Briar Alpert / BioTek
Start Here Podcast | EPISODE #22 | 04/26/18
Today we sit down with Briar Alpert, President & CEO of BioTek Instruments and VCET board member.
Transcription:
Transcription:
Briar: So Bioteck has really made a commitment to the state of Vermont you know we do a hundred percent of our engineering or manufacturing are back office at work here in Vermont. And then where we’ve expanded outside the state is sales service and support. So you need to provide that in your local country to be successful in selling products.
Sam: From Vermont Center for emerging Technologies and start here, podcast sharing the stories of active, aspiring, and accidental entrepreneurs. On today’s episode we are thrilled to feature dryer Briar Alpert president and CEO of Biotek instruments, a leader in life sciences and a family company that he’s LED for more than 30 years. Welcome this is Sam Roach-Gerber and Dave Bradbury recording from the Consolidated Communications technology Hub in downtown Burlington Vermont.
Sam: Hey Briar.
Dave: Briar is in the house welcome
Briar: Hey guys
Dave: So let’s hit it Sam this is exciting, we seldom get a hard sciences company in here.
Sam:Yeah it’s so far out of my element I’m really looking forward to learning today.
Dave: We’ve got a reference card in case you start throwing some terms at us because we embarrass ourselves way too easily.
Briar: Don’t worry about that
Sam: So let’s start with the not so obvious here. What is BioTek?
Briar so I BioTek is basically a life science tools company. So what that means is we make Precision instrumentation and software solutions that are used in numerous applications including a basic science research done at universities into looking for the mechanisms associated with things like heart disease, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cancer. Then once those mechanisms are discovered our instrumentation is then used in BioTeknology and pharmaceutical companies looking for cures and treatments to diseases and then we have many other alternative uses for equipment such as food testing or epidemiology or clinical testing or are even looking for new alternative energy sources.
Sam: Wow
Dave:Wow
Sam: How do you focus and choose something? How do you choose your next product?
Briar: yeah so that it’s a great question you know I think for a long period in our evolution of the company when we were smaller and less well-funded we adopted a strategy that I would call Innovative fast follower. And so what I mean by that is we were never first-to-market we were always a second or third day Market but with a unique combination of features and value. What that allows you to do is kind of see what’s working in the market and what’s not working and then come to the market with a better combination of functionality.Now that the company has has grown and gotten stronger we really changed our strategy to being one of the leaders and so to be a later now that requires significantly more investment inscience, in applications in understanding what the customer wants to do so that you can articulate in your mind what that product is before the customer knows that they need it.
Dave: You must be in a stage of your company, Briar where you’re listening to your customers a lot more actively and globally. So does that de-risk sort of these little strategic bets to make around new products and new Solutions vs. the early days where you’re like gosh I hate the bet all the chips on one product that you were hopeful someone would buy?
Briar: It’s a point well-taken. We enjoy a lot more diversification than we did when we were smaller and that diversification takes many forms. So we have a number of different product lines that we sell into a number of different markets that we sell into a number of different geographies. So the effect is similar to a stock portfolio, so where as you may see business is down in Europe on year it’s up in China the next. Or maybe academic funding is down one year but pharmaceutical spending is up and so at the highest level it makes for a smoother and predictable revenue and profitability but down in the details there’s tremendous volatility. But because of this diversification we were able to manage our business in a very predictable manner.
Dave: Was that a conscious choice to get diversification? Was there a period of time that the
company was just like holy crap the world’s changing we’re not responding rapidly enough or did it just could just organically develop?
Briar: There have certainly been points in our history where we’ve suffered from a lack of diversification. You know we’ve had you know major OEM customers you know we used to make a device that tested pacemakers and it was a big contract. One day the company called us and said we’re going to cancel the contract. That represented 30 or 40% of our business and when that kind of a reduction in your plan occurs rapidly you’re forced to take it you’re very dramatic unpleasant actions to right-size the business. And so I think it’s a lesson that you learn it’s very hard to to walk away from these big opportunities but you know you really work to manage your business so that no one customer one segment represents such a large portion of your business that you know it it fundamentally can change the structure of your business if you end up losing that.
Dave: Got you. So backtrack a bit, BioTek is a family business. Your father Norm Right started this I think, and your brother are in the business now. Was it sort of like the mafia where you had to go into it? How did you decide to get involved in the family business?
