- November 20, 2024
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Reinhold Schmieding could easily be a braggart.
The Naples entrepreneur has a lot to boast about, much of it attributable to Arthrex, a medical manufacturer focusing on sports medicine and less invasive surgery products through the motto of “helping surgeons treat their patients better.”
Schmieding, born in Michigan and the son of German immigrants to America, founded the company in 1981 in Munich, Germany and moved it to Naples a decade later. When Schmiedinghe pulled into Naples in the summer of 1991, the assets of Arthrex were locked inside a van and U-Haul trailer he was driving.
Some 35 years later, the company’s success has changed the lives of thousands of people — both employees and the patients who have had procedures using its patented products. Its economic impact on Collier County is also singularly unique, in that it not only is the largest private employer, it also has a hotel and conference center on its sprawling state-of-the-art campus, where hundreds of doctors and medical professionals come every year for courses and training seminars. That second facet has led to a niche in medical tourism, where some of those medical professionals check out Naples, shop, eat and even find a place to buy and move to town.
Some of the standout Arthrex statistics include:
“Reinhold has made an incalculable impact on Collier County,” says Collier County Commissioner Burt Saunders. He adds the medical tourism side of Arthrex is a key, and sometimes unheralded, part of its impact, in adding to the tax base. “He’s brought a lot of people to Collier County. That’s been a big boon.”
Yet even with those figures, comments and many other accolades, Schmieding rarely gives media interviews and he rarely speaks in a public setting about Arthrex. Schmieding has turned down multiple interview requests from the Business Observer for more than 15 years, including in 2008, when he was named a Top Entrepreneur in the publication.
Schmieding has rejected other interview requests, too. That list includes Forbes, of which Schmieding is on the magazine’s 400 richest people in the world list, with an estimated net worth of $7 billion in 2024. When he debuted on the list in 2013, a Forbes writer, in a profile story, wrote “Schmieding agreed to sit down with Forbes in Munich for what apparently would be his first-ever interview with a national publication.” The magazine says Schmieding canceled the interview the day before, instead answering seven questions over email for the story, which ran under the headline “The Secretive Sultan of Sports Medicine.”
Some insight into Schmieding’s mindset and what makes Arthrex so successful came from an April 2021 interview posted on YouTube. He had just received the Edison Achievement Award, which honors excellence in new product development and innovation and is named for Thomas Edison. The interviewer was PBS national science correspondent Miles O’Brien — who had his left arm above the elbow amputated in 2015 after an accident on the job.
Asked how the company is able to keep up the pace of 1,000 new products a year, Schmieding says Arthrex has “a lot of creative people” and it gives them the “resources and the autonomy to make decisions.” Schmieding also corrects O’Brien, saying the company introduced 2,000 new products in 2020. “Our minimum expectation is 1,000 new products a year,” Schmieding says.
On the company’s financial success, Schmieding tells O’Brien “economic gain was something I was never really interested in. You know, that's my one piece of advice for those who are developing a product or starting a company: follow a passion, do things for the right reason…if you do it for economic gain, you probably won't be successful.”
Several times in the O’Brien interview Schmieding credits the Arthrex employees for the company’s success, saying “really, I'm just one of the team players.”
Collier County commissioner Saunders says that’s not a trite false-modesty statement, either. Saunders says he’s gotten to know Schmieding through Collier County meetings and Arthrex initiatives, such as affordable housing projects or the redevelopment of the Golden Gate golf course. “Reinhold really cares about his employees’ well being,” Saunders says. “He has set a standard of corporate culture unmatched in Collier County.”
One nugget to back that up is a company perk called “Trip of a Lifetime.” According to a company blog post, for every five years of employment with Arthrex employees are eligible for a company-paid Trip of a Lifetime to recognize their dedication. The company posts stories about some of the trips on social media. One employee, under the position “Infrastructure Analyst II,” recently took his wife and four kids to Walt Disney World to celebrate his five-year Arthrex anniversary, the company posted on Facebook. Another employee recently went on a fishing trip to the Florida Keys.
Those life-changing experiences, and the life-changing experiences for patients, continues to motivate Schmieding. In the 2021 interview with O’Brien, Schmieding, then 66, says as long as he’s healthy and has “the ability to create and make a difference (in) people's lives, help patients around the world, help surgeons, help our employees and do good…I will continue to do that.”
Schmieding reflected back a bit, too, talking about the startup days on his “little white table” in his apartment in the Olympic Village in Munich. He had no outside financing in a foreign country and in a market of high-end surgical instruments that didn't exist, he told O’Brien. “When you follow up passion like that, and you have nothing, you're sacrificing everything,” he says. “All you want to do is survive and hopefully, you can take care of your family someday. That was my only dream.”
