Business Name:
Medelita
Website URL:
http://www.medelita.com
Social Media Links:
Twitter:?http://www.twitter.com/
Facebook:?http://www.facebook.com/
LinkedIn:?http://www.linkedin.com/
Year Founded:
2008
Business Partners:
Joe Francisco (husband)
Number of Employees:
13
What does your company do?
Medelita has taken the traditional medical uniform and upgraded it in every conceivable way. Our ultimate goal is to completely change the way that healthcare professionals think about their uniform and where they purchase it. A baffling display of flimsy material and ill-fitting silhouettes have needed an upgrade for quite some time. For over 40 years, millions of health care professionals around the world have worn ? and accepted ? basic, unisex lab coats and scrubs with a quality similar to rigid pajamas. Medelita set out to change that. ?We currently offer several unique and gender-specific lab coat and scrub designs that have been painstakingly developed to meet the highest standards of quality, fit, and performance. Our products are sold direct to physicians, clinicians, dentists, and veterinarians through our website at?medelita.com.
Was there a specific turning point when you realized your business was moving to the next level?
When I first started Medelita I had some doubts about the market for these products, since the idea was born out of my own need for something more appropriate in my own practice as a physician assistant. ?After just two years since we launched, we reached over 10,000 orders and over $1MM in annual sales. ?We also began to see the vast majority of customers placing subsequent orders, affirming the appeal of this new approach to healthcare uniform design and service. ?It was at that point that we received the validation we were looking for, and it gave us the confidence to take this to the mass market.
What processes or procedures have you implemented that have helped grow your company?
The greatest misconception in the $4.3 Billion medical apparel industry is that purchasing decisions are primarily driven by price, when in reality they are determined by physician preference. Other uniform manufacturers believe price is the primary determinant and costs keep rising, so they are constantly cost cutting, reducing quality, style, and customer service. Before Medelita, the end user had virtually no choice but to settle for unisex, uncomfortable, poorly fitting garments made of low quality fabrics. ?In contrast, we have taken a vertical approach to our business to ensure the highest standards of quality possible, and have partnered with several large firms like DuPont to test and deliver performance fabrics that are unmatched in the industry. ?We also have placed tight controls on our branding, customer service, embroidery services, and distribution. ?For instance, we currently sell most of our products through our website that is managed internally and continue to handle all of the embroidery in our own design studio. ?By keeping everything in-house, we?re able to ensure that our marketing messages reflect the same quality that our customers have come to expect through personalized customer service and a pursuit of perfection in product design.
What are some of the best marketing strategies that have worked for your business?
Initially I thought I could rely on my colleagues to help spread the word about our products, but I quickly realized that in order to build awareness we absolutely had to put our products directly in front of as many new customers as possible. ?While the website featured an abundance of information about our products, we had to let people touch the fabric and actually try it on before we could expect anyone to trust us to by online. ?In that spirit we set out to attend as many medical and dental conferences that we could fit into the span of a year. Soon enough our conference booths could be found with lines around the corner! ?We installed a mobile ?fitting room? where conference attendees could try on our products in a mirror, just as if they were in a retail store. ?The investment in time, money, and resources to help introduce our products and our brand at conferences across the U.S. and abroad was essential in our launch strategy.
Are there any ways that you have leveraged the Internet to grow your business?
We are firm believers in the potential for internet retailing. ?While traditional retailers are seeing modest, single-digit growth we know that online apparel sales will grow at an industry-wide pace of 16% year over year through 2016 (source Internetretailor.com). ?Our pace of growth has been dramatically higher than average due to the latent demand for products like ours and also thanks to the low barriers to entry that the internet provided us. ?We wouldn?t have been able to start the way we did under a traditional manufacturing and distribution model given the high capital requirement and low margins. ?In every way, we owe our success to the democratization effect that the internet has had on retailing. ?Going forward, we will continue to invest in new technologies that will add more transparency to the ordering process, where we constantly strive to replicate the experience of trying something on inside of a store.
What is most rewarding about running your business?