Briar: Yeah that’s good history so yes generation family-owned family-run business it was started by my father, a normal person who was the professor and chairman of the physiology biophysics department at the University of Vermont. A good friend of his George Lure who was in charge of the model making facility at the University of Vermont. And so you combined a scientist and an engineer and that turned out to be a very powerful combination. You know, one was an optimist, one was a pessimist and in fact that is very helpful in reviewing potential opportunities. The business which started 50 years ago, you know, was always there in the background. It was never expected or required that myself or my brother would enter into the business. It was available but my father had a view that you really should pursue your passion, do what you enjoy and even if one day you want to join the business it would be valuable for you to go and work and some other places now.
Sam: Good advice.
Briar: I think it was good advice. You know so while I was free to do anything that I wanted to do it it ended up that and I really did want to go into the business. The opportunities that owning a business provided we’re just so much significantly greater than pursuing a career independent of that.
Sam: Totally.So like you said BioTek is celebrating its 50th Anniversary which is crazy is that is that hard to wrap your head around or like a man it’s been around forever for you but I mean I just can’t imagine that coming up unless…
Dave:It’s tough to find 50 year old science company because of pace of change your private equity or some other company comes and buys it.
Sam: Yeah.
Dave: Why are you still here at 50 years old?
Briar: It is a rarity. We were just at a big trade show out in San Diego and you can’t find a life science company that has the same name or same ownership that’s been around for
more than 10 or 15 years. it’s a driver of a couple things you don’t want as many life science companies fail to succeed.But those that succeed are often required either by private-equity or by a strategic partner and so there’s been tremendous consolidation in our industry. BioTek remains one of the very few large privately-owned life science companies in the world. So when we look at our competitors today you know we’re really competing against divisions of these Global public multibillion-dollar companies. We happen to think that’s a competitive Advantage you know that private companies move in a way that’s much faster and we have a vision that’s much more long-term. We’re not focused on quarterly profits, we’re more focused on what’s in the best long-term interest of our customers and our employees and in fact when you do that there’s actually complete alignment with what’s in the best long-term interest of our stockholders. So you know we don’t see any conflict between the three things and sometimes are public company competitors that don’t say that alignment.But yes I can’t believe in 50 years I’ve been at the company you know more than half of my life. I say it like it’s an unusual story but if you look at the people who have chosen to make a career at BioTek, 20% of our employees have been with the company for over 20 years the average tenure of our employees is over 10 years and you know we’ve hired a hundred fifty people in the last 3 years and so even with that…
Dave: 150 people? What’s your total employment globally now?
Briar: Right now we have 475 of which 300 are in Vermont.
Dave: Oh you got to get to 500 like five hundred fifty years just seems like it’s the right thing.
Briar: Based on our plan we will hit that number in our in our 50th year so BioTek really has made a commitment to the state of Vermont you know we do a hundred percent of our engineering or manufacturing are back office at work here in Vermont and then where we’ve expanded outside the state is sales, service, and support. So you need to provide that in local country in order to to be successful in selling the products and so we we like the motto you know we really export products not jobs.
Sam: Awesome. How is that transition been like from when you were just strictly a Vermont company to when you expanded will boy can talk a little bit about that transition.
Briar: Yea, I’d be happy to. We like to say with in our category we dominate within the state of Vermont the state of Vermont represents less than one-tenth of 1% of our business so it’s just not practical for BioTek with the focus on the Vermont business. We started really with the United States you know that’s where we were most comfortable.Then really built out a distribution Network starting with Distributors and then migrating attitude direct sales presents. The United States is the biggest Market in the world representing about half of a of the entire world market but it’s only half and so if you want to achieve in a real scale you have to go in access these markets around the world and part of our strategic plan that we put together probably back in 2008 was we wanted to have a direct presence in the top 10 countries in the world. At that time we were directing and maybe three or four of them so one of the key legs of our strategy was to go and establish subsidiaries in these countries and while we have them sort of prioritized by sales opportunity we actually implemented them in the order that we found the right leader to lead the country.
Dave: Like Talent.
Briar: Yeah the talent the individual really drove the sequence but we did get there over a course of about a 5-6 year period.
Dave: Did you partner into these countries or were these just BioTek employees that because I think we had Logic Supply was in here in a recent talking about sort of their success in their mixus. So were they your employees from the outset or did you sign a deal with a joint venture partner to learn to Market a bit.
