Family business MSP Medical over the years
Do you already know the personal story behind the family business MSP Medical? Mike Dhanpat, co-founder and owner of MSP Medical, talks about the history of the family business. How the company has developed over the past few years into the leading medical device company it is today.
How did MSP Medical come to be?
"It started in 1993. My parents both worked full-time and did the work for MSP, then known as 'Ecosystems' in the garage in the evenings on the side. After five years, my parents decided to go full-time, so they quit their jobs. Ecosystems BV. was founded and we got our first office building in Tilburg. The first product we made there was the 'Easyrider'. This is an electric trolley to attach to a hospital bed, to move it easily - even with someone in it. To this day, this trolley is still used in the Elisabeth-TweeSteden Hospital in Tilburg.
From the electronics we made for the Easyrider, we got in touch with a manufacturer who made infrared saunas. This is where we started making electronics for the saunas, but also for medical equipment. From there, we came into contact with a Belgian company in the early 2000s, which asked us to develop electronics for a patient lift. That collaboration then took off and was extended with more and more products. Then the Belgian club was taken over by a multinational in the field of patient devices. We stayed on as a supplier and because it was a multinational, volumes went up considerably. There was a global demand for the products we made. Then we were running around with about eight extra men who actually worked in production. In 2011, the Belgian site was closed and everything was moved to Poland, with all suppliers, including us, staying for 2 years. But we immediately noticed that the products they bought from us, they tried it to be locally sourced or brought from low-wage countries to make it cheaper. In addition, the cooperation with Poland was difficult and, as a result, my father's enjoyment of the work flowed away. In 2013, that collaboration stopped.
I myself joined MSP in 2008. In the time that followed after the partnership ended, it bubbled up to do more with medical device 'spare parts', to sell them separately to service and maintenance companies, hospitals and healthcare institutions. Between 2013 and 2015, we also received more and more requests from such companies. These companies were fed up with the way multinationals were acting: arrogant, low service levels, high prices and poor delivery times. With that in mind, we came up with the idea of setting up MSP. Now we could give our own products a quality boost, on a technical, safety, sustainability and ergonomic level. We set up our own house brand of spare parts that we were going to offer to replace the original, providing at least an equivalent product, but often better. Quality, longevity, ease of use and that with cost savings of up to 50%. Within 3 months, we already had international customers, including from America, Australia and several countries in Europe. Since 2015 until now, we have been expanding our portfolio, creating more and more products under our own label MSP, such as our own line of lifting straps and batteries, selling more third-party products that are a good complement to our own MSP line, and working more and more with OEMs to sell their original products."
When did you join MSP?
"In 1998 when I was eight, I was already helping my dad on Saturdays, walking around with a screwdriver and to put things together. I always worked here on Saturdays as a side job. After high school (VWO), with Nature and Engineering as my chosen profile, I started working here full-time. I did make two more detours to studies in Management Economics and Law and Applied Physics, but I ended both quickly. I found out pretty soon that how it was in the books is not how it works in practice."
Your Nature and Engineering background during high-school certainly comes in handy here now?
"Well my father