As of 2017, Vilvet Pharmaceutical launched into one of the most competitive industries globally. They began by registering with the Food and Drug Administration and subsequently began selling to wholesalers. When they entered this busy marketplace, generic pharmaceuticals were becoming more common. In a good combination that leads to success, Vilvet Pharma combined the right wholesalers with the right suppliers leading to a positive return on investment in under a year.
Vilvet Pharmaceutical has a unique perspective on maintaining business and staff. They strive to create harmony and camaraderie among the employees. By developing relationships among the staff, everyone is striving for the same goals. While they handled the day to day operations, business building, and client development, they were all working for the same larger goal. By instilling the value of each person into the core of the company they have been able to cultivate a prolonged, successful foundation to grow from.
The Vilvet Founder – Sebastian Vilvet says, “It is all about growing people and elevating their careers.”
Vilvet Pharmaceutical utilizes the most current marketing and promotional activities. This includes email marketing, direct to client, engaging prospective customers directly with clear calls to action is both beneficial and helpful for building relationships. The Research and Development teams are concise about determining the best products with minimal competition and reasonable profitability within the marketplace. The final research outcome determines which products will be launched during each calendar year.
How did you get started with Vilvet Pharmaceutical? What inspired you to do so?
Our experience comes from the pharmaceutical industry. The senior members of our staff were all in different areas of the pharmaceutical industry. We have worked with some of the major players in the industry for many years. We work with companies such as wholesalers Cardinal Health and McCutcheon, which is how we got the idea to distribute to the wholesalers. We partnered together to bring Vilvet Pharmaceutical to where it is today. I think what inspired us is that we were all on the same page. We all work very hard and we work well together. We trusted the experience that we brought to the table.
How does your firm make money?
As orders come in from the wholesalers we enter the orders to an Electronic Data Interchange system that send the orders to the manufacturing company. Manufacturing with the process the orders as requested. After that, it is simply a matter of invoicing each one of the wholesale companies.
How long did it take for your firm to become profitable?
We were profitable very quickly. It was within our first year that we were profitable. I would say it was closer to about eight months when we began to see our profit. We have a very good cost per unit margin on our products which is what helped us to be so successful in such a short time-frame.
When you first started out did you ever doubt that this would work for you? If so, how did you handle it?
It has been very difficult at times. However, we have some great people on staff with many years of industry experience. With the combined experience that we are fortunate enough to have, together we can address virtually any obstacles that might arise.
How did you find your first customer?
We engaged our first customer via email. We designed a marketing strategy to use email. After our email marketing blast, we proceeded to fill out the applications to become suppliers for the wholesales.
What is one marketing strategy other than referrals that you use to generate new business?
We have designed our marketing strategy around email marketing. Each month we plan to send an email blast to all of the companies that we would like to do business with every Thursday.
What is the toughest decision you have had to make in the past few months?
The toughest decision that I have to make is on the number of products that I purchase. A part of our business is to have inventory on hand. But is a delicate call when you’re ordering. You really don’t want to keep any stock or overstock in your inventory. On the other hand, there are times that you may not order enough inventory. Operations managers have a really tough call on this issue every time ordering has to be addressed.
What do you think makes you successful?
One of the things that I believe makes us successful is that each one of us has very good customer relation skills. We have great communications with our customers. We pay attention to every detail and we are very attentive to our customer’s needs. We have built long-lasting relationships with our customers and they keep coming back.
What does the future hold for you and your firm? What are you most excited about?
I am very excited about the opportunities that there are in the generic Rx field. We have already identified various products that are planning to launch in 2020. We have a research market management team who determine which products have the least competition and the best profitability within the market. That research will ultimately govern the decisions made on which products we will launch for the following year.
What business books have inspired you that you’d recommend?
I am not a book reader. I read a lot about research and development in the market from the latest articles and trade magazines. I like to stay on top of everything going on in the industry. It can be a difficult market place. I believe staying informed is critical to the success of the business. My focus is to stay one step ahead of our competitors.
What is a recent purchase that you have made for Vilvet Pharmaceutical?
One of the biggest purchases that we always have to make which is one of our largest expenditures is buying enough raw materials for our manufacturing company. When we buy more raw materials for our manufacturing process, we lower the cost of production, we get better lead time, and have faster product distribution.