StatLab Medical Products was founded in 1976 and by 2009 was distributing 1,500 products to 2,000 customers and generating $18 million in annual revenue. That same year we acquired StatLab and moved from Chicago to Dallas to grow the business in day-to-day leadership roles.
We invested broadly in StatLab to accelerate growth by executing the following key initiatives:
Sales
We recruited, trained, and retained a national sales organization—consisting of 24 direct sales representatives, 4 sales managers, 2 technical support professionals, and 2 inside sales support professionals—at a cost of over $6 million per year. These investments allowed us to:
Increase revenue at over 5x the overall industry growth rate
Increase the number of active customer accounts by over 60%
Increase our average revenue per customer by over 40%
Manufacturing
We custom-designed and oversaw the construction of a 65,000 square-foot facility at a cost of $9 million to manufacture stains, reagents, specialty chemicals, waxes, and other formulation-based products representing 50% of the company’s annual revenue. These investments allowed us to:
Increase gross margin by 8 percentage points
Reduce back orders by 55%
Open a new sales channel servicing large OEM customers
Product
We introduced unified branding across our website, product packaging, and marketing collateral and added over 750 new products to our offering over seven years. These investments helped us to:
Reposition the company as a leading provider of high-quality products
Grow new product revenue to over 25% of annual sales
Increase the effectiveness of our sales organization by expanding the addressable opportunity with each customer and prospect
Systems
We implemented best-in-class ERP, CRM, and e-commerce technologies, obtained ISO 13485 certification, and developed an FDA-compliant quality management system. These investments allowed us to:
Maintain service level rates of 98%+ during our expansion
Proactively manage a diverse set of risks within our business
Drive productivity improvements and effectively convert revenue growth into profit growth
Leadership
We recruited or retained a talented senior management team of functional and industry experts. These investments helped us:
Manage a 200% increase in employee headcount across 4 operating locations
Create a culture of team-work, accountability, and performance
Execute transformational investments in sales, manufacturing, products, and systems
Acquisitions
We completed four complementary acquisitions and commercialized one technology out of the academic sector. These initiatives added:
A market-leading brand in a niche product category
Research and development capabilities to execute our manufacturing strategy
A novel technology to our market
StatLab Today
To meet our commitments to our original investors, we sold a majority interest in StatLab in 2017 and generated a 10x gross return on our initial $12 million equity investment. We transitioned out of day-to-day operating responsibility and passed the reins to our talented team. We helped the new majority owner with their growth objectives and eventually sold our remaining interest in StatLab in 2020.