Powder play

Executives and employees at Biolife don't have to look far for heartwarming stories of people who have used their product, a powder that can control bleeding and protect wounds.

For starters, there's the wall of why in the lobby of the firm's Manatee County headquarters and production facility. That's filled with framed testimonial letters. Then there's the news Vice President of Marketing Andrew McFall recently received: A nurse in the neonatal intensive care unit at the University of Cincinnati Hospital treated a bleeding 6-month-old baby with StatSeal, one of Biolife's three core products.

“Those kinds of stories are really important to us as a company,” says McFall. “Our competitors' products aren't used in those situations, but ours are. It tells us we are on the right path.”

That path, to what McFall calls the Biolife tipping point, has been a long road. The firm was founded in 1999 and its first decade was long on promise, yet short on sustained sales growth, despite positive market response to the products. Accolades have continued in the firm's second decade: GrowFl, a statewide economic development program, selected Biolife for a specialized technical assistance program in 2011. And GrowFl named Biolife one of 50 Florida Companies to Watch in 2012.

Biolife executives decline to release current sales figures. Former CEO Sam Shake, in a 2010 Business Observer story, says annual sales in 2009 were less than $5 million. Sales come from three distinct markets: hospitals, which make up about 40% of total sales; over-the-counter consumers, about 30%; and workplace first aid kits, also about 30% of sales. The payroll has hovered around 30 people for several years.

A core hurdle in all three markets, says McFall, is customer education about Biolife's products.

The formula is a rust-colored powder that consists of a water-based polymer and potassium ferrate. That combination was discovered in 1999 when James Patterson, a then 78-year-old scientist in Sarasota, was exploring ways to purify drinking water. Patterson accidentally cut himself on a piece of glass and his hands were quickly coated with the potassium salt with which he had been tinkering.
That was the genesis of the formula that today stops bleeding and seals a wound.

“This is a unique, disruptive idea,” says McFall. “People aren't used to putting a brown powder on a wound.”

Despite the challenges, McFall and other executives are optimistic 2015 will be a big year for Biolife. “We feel like we have a great product,” Biolife CEO Stuart Jones says.

One key to the projection is a new partnership with Austin, Texas-based medical distribution firm Alliance Medical. An Alliance sales team with at least 60 reps will start selling Biolife's hospital product, StatSeal, in early 2015. Jones, a former Biolife executive from the early 2000s who came back for the CEO role in 2013, hopes the partnership will provide some momentum in the hospital marketplace.
The agreement is also an improvement over the recent past, when hospital sales were handled in-house, a costly undertaking. Says McFall: “Our reach is more powerful this way.”

Outside hospitals, after three years of heavy pushing, the firm's commercial consumer product, WoundSeal, is now in 25,000 stores nationwide. That's grown from 50 tests stores in the Sarasota-Manatee market in 2011. Current chains that carry WoundSeal include CVS, Publix and Walgreens.

Another reason executives have a positive outlook going into 2015 surrounds plans to rapidly expand in Europe and other foreign markets. McFall and Jones, for example, traveled to Germany in November for Medica, a major medical products tradeshow.

“The challenge there is to pick the right partner,” says McFall. “We don't have all the dollars of a big company, so we have to make good choices. When you are a small company, you can't afford to miss.”

Follow Mark Gordon on Twitter @markigordon