Medi-Dyne's Top Down Support Vital to Export Success

Medi-Dyne’s Top Down Support Vital to Export Success

This episode of Export Nation, features Kristin Drauschke of Medi-Dyne Healthcare Products, a medical healthcare company located in Colleyville, Texas. The company specializes in sports medicine, orthopedic podiatry products, and more.

Relevant Links

Company Information: Medi-Dyne Healthcare Products - www.medi-dyne.com/
Office: U.S. Commercial Service Dallas-Fort Worth
Director: David Royce - David.Royce@trade.gov
Services - Website Globalization, International Company Profile

Podcast Transcript

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[00:01:02] Derrick Small: On this episode of Export Nation, we speak to Kristin Drauschke of Medi-Dyne, a medical healthcare company located in Colleyville, Texas. The company specializes in sports medicine, orthopedic podiatry products, and more. We are also joined by David Royce, a senior international trade specialist with the US Commercial Services Dallas Fort-Worth Texas office. Thank you very much for joining today. Truly appreciate having you on the program. Kristin, maybe you can start by telling us a little bit about yourself-

[00:01:39] Kristin Drauschke: Sure.

[00:01:39] Derrick: -and your company.

[00:01:41] Kristin: Yes. Thanks to you, Derrick and David, as well for having us, myself and Medi-Dyne, on the show. I appreciate the opportunity. A few words about Medi-Dyne. We are a medical healthcare company located in Colleyville, Texas, which is in the DFW area in Texas. We were established in 1998, and we specialize in sports medicine, orthopedic podiatry products. Our products are mainly sold at pharmacies around the world, medical shops, as well as physical therapies, for example, or orthopedic offices or the big doctors’ offices.

[00:02:24] Derrick: Okay. Perfect. Then, how did you connect with the US Commercial Service? How did that relationship start?

[00:02:34] Kristin: I’m proud to say it’s been, I believe, almost 15 years that we’ve been working with the Commercial Service and David now over the past I think already seven or eight years. It was my predecessor at Medi-Dyne who was heading up an international business unit like, again, 12 to 15 years ago who initiated the first contact with the Commercial Service. We set it off ever since then and just continued growing the relationship and taking advantage and benefiting from the various programs that the Commercial Service offers.

[00:03:11] Derrick: David, do you, by any chance, remember meeting Medi-Dyne or Kristin?

[00:03:19] David Royce: Absolutely. I think the first that I had met Medi-Dyne, it was during a transition in our office. At times, we transition to certain industries. I then became responsible for the healthcare medicare industry, and that’s when I was introduced to Medi-Dyne. I met the founder or one of the founders, Craig, first and then later was introduced to Kristin.

[00:03:50] Derrick: Oh, wow. Okay. Perfect. Dave, I’m sorry. Go ahead, Kristin.

[00:03:54] Kristin: It’s actually funny David and I just recently shared a few stories from a previous job that I worked at. We used to work together there. I was with the ISBDC, International Small Business Development Centers. We used to do programs there together. Then we just reconnected and realized that a few months ago. [00:03:17] David: We were reminded, at least I was reminded just how small the international business world is or it can be. That was fascinating to learn about.

[00:04:16] Derrick: That’s cool. I’ve been hearing stories like that where people sort of were with one company and may have worked with us, especially because they were getting back into international sales, they sort of instantly need to come back to us, which is pretty good. In a way, it keeps that relationship going. David, maybe a sentence or two about you if you can.

[00:04:50] David: Yes, I’ll just keep it short and brief. I’ve been with the US Commercial Service for 18-plus years. I’ve handled multiple industries vastly because, during the years, our office tends to change responsibilities for industries. When that happens, we transition, and I take on different industries. Healthcare is one of those that I currently have and have had for quite some time.

Prior to the US Commercial Service, as Kristin mentioned, I worked for the Small Business Development Center through the Tarrant County College District system. There, I was also assisting companies to export and import. [00:05:46] Derrick: Oh, wow. You have a long history of being in exporting and helping clients and your customers. Perfect. All right. Kristin, back to you. In what ways has the US Commercial Service helped Medi-Dyne build its international sales?

