Spineblogger – The World is Flat, the Market is Hot and the Spine Industry is Crowded!
“The expansion of Custom Spine’s sales management team shows the company’s dedication to future growth and providing the market with unique spine solutions.” – Lew Bennett
This isn’t a blog about the Thomas Friedman’s best seller, this could be the story about a company that is delusional. Our readers must admit that it is “unique” that an octogenarian running a “me too” company is quoted as saying that CS is providing “unique spinal solutions to the market.” Unique? The definition of unique is “having no like or equal, unparalleled or incomparable.” Have any of our readers looked at the CS website? Not a very unique product portfolio. Lew, this company isn’t Sofamor Danek thirty years ago and honestly your grasp on the English lexicon leaves much to be desired. Custom Spine is another one of those “me too” companies that we always write about. One analyst described it as ” not much smoke and a lot of mirrors.”
Why would a potential distributor want to work for a company that self-anointed itself “a pioneering leader in the spine market creating the next generation of surgeon friendly implants and instruments that provide superior performance.” Donnie Deutsch were are you when someone needs a real marketeer? Word on the street was that they terminated their second largest distributor and replaced them with scrub techs at a bargain basement price, and reduced their largest distributors commissions by 10% in order to increase their operating income.
Another “me too” pedicle screw, a cervical plate that only has 5 degrees of superior/inferior angulation and more PEEK products, sounds like something truly unique and pioneering is going on at this company, it all likelihood, it is Lew himself. TSB wants to know what our readers think?