Briar: We tried all models so for example in Switzerland we had a major distributor and we ended up purchasing that distributor so that distribute are they all became BioTek employees it was a very nice transition for for all parties and we really hit the ground running immediately just rebranding the distributor as as a biotic subsidiary. In the majority of the other countries we as I said we found the leader that we thought was able to run the business independently that operated consistent with our culture and core values that we trusted and then we really relied on that leader to build out the organization. So what one of the key components of our of our culture is the delegation of a real authority and responsibility so this is you need to find individuals that are comfortable that really want that Authority and will shoulder the responsibility and then we provide guidance and support relative to the you know things like counting and an inventory control and product launches. But we’re counting on that individual in the country to really provide the leadership to do the hiring and maintain the culture consistent with the way we run the company and drive the business forward. We will support them you know with Resources with advice but but they have to own it
Sam: Right, that’s awesome and so those at least that are mostly salesman and service folks can you talk a little bit about the employee breakdown here in Vermont you know whether it’s Hardware Engineers vs. software engineer a scientist like what is a breakdown look like today? Briar: So the biggest department and in BioTek Vermont is our manufacturing group we are a vertically Consolidated company so what that means is we really manage the process from the conceptualization of the product to the to the development that released to manufacturing the manufacturing the launch into the marketplace then the sales service and support. So in Vermont we do the conceptualization and the development and so these would be marketing and sales and applications scientist, the scientists would often have Masters or phds in things like molecular Diagnostics…
Dave: We’ve got a few of those in our VCET staff.
Briar: These are scientists that help us understand the science and can help us decide how we wanted director R&D resources in once the products developed you release it into our manufacturing team. These would be people who do assembly calibration quality control inventory control machine shop purchasing production control. These people in a range from people just with very good mechanical electrical assembly at capabilities to people with technician degrees you know two people with Advanced degrees in in logistics and procurement management.
Sam: How are you finding all these smart people?
Briar: Well so it’s getting harder you know we have our growth has been accelerating in the past years for a long time we were very able and capable of hiring people with in the state of Vermont you know unfortunately it’s often from other companies and so something about the value proposition we offer in the benefits and being part of what we’re doing was very attractive to people and we were able to attract people readily but in the last 12-18 months it’s getting harder it’s taking longer and and we’re trying to get more creative and so particularly in the assembly where we’re growing rapidly you know we’re looking to maybe some non-traditional sources. Like people who have experience and Automotive people who have worked on a farm. Dave: It’s tough enough to get my car serviced don’t take my mechanic Briar.
Briar: We find the vermont worker to be an amazing contributor and I put the Vermont worker up against anybody anywhere in the world in terms of productivity and Ingenuity. The key is to provide an environment that unleashes that power you know where you know we want to bring people in not only to do the work but to be thinking about how we go about doing the work. We strongly believe that person closest to the where the work being performed is often best positioned to define how that work gets done. So it’s not just about doing the work it’s about helping us do the work more creatively.
Sam: And no just doing things because that’s the way that its been done but thinking about things in new ways.
Briar: Exactly and that’s a philosophy that takes time in an organization you know I think one of the things that you’re a paradigm that you need two addresses there can be a mentality that says well if I’m twice as efficient you only need half as many people to do this and so in fact you’re going to let half of us go. But that paradigms exactly wrong in fact if you’re more efficient if you’re more productive the one we can pay you more money to we’re going to be more successful in the marketplace we’re going to sell more products and in fact we’re going to need to hire more people and that’s the fact pattern that’s occurred at BioTek over the last 20 years and that’s a trust that’s been built over the last 20 years. So people in their gut get it that by improving productivity it’s a rising tide that raises all ships.
Dave: Right, not a threat so you may not even have an example of the F-word, but any
any failures you can share that we’re these sort of a come-to-jesus kind of moments for you as a leader or for the company that might help some of our listeners on their Journey.
Briar: Sure yes we’ve had many failures at BioTek you could even call them some near-death experiences under my leadership that we explored almost to the very end. The largest was an acquisition we did of a European company, this follows to successful Acquisitions we did that were were very successful and and confidence-building and we bought a portion of a European company that had manufacturing Italy distribution in five European countries and from our perspective this was going to be transformational, it was going to allow us to take the products we make in the United States and plug him into the European distribution system. It was going to allow us to take the the products made in the Italian company and plug them into the Us distribution system we had and we thought this would really bring us to the next level.