[00:06:02] Kristin: I believe we’re probably one of the very few companies who’ve probably taken advantage of every single program the Commercial Service offers over the years. We’ve done everything from the IPSs, International Partner Searches. Actually, we’re currently in the middle of one for Chile. David has connected us with a local officer in [unintelligible 00:06:28] Chile.

[unintelligible 00:06:30] on the medical field and orthopedic and physical therapy distributors. As we’re talking, actually, today or tomorrow, I’m having calls with some prospective new partners. Over the years, we’ve probably done six, seven, or eight of these international partners, that’s one example, then the Gold Key Services, another very important program, I believe, offered by the Commercial Service.

Again, the research was being done on prospective partners in the industry. Then we, as a company, have the opportunity to travel to that specific country of our interest and meet with the preselected companies. We’ve done probably four, five, six of these Gold Keys from countries ranging from India to Australia, Japan, also done it with Mexico and Colombia in the past.

Yes, we’ve used Services to financially vet new prospective partners to make sure that we know what we’re getting into or we have certain inquiries or inquiries relating to government contracts. We, from time to time, ask the Commercial Service to just give us or share, a little bit more, market or company insight and company financial data as far as they have access to it, the tools that they have access to.

We’ve been part of the [unintelligible 00:08:08] at MEDICA, which is the largest trade show for our field at least. The US Commercial Service always participates with the large area at MEDICA with bringing together all the US companies. We’ve done that a few years in the past. David has referred us to some grant programs that are specifically relevant to Texas companies where we’ve been able to sort out the paperwork.

For three years in a row now, we’ve been able to get additional export grant money to help with our export activities, initiatives, marketing initiatives to foster and grow our international sales.

[00:08:58] David: Derrick, I’d like to add that one of the things that I have thoroughly enjoyed working with Medi-Dyne on is just their openness to ideas. They are dedicated, they develop strategy, they put funding where it’s necessary. The support is from the top. With all of those factors, it allows us to better serve them. Just the openness to some suggestions is key.

As Kristin mentioned, one of the grant programs that they applied for has enabled them to do a little bit more with some additional funding. It’s been a real pleasure working with them for a number of years, and as a result, I think they’ve demonstrated great success. One of the things that Kristin mentioned is the international partnership program. Recently, we have done some virtual introductions.

We’ve always had the virtual introductions option, but because of the current world situation where we’re not able to travel and we’re not able to have face-to-face interactions much, we’ve enhanced our offerings for virtual introductions.

[00:10:41] Derrick: You brought up a few good points there. First, I’m going to ask Kristin, which one of these services do you feel were maybe most impactful if any? Maybe they were all impactful, but which one would you say is like your go-to service?

[00:11:00] Kristin: Personally, I think is the International Partner Search with the Virtual Introductions because of the limits to resources initially required from our end as a company. It helps us in the day-to-day activities. It takes a good amount of time to research prospective partners and to get in touch with them, to get an audience with them, to get time scheduled. With all these preliminary steps, the Commercial Service really just takes that off of our plate for a very low fee in comparison to what it costs us in terms of labor internally in the company, and the quality of the results just speaks for itself.

For us or for my position, for my role, that’s just a really big help. I can also think that things like the MEDICA trade groups if somebody is not maybe as well-versed traveling or meeting people from all different cultures or just not sure about it or just doesn’t have the experience yet, I think that really helps create the right atmosphere and setup as well to support US companies when they go international to participate together with the Commercial Service at a trade show. This is the full package that makes it a lot easier for the other US companies to be successful overseas.

[00:12:32] Derrick: One more tee, just so we’re not toned up and David brought it up, COVID-19. Some of the clients that I speak to have mentioned that because they’ve had the international sales channels, that they’ve been able to weather the storm. Now, not every company is fortunate in that way, but would you say— If not, it’s fine, but would you say that having that international sales channel has helped weather this current environment?

