to 600 staff, Ned says the parent model allows each site to operate pretty independently.
“To be honest with you, each team runs separately because you’ve got a partner onsite, and every team has their own way of operating,” he says.
“You still need to create a universal system that matches everyone's needs.”
Despite this, both Ned and Claudine are still hands-on with the business.
“I travel around to a lot of these locations and visit these clinics and operate in them with other clinicians,” Ned says.
“We’ve got regional managers as well and a big team. Obviously, we keep our finger on the pulse to make sure that all aspects of the business are looked after,” Claudine says.
Ned also says Smile On is a leader in education.
“Our sister programme, the Australasian Implant Academy, is one of the leading implant training programmes in Australia,” he says.
“At the moment, we train more than 300 clinicians a year in implantology, so that allows us to upskill a lot of the clinicians we're involved with.”
The Australasian Implant Academy offers a complete implant curriculum with hands-on courses.
Smile On also has its own laboratory to support small clinicians and has a new, smaller division called Smile On Health, which Ned says is only set to grow.
“We own and operate two large medical centres,” he says.
“We're going to be growing into that field, because we believe there's a big demand here.”
The company also plans to continue growth in regional areas and continue filling that gap in the market.
“There are a lot of population areas around Australia with not a lot of support regionally, from a dental point of view,” Ned says.
“We think Smile On could be one of the leading entity companies that could provide support to clinicians in those regional areas that are not getting the support.”
Family business
Around seven in 10 businesses in Australia are family-owned, and Smile On is one of them.
While there are days when tensions arise between the siblings, Ned says the arrangement works well for them and that they tend to bring out each other's strengths.
“Working with family, you’ve got the trust and support that you need,” he says.
Even though working with family doesn’t always work, Ned encourages others considering it to try it, as when it works, it can work really well.
“There will be challenges in any working relationship,” he says.
“But, if you’ve got your heart in the right place and you’re focusing on the goal, you overcome these challenges.”