Dave: Brilliant
Briar: Yeah, on paper were going to be a tremendously successful and we kind of had an opinion that you know based on their success in the past you know we’ll just do it again but at a bigger scale and we did it at a time when it was easy to borrow a lot of money Banks were pleased to land at high debt to ebitda levels and so we did the transaction we had a great dinner and then we we started running the business and what we found was we were in a market we we didn’t understand it was a brand new technology we were only getting business that the big companies didn’t want so this was unprofitable business. Italy is an amazing place for food but not the best place to have a manufacturing operation. We had quality problems the cultures were incompatible you know I talked about this delegation of authority and responsibility and the culture of the company we acquired was one where one sat on the top and told everybody what to do it was very autocratic and even though we told people over and over again you know what no no we want you to make the decision we want you to be responsible we couldn’t get that cultural change. Then on top of that the the employment laws in the European countries are different from the United States and we probably took too many people here in the transaction more than the business could afford and it is so expensive to reduce the employment base that it became prohibitive and whereas I think we could have had a successful business with say 150 people we couldn’t make it go work with 200 people and there was no path to reduce the 50 people in the organization at the same time the credit markets dried up the banks got very uncomfortable and we started missing Financial covenants we went into something that’s called work out which is not where you want to be. The banks are really forced to take steps that ensure that they they are repaid those aren’t often in the best interest of the company and we found ourselves you know 30 years into the company at a point where fundamentally everything was at risk if you know we are in danger of losing the entire company because of this acquisition. After struggling for four or five years with it we ended up closing that business down and we were in such financial distress that we ended up selling one of the divisions of the company now a very painful. In the history of the company but if you were to look at it over the the 50-year history it really was an inflection point for the company. For the first time with that sale of the division we had fixed our capital structure, delivered our balance sheet, focused all of our management attention on on one line of business and during this crisis the senior leadership had to step up to address the crisis and the middle management stepped up and started running the business on a day-to-day basis. To the credit of the Senior Management when the crisis was over they didn’t go back down running the business that the middle management continue to run the business allowing the Senior Management Group maybe for the first time to think much more strategically and look about looking at where do we want to go as a company what do we need how do we transition from this fast follower to a leader and really was an inflection point in the success of the organization so from the biggest failure in the history of the company we rose up stronger than we ever were and that Foundation is what it what really has led to the success we have today.
Dave: Can you eat Italian food and not think of this experience?
We have a wonderful restaurant in our company in Italy. One of the employment laws if you have to provide lunch to everybody and and the food was outstanding the products we made… Sam: so it wasn’t all bad.
Briar: It wasn’t all bad, the food is great and the people were great but we weren’t able to make a go of it with an Italian manufacturing company.
Dave: It’s funny cuz you said prior to our start that food is very much part of your employees culture reacted to reschedule this podcast cuz that Briar had to judge the annual chili contest which is the best excuse we have ever heard.
Sam: yea it was the only one we would’ve taken for sure.
Dave: I love the team element I mean it just sort of that family feel that you’ve built the culture at your at your company.
Sam: And also I was just thinking about your middle management stepping up and it’s just shows that you have the right people. You know when when they face a challenge like that and step up and it must be really gratifying.
Briar: I think for an employee there is nothing more exciting than been following your own ideas I mean you do it with with a higher level of passion are then if you’re doing something that you’re being told to do and so I think we work very hard to get to create that environment where ideas compete with each other but then the best ideas are followed independent of the source and that’s that’s that’s a powerful environment you create and it serves as a strong Lifeline for me in my decision-making in a we have hundreds of people in the company who are very comfortable coming into my office and telling me when they think I’ve made a mistake. I don’t always agree with them but often times I do and it is powerful for people to know that leadership will change their mind when presented with with new facts and information.
Dave: You are on the University of Vermont trustees. Why?
Briar :Well so my my my roots into UVM are deep and Manny you know my undergraduate and graduate degrees are from UVM might my father was Professor there. BioTek really wasn’t a technology transfer that came out of the University of Vermont and you know I think sometimes University doesn’t get the credit that it’s do relative the economic impact that it has you think about it you know BioTek has exported over a billion dollars worth of products out of the state of Vermont. It took us about 45 years to do that but will export II billion dollars worth of products in about 7 years and then the third billion dollars worth of products in three or four years if we continue to grow in a right and so you think about that you know BioTek would not be here but if not for the University of Vermont being here so my family came here because University offered my father job and that’s why BioTek ended up being here. So I’m interested in it because of all those connections UVM is in its a bagen and complex organization with a budget of six seven hundred million dollars. Thousands of students it is a nerve center for ideas and thought and exchange and just a very significant and important component to the Burlington in Vermont. I wanted to be part of that. I also saw a board and an Administration that and wanted to make changes and wanted make the university better and recognize this is a time where where were where students and parents are really looking at the value proposition of a four-year $200,000 education and the people need to feel comfortable that they’re going to get a good return on that investment in that sounds like a fun project.
Dave: Well thank you for doing I think it’s great to have a an entrepreneur from Vermont at that table so I thank you.
Sam: So Briar, looking back at you career so far, what are you most proud of what makes you smile.