[00:13:09] Kristin: I think in general it always helps, obviously, the more legs you stand on to stabilize the business in hard situations or challenging environments. For us, certainly, of course, the entire world was impacted, so every one of our countries that we conduct business in was impacted when, with direct and indirect partners, went over 70 countries as a company with all of our brands.

Each and every single one was impacted. Some of them, they’ve come back quicker than others, and some countries have come back quicker than others and just are back rolling already again. All these different countries have helped each other, and that has helped Medi-Dyne. Yes, I don’t know if that helps.

[00:14:03] Derrick: No, no, no, of course. David, lastly, you mentioned top-down support. Is that a good sign when you’re working with a company that they have support from the senior executives?

[00:14:21] David: Yes. Many times when we are counseling companies, it’s something that we look for to see if they have the support in order to be successful. We know that doing international business involves quite a bit more than just doing domestic business. For instance, the funding and the budget, in normal times, we would be traveling, we would be doing face-to-face meetings.

You have to have the funding in order to travel, you have to have the funding to participate in trade shows, you have to have the funding to make product modifications, to do effective marketing, those kinds of things. Just strictly on the funding side, that has to be supported from the top. The other idea is that leadership has to understand that the sales cycle is a little bit longer than you would expect in the US.

Back to your question, Derrick, yes, that’s one of the things that we look for and we recommend to those US companies looking to do international business, is to be sure that the support is there.

[00:15:54] Derrick: Perfect. Thank you. Kristin, back to you. What are some key characteristics your company looks for in international sales partners?

[00:16:08] Kristin: There’s several different combination of things that we look for. First off, it’s always very important to us that we are able to meet with the potential new partner face to face, either at a trade show or at the company’s headquarter. Normally, that would be me going to that specific company, just to get a good idea of the inner workings of the company, see their facility.

It’s oftentimes [unintelligible 00:16:39] for them to get terms as well so you want to have, at least on the outside, a good understanding, some additional insight of how the company is set up. To us, that’s really, really important to have that option to visit locally and for them to be open to it. Of course, that’s already the second or third step along the way.

In general, what we ask our partners to do initially is to fill out our partner application form. Of course, it’s all information you could get from the website just from some research, but to us, it shows already from them having to fill out five, six pages and a little bit of a business plan with regards to our brands, it already shows how deep their interest is or if they truly are interested, if they are dedicated, if they’re willing to spend, even initially, some time thinking about our brands and the marketing opportunity.

It’s just small things like that give us indications of how interested the other party is. It’s filling out the partner application form, it’s understanding their willingness to apply for medical registrations. Again, we’re in the medical industry. Almost every country in the world has their own registrations or ministries that you need to apply the product licenses for. We need partners that are willing to make those commitments and make the registrations.

The same goes for marketing material. Again, that’s pretty telling if a partner initially is willing to at least co-share the expenses on localized marketing material. All of those are really important indications.

Finally, specifically with regards to our products, because, again, they’re medical products and oftentimes, they require a large amount of explanation and product demonstration and product presentations, you can’t just put them somewhere up on the website and hope that they sell themselves.

They’re quite unique and innovative. Oftentimes, people have never seen something like it before, so we require the foreign sales team to really do their job and go out to their customer base and have the capacity and the resources and the staff to actually visit their customers to explain and demonstrate our products. Those are just really important criteria for us specifically as a company to identify who’s a promising prospective or new partner.

It takes quite some preparation on both ends. It’s not a quick sale, just as David said earlier that the sales cycle’s quite large or quite long to actually establish new partnerships and build that relationship. It’s definitely worthwhile investing your time upfront.

[00:19:49] Derrick: Okay, thank you. This might be a tough question for you, being that your company is in, I think it says, over 70 countries. Medi-Dyne’s in a lot of countries, right? What would be the most satisfying export experience and why?

[00:20:09] Kristin: Yes. [unintelligible 00:20:12] David about that the other day. I think maybe because of COVID, my perception has changed a little bit as well or just my attitude towards it or perception.