I take every customer interaction we have very personally. ?I spend a great deal of time every day spending as much time as I can spare to inspect every order that comes in. I like to make sure our customers (whom I still consider my colleagues) not only come away with a positive ordering experience, but also feel good about coming back when they?re ready to order again?which they often do. ?It?s for this reason that my heart jumps every time we receive a positive review or a referral. ?Just knowing that someone was happy enough about our products to tell us about it is incredibly rewarding, let alone when they choose to tell others about them. ?The same goes for our customer service. ?The team that has joined us at Medelita consists of some of the most compassionate, intelligent, and entrepreneurial people I?ve ever known, and I think our customers can tell every time they call or email us that something special is going on over here.
What challenges have you faced and how have you overcome them?
We initially made both lab coats and scrubs in the U.S., at a factory about 30 minutes from our office. ?We had excellent quality and daily, hands on supervision of anything that was being made with our label, and that was exactly what I always dreamed of/wanted. ?I wanted that Made In USA label on everything. ?I wanted to promote that on our web site. ?I wanted to emphasize that decision to our colleagues/customers, assuming it was important to me and likely important to them. ?Over a three-year period we watched our sewing costs go up, and up and up. ?Every time we would go to place a new order ? always bigger than the last order ? they would increase our costs (substantially) every single time we placed a new/bigger order, with a myriad of explanations including increased rent, increased liability expenses, increased workers comp expenses, forced renovations, etc.
We spent a year sourcing other local and U.S. Factories that had woven expertise and much to my dismay, we couldn?t find another factory that could sew our round lapels, round pockets and welt pockets with the same precision as our main U.S. Sewing factory. ?The U.S. Apparel market specializes in knit wear (mainly t-shirts) that can be mass-produced at a very low cost and still with a profit. ?We were in a situation that if we continued to manufacture in the U.S. We would quickly go out of business because of our own overhead, growth efforts, and the very high costs of our specialized performance fabrics. ?It took our management team about a year to convince me that we needed to look overseas for both cost savings and woven expertise, and after visiting both the fabric manufacturing facilities and the sewing facilities with my husband, we felt that we were making a good decision. ?In the end it was really the only one we could make in order to stay in business. ?It wasn?t what I wanted or what I dreamed of but I mainly felt that we had a really good concept that was very well received in the medical community and that I didn?t want to throw in the towel.
If you were starting over today, what would you do differently?
Early on in the process we decided to give in to the perceived cost savings that hiring consultants and outsourcing would provide. ?We slowly began to realize that by relying on third parties to handle important aspects of our business was not only slowing us down, but became a huge drag on our expenses. ?By hiring an internal staff we were able to become extremely quick and nimble, and able to try a lot more new ideas while reacting quickly when something didn?t work. ?If I could do it all over again I would hire all the right people from the start and grow the business as a team.
What advice do you have for other business owners?
Raise more money than you think you need at first, because you will definitely need it. ?I?d also advise people not to leverage so much of your own personal assets in the business, if you can afford not to. ?Often times my husband and I find ourselves wrestling with our own emotions when making big decisions, and it?s a lot harder to take the risks that are necessary when you?re a start-up.
Please list any favorite books, tools or resources (software, website, etc.) you would recommend for others:
We subscribe to the Harvard Business Review and read it religiously for new ideas. ?Outside of that we try to keep an eye on what?s going on in the world of internet retailing and of course, any business news to stay on top of trends. ?We use Mailchimp to manage our marketing emails, Raventools to track our progress with search engine rankings and SEO, and a myriad of other tools that we use daily to help with our online marketing efforts.
What is something that people might be surprised to learn about you?
While I?ve always been interested in fashion, I came into this as a physician assistant with literally zero fashion or clothing experience. ?Despite all that I designed all of our coats and scrubs, paying special attention to the needs of others working in medicine. ?Today I?m still a certified PA working on new designs, all while raising a toddler and expecting twins on the way! ?It?s a ton of hard work, but after 10 years working in the ER there isn?t much that you feel you can?t handle.
Source: http://businessinfoguide.com/entrepreneur-interview-lara-manchik-francisco-medelita/
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