Briar: Well, from a career perspective I take a lot of satisfaction in BioTek. What we’ve accomplished you know they’re there are so many different aspects to the the pleasure and joy I get from BioTek you know there’s the one where we have created not just jobs but careers for people at the company and I’ve seen people move from accounting clerks to customer sales reps to middle management to Senior Management over the 10-year of their career. So that’s very satisfying you know to provide a safe stable environment where people can earn a good living and really make a contribution to the success of an organization. Then on the other side of it you don’t we make really cool products that are doing amazing things in the world. It’s not that we’re doing the science we’re providing the tools to the scientists around the world to make the next great discovery that could cure cancer that could you know keep food supply safe that you know is being used to control epidemics around the world until every day there are things happening with our instruments to advance science so that we have a better understanding of the world we live in and and the quality of life that we all enjoy.
Sam: Amazing.
Dave: Tools that matter
Sam: Dave and I talk all the time about you know we’re not just creating jobs in Vermont or creating careers and high paying jobs that people can actually live a good life on you know it’s important that’s why people live here. I just wanted to backtrack a little bit and ask you about your customer maybe it’s just narrow down on one of your favorites or something you think is super cool right now.
Briar: A brand new customer, a company called quanterix they just went public and they have a blood test that checks for concussions and so they have contracts with National Football League National Hockey League. Basically I think we’re all familiar with concussions has become a big issue in professional and even College and High School sports and so right now
you go into this concussion protocol and then your monitored and ultimately go in and have an MRI this company has a blood test that checks for an enzyme that’s produced when your brain has a concussion event.
Sam: Crazy!
Briar: So this is easy it’s fast it’s less expensive and you’d be able to determine you know the head then the magnitude is a concussion event or if there’s not one. So the goal of course is you know the safety of the player but in but it’s also about subjectivity gets rid of it and right let’s get the player back into the game if they’re capable of getting back back into the game but let’s protect them if they’re not so that’s that’s one new customer doing something I really cool and I tell you every week there’s a new customer doing something really amazing.
Dave: That’s awesome brain food right what a challenge and it’s actually kinda VCET we see a couple hundred folks here that year and it’s literally that the rocket scientist walks in the door to put cube satellites into space to people doing things in agriculture and it’s fairly daunting. I did want to recognize Briar Alpert is a founding board member at VCET.
Sam: yeah thanks Briar
Dave: What do we have over you that has allowed us to keep you for this long, I don’t know where that file is. But thank you. You can spend your time anywhere sailing, judging chili contest, solving problems that matter what do you get out of VCET by donating your time and expertise?
Briar: So when I was originally asked to be on VCET, the mission as explained to me was to help promote and create high paying jobs in the state of Vermont and I thought that was important to the state it was it was necessary and was perhaps the the best use of some of my extra free time. Plus it’s fun and interesting you know you stay engaged with new young entrepreneurs who are doing an amazing different things and you know you give but you also learn as you’re doing it. I chose to make my home here in the state of Vermont and we’ve mad it no secret that BioTek is is committed to staying here until I want to be part of the solution towards a making Vermont a more prosperous successful State. I think creating high-paying jobs in a entrepreneurial ecosystem is going to be a key component of doing that and you know I think that that you guys Dave and Sam are really doing extraordinary things. If I was to reach out to the state of Vermont and they were looking to you know get a good return on their investment I would encourage them to increase their support of VCET.
Dave : Thank you wow! Do you have to disclose that fundraising pitch? We need to get to the the final magic wand.
Sam: Already? I’m going to have to trap you at the next board meeting site like so many more questions. Our final special question… if you were to change one thing about Vermont today what would it be?
Briar: I can change anything? Well let’s pick a hard problem.
Sam: You tend to do that don’t you.
Briar: Well it’s a magic wand. I think I would clean up all the rivers and streams and lake. you know it it’s fascinating to me you know we talk the talk in this state about the environment we certainly do it right relative the regulation of business and industry and yet we allow the pollution of of the rivers and streams and lakes and we haven’t yet come up with a funding mechanism or a plan to really address the problem and you know the environment is such an asset for this state and and such an important part of the economy that you know I think it is a mistake not too aggressively address this issue.
Sam: We got to walk the walk.
Dave: That is a great one to a wrap it up on the new one I think. We’ve had red pandas, poverty opiates things like that, so I was a good one and I was addressable.
Dave: Ok this has been the start here podcast with Sam & Dave where we have been sharing stories of active aspiring an accidental entrepreneurs the series were made possible by the Vermont Technology Council and Consolidated Communications follow us on Twitter @VCET thanks for listening and let’s get back to work.