Traditionally, what my answer would be, and it still stands correct, based on everything I just said, how important all of the preparations are when you start with a new company, it’s also, of course, very rewarding if after one and a half or two years you finally get your first sale through and the first import is done. This is what actually happens with our new partner in Hungary a few years back. I was able to identify a new company. None of our brands were previously sold in Hungary. This company, our partner company, decided to start selling and importing and working with our brands for the entire medical market there. It took one and a half years of diligent work, and they were vital.

It required tons of documentation and registrations and translations. Honestly, at some point, I was like, “I don’t know if this is ever going to happen.” However, it did happen. It’s just been an amazing success story ever since then. In fact, they won our International Distributor Awards twice already. We issue International Distributor Awards once every year to some outstanding partners as a motivation but just to recognize the special efforts.

They’ve earned it twice in the past five years. That was very rewarding when you see all of that hard preparation coming to fruition. Now, this is in a normal business environment, but obviously, with COVID, it has new challenges, different challenges. Over the past year, it was just almost impossible to identify new leads, just cold calling. Really, it’s cold calling, you don’t see anybody at the trade shows.

What we did instead was we hosted an international partner or virtual international partner meeting. We had over 20 of our international partners participate in a half-day event last year to just give them the opportunity to have a platform to reconnect despite nobody being able to travel. We gave them a platform to brainstorm ideas amongst each other, to share how they’re managing through the crisis, and then just offered a lot of our support.

That was very, very well-received. Even weeks after, we got thank you emails. I’m saying that because that was just very rewarding as well because, obviously, it took a lot of effort to prepare that half-a-day virtual meeting, but people really saw the benefit in it and made us part of our international network. I think those are the things that count in international business at the end of the day.

[00:23:26] David: Derrick, one of the things that Medi-Dyne does so well and adds to their success is they are very supportive of their partners. An example for marketing as an example, and Kristin could probably talk about more, but their relationship with their partners is truly a partnership where they don’t just sign a partnership agreement and then just let them loose. They’re very supportive behind the scenes at times. Kristin, maybe you can talk a little bit more about that.

[00:24:05] Kristin: Sure. One thing we’ve been offering over the years is our marketing database for distributors. It’s on [unintelligible 00:24:18].com, for example, so all of our partners have special access to all of our marketing material, so they can just benefit from the creativity that our local US team puts into the work. Then we do international partner meetings.

Again, last year we had the virtual one, but under normal circumstances, we try to do one every two years. We invite everybody to Texas to just get everybody together and create that. We call it the family of partners. We have a family of brands at Medi-Dyne and then there’s our partner family, with all of our key partners. We have customer service that’s dedicated to our international customers.

Parts of the shipping staff are dedicated to international, somebody just for order entry in international, then myself as located in Europe, just to have easier access to key customers in some of our key markets. It’s a mentality and it’s a mindset that just really goes through all of the different facets of conducting business.

[00:25:39] Derrick: Beautiful. Kristin, with all this exporting experience, what kind of advice would you give to companies in the initial stages of developing a strategy and tips?

[00:25:55] Kristin: Sure. The first thing that comes to mind is just what David said earlier as well. It’s extremely important to have top-down support because if you just if you’re one champion [unintelligible 00:26:09] and let’s say US domestic sales and you see the international potential but you just don’t have the support, it’s really, really tough to be successful and to really develop a sustaining strategy. Having that top-down support is vital.

Apart from that, what’s always really important to understand is there are no quick sales and internationals. You have to be aware that all of it takes at least one and a half times longer than it would have to or at least two times actually longer than it would with a domestic sale. Either setting up a website in another market or doing the traveling arrangements, everything takes a lot longer, and you need to be aware of that. Language barriers are always a challenge, terrorists in different countries, shipping modalities. Just having the right amount of training or the right training content to not have any negative surprises, let’s say, I think it’s really important to have somebody within the company that is willing to learn about export shipping documents and export [unintelligible 00:27:27] from the Department of Commerce is a great resource to have access to all of the training tools for somebody who’s a complete beginner but also for more advanced people as well.

Now, everything as it pertains to international marketing, how do you have to think about pricing structure? Do you have to think about local packaging or [unintelligible 00:27:51] packaging? The same, again, as it relates to shipping, to finances, how do you offer terms internationally? Do you even want to offer terms? All of that, what registrations do you need? All of that needs to be looked at carefully initially.

