Integrity Implants, Inc. sold just under $10 million in products last year—its first year. Its co-founders think they can sell $20-25 million this year.
With only two sales people and one product—a TLIF/PLIF—Integrity has been in 1,400 cases in the past ten months. Two weeks before we visited, the company had two training sessions for a couple dozen surgeons.
Their “booth” at last October’s NASS (North American Spine Society) was a wall with a door. The door led to a small room with a conference table, chairs, a rug. It felt like a hidden room, a speakeasy within a busy exhibit hall.
Integrity Implants is not typical.
So, this past February we made the trek down to Jupiter, Florida, to spend some quality time with founders, Chris Walsh, Chief Executive Officer, and Wyatt Geist, President and Chief Technology Officer.
Chris and Wyatt
The first thing to understand about Integrity’s founders, Chris and Wyatt, is that they are absolutely opposite people. They each look at the work in very different ways. Chris is an English major, passionate and a consummate manager. He goes all the way back to Stryker’s early days and mono axial screws. Wyatt is an engineer and inveterate tinkerer. They met as competitors in southeast Florida. Wyatt was with DePuy and Chris was with Stryker.
They are an odd couple that, together, are an extraordinary business combination.
In the mid-90s they started a medical products distribution business. A little California company with a Cheetah for a mascot and crazy idea about lateral spine surgery asked Chris and Wyatt if they’d carry their product.
They did. Very quickly, Chris and Wyatt became NuVasive, Inc.’s #1 distributor—and three-time distributor of the year. They grew NuVasive (NUVA) to $40 million in annual sales.
Chris and Wyatt captured the #2 market for all spinal implants in Florida—ahead of JNJ and Stryker.
How did they do it?
“Chris and I busted our ass. It was us doing our work here,” remembers Wyatt.
In 2004, Chris approached Alex, Keith and Pat (the CEO, President and VP of Sales, respectively, of NuVasive at the time) to sell NuVasive’s implants lines exclusively. Says Chris about that, “We told Alex, Keith and Pat that to bring about procedural change we had to be laser focused and represent only one company.”
So, Chris and Wyatt went all in with lateral spine procedures and NuVasive.
Ultimately, NuVasive bought Chris’s distributorship—in 2013. During the three year non-compete that followed, Chris started a fishing lure business—SpoolTek (now a key supplier to Bass Pro Shops) and joined up with such private equity luminaries as Quad-C Management to locate other (non-spine) companies to build wealth for both himself and fellow investors.
Wyatt, who says of himself, “I love making new solutions to old problems. I don’t pat myself on the back, very often. When I solve a problem, I feel a wave of joy” went to work on several projects including his most famous one—SafeWire—which was sold for beaucoup bucks in 2016.
