Most of our competitors are traditional manufacturers that offer established products and strong production capabilities, but minimal customer service and modest R&D budgets. Most market their goods through distributors, using product catalogs as support. Many have not yet realized the Internet's full potential, offering web sites that are largely on-line versions of their printed materials.

A prime example is The Vibratome Company, which Coretech purchased in 2000. Like many instrumentation manufacturers, The Vibratome Company had a small, relatively mature product line that had gone virtually unchanged for two decades. It made minimal investments in customer support and even less in R&D.

Coretech, on the other hand, uses a hybrid business model that combines the innovation of a proprietary product manufacturer, the service of a high-level customer-support provider, and the speed, agility and efficiency of an e-commerce company.

Proprietary product manufacturer
We rely on heavy investment in research & development to identify and fulfill unmet needs in the laboratory research and clinical marketplaces.
Since purchasing The Vibratome Company, for example, we have greatly expanded the Vibratome product line family to include five new, more advanced models of vibratory microtomes and added a wide range of accessories and ancillary equipment that vastly increase their versatility and range of application.

Our R&D staff develops new product prototypes virtually every week, often at the request of customers in search of instrumentation to address emerging needs. Working hand in hand with our agile manufacturing operations, we are able to move from concept to production in as little as two weeks.

Since our founding, we have developed more than 100 proprietary new instrumentation products, accessories and ancillary equipment. To supplement our e-commerce initiative and small in-house sales staff, we have also partnered with medical and research distributors throughout the world to expand our reach.

E-commerce company
Our company's marketing program is built on an Internet backbone, with web sites unlike any you'll find in our industry. Our internet approach is so innovative, in fact, that INC magazine named it a "Killer Application" in the publication's Annual Web Awards in December 2002.

Innovation was necessary, in our case, because traditional e-commerce sites would be of little value to our primary customers -- Ph.D.-level researchers. Why? For one thing, researchers typically choose their own instruments, but their university purchasing departments make the actual purchases. For another, most instrumentation purchases are funded by research grant money - funds that only arrive (months) after a researcher submits a successful grant proposal.

Our customers, in other words, don't need help buying instruments so much as they need help choosing the right instruments and writing successful proposals. So we set out to create a resource center that directly supports university researchers' and clinicians' in the product selection and grant-writing process.

The "front end" of our web sites are places where users in a particular field (e.g., neuroscience) can configure instrumentation for their laboratories, review published research papers and case studies that document the successful use of our instruments and watch streaming videos that illustrate their setup and use. We've made it easy for users to research and assemble on-line quotes, obtain peer advice and other support materials needed to develop grant applications.

Supporting our web sites is a single "back-end" database of our 900 products - many of which have applications in multiple market niches and appear on multiple vertically focused web sites. By using a common web infrastructure, we are able to add or update products quickly across as many channels as necessary.

Our internet initiative has enabled us to market our highly specialized products to niche markets worldwide, increasing sales by 250% in less than two years.

Customer service provider
One reason so many of our new product ideas come from our customers is because of the high level of support we offer. Our customer service staff includes research PhD's who provide technical support on every product the company sells. The relationships they develop with our customers help fuel new innovation, as well as help ensure our customers' understanding of and satisfaction with our instrumentation.

Many scientific instrument companies build staffs that are experts on their instrumentation. While such expertise is desirable and important, most researchers prefer to talk to people who are knowledgeable about their research and application. This is one important reason why Coretech chose to focus on vertical market segments such as neuroscience. Our staff of neuroscience research experts provides a level of service unsurpassed by our competitors. We form partnerships with our customers, oftentimes assisting them with their application and developing new instruments for a joint grant application to the National Institutes of Health. These partnerships give Coretech a large competitive advantage.