Having said all of this the one big advice relating to this is just, do your homework and analyze each prospective market according to the things that I just mentioned. That’s one big block, and the second thing is, be prepared and be willing to actually travel. Have the mindset and the willingness to go to your country of choice and make the commitment on your calendar to go at least once, preferably twice a year, let’s say one customer visit, one trade show visit.

Of course, during COVID, that’s not possible, but at some point, you’ll have to have those face-to-face meetings in order for the partner overseas to actually pay or to continue to pay attention to your brands, and a lot of cultures require that face-to-face. In order to build rapport and to build trust, you have to be willing to visit your local partner. Don’t underestimate the importance of cultural differences, even if somebody else speaks perfect English and you think, “Oh, there’s no chance or no risk of miscommunication.” You’d be surprised. Just be open-minded, don’t think that every country is like the US. On the contrary, none of them are, so just be open about it and be willing to travel and learn about the local requirements and over-communicate. I promise you that was only three blocks: analysis, travel, and attitude.

[laughter] [pause 00:29:56]

[00:30:08] Derrick: Perfect. I don’t think we’ve spoken about what the impact of exports is on your company’s sales. Can you talk a little bit about that?

[00:30:23] Kristin: Sure. Exports are about 30% of overall company revenue from Medi-Dyne.

[00:30:33] Derrick: David, really quickly, would you say that export regulations in other countries involve a lot of time commitment? Would that be the most time-consuming part of exporting, just based on your experiences, or is that one of them? Maybe it’s not the only, but what would you say?

[00:30:58] David: It’s one of them. It can be a huge mistake if a company does not recognize prior to spending a lot of resources, time, funding, trying to enter a new country without knowing, ahead of time, what they’re going to have to meet. In the healthcare industry, as an example, there are regulations like most industries. In the healthcare industry specifically, you have to understand what those countries’ requirements are for your particular product or service. Yes, it is something that’s part of the very first steps when evaluating a country of interest.

[00:31:46] Derrick: Thank you. Kristin, how much staff or do you have staff that supports export sales or is it only you in the department? 70 countries, that’s a quite tall order for one person.

[00:32:02] Kristin: As I mentioned or I tried to explain earlier, we’re manufacturers, and we ship out of our Colleyville, Texas office and warehouse. We actually have customer service personnel that only are in touch with our international customers, then there’s parts of the shipping team who are only doing pre-packing and then shipping, preparing the international orders, then myself, obviously, here being located in Europe, and then one of our founding partners, which is my boss, Craig DiGiovanni.

He’s very, very involved in all of the international opportunities as well, and it’s really close and dear to his heart as well to make it successful. He puts a lot of passion and time into making our international business unit successful as well. We’re a small family-run business, but even for us, it’s at least continuously five or six people at any one point in time working on international orders and supporting our international customers.

[00:33:17] Derrick: Wonderful. Tell us, tell our listeners where they can reach you or the company if they want to get in contact, do business, for whatever reason.

[00:33:28] Kristin: Sure. Our website is medi-dyne.com. That’s medi-dyne.com. Definitely, we’d love to hear from anybody with additional input or with a specific question. My email is kristin, with a K, @medi-dyne.com. That’s medi-dyne.com.

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[00:33:47] Derrick: This podcast is intended to provide information that may be of assistance to US companies. Statements made by Export Nation podcast guests reflect the views and opinions of that individual. This podcast does not constitute an endorsement by the US Commercial Service of the individual, his or her employer, or affiliated entity, the specific information provided, resources mentioned, or products or services endorsed or offered by that individual and his or her employer or affiliated entity.

The US Commercial Service assumes no responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of the information provided by the guests or for the decisions made in reliance on any information provided by the guests in this podcast. The information provided in this podcast does not constitute legal advice. Thank you for listening to this episode of Export Nation, brought to you by the US Commercial Service. For more information on how you can get started exporting, please visit www.trade.gov.

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