Within the past month, RSB Spine LLC of Cleveland has announced a 229-percent quarterly sales jump over the same period of 2009, gotten news of $1.5 million of new investment in the company and even showed up in the unlikeliest of places -- ABC's "Dancing With the Stars."
For the company, formed in 2001 by Cleveland-based John Redmond and a friend, California spinal surgeon Dr. Robert S. Bray, these are heady days.
Its latest product line, InterPlate, was launched in 2006 after gaining FDA approval. The InterPlate line, with four separate products to date, has quickly gained advantage over competing lines.
"It's a crowded market out there," says Redmond, the firm's CEO. "The advantage that InterPlate offers over the rest of field is that it's really an evolutionary product, which is why you're seeing the growth. The main idea is that it's modular, which means that it allows surgeons a lot of different choices in the materials used in the implant and choices in how they implant the device."
Surgeons use the implants to fuse vertebrae in the lumbar and cervical areas of the spine. Made of titanium and special graft material, it also offers quicker fusion rates, meaning the patient will heal faster.
InterPlate's popularity with spinal surgeons led to a 2009 partnership with Massachusetts-based Paradigm BioDevices, which became the exclusive distributor of the InterPlate line and has boosted sales at such an incredible rate, Redmond says.
Publicity hasn't hurt, either. The latest -- InterPlate's supporting role on ABC's hit dance contest -- came because of eventual winner Jennifer Grey's relationship with Bray. Bray has performed more than 7,500 spinal surgeries over his years in practice � and one of his patients was Grey, who underwent spinal fusion surgery just months before the show started.
"On two or three occasions, they showed an x-ray of the spinal fusion she had done in her neck," says Redmond, "and there was our implant. It was a pretty good advertisement."
Source: John Redmond, RSB Spine
Writer: Dave Malaska