Athens, Ga. – University of Georgia President Jere W. Morehead will visit a dental studio that has received assistance from the UGA Small Business Development Center during a trip to Augusta on July 29.
The president will meet with Dr. Geoffrey W. Sheen, who owns and operates the Mustard Seed Dental Studio at 3643 Walton Way Extension, Augusta, at 3 p.m. He will be joined by Susan Caldwell, director of the Augusta SBDC office.
The visit is intended to strengthen the relationship between UGA and the Augusta community and to showcase the work that the SBDC has done to boost economic development in the region.
Morehead will tour the dental lab and observe its operations.
Sheen has been an SBDC client since 2011. Since then, the SBDC has helped Sheen and the studio, which employs 18 people, with strategic planning, human resources and financial analysis. SBDC professionals also helped develop a loan package, which resulted in about $800,000 in funding that enabled Sheen to buy new equipment, lower expenses and increase profit by hiring employees for in-house technical work that had previously been outsourced. He also was able to purchase a second building to expand the lab, adding a training room and providing space for additional staff.
This year the company has seen a 10 percent increase in revenue over last year; a 104 percent increase in June 2014 over June 2013. Gross profit is up 28 percent for the year-to-date over last year and second quarter revenue for 2014 is up by 18.5 percent over the second quarter of 2013.
In addition to running the dental studio, Sheen also is an assistant clinical professor of oral rehabilitation at the Georgia Regents University College of Dental Medicine.
The UGA Small Business Development Center is a public service and outreach program of the University of Georgia that provides management training and consulting to business owners and prospective entrepreneurs. Through a network of 17 offices located throughout the state the SBDC reaches approximately 10,000 clients and program attendees annually. For more information, see https://www.georgiasbdc.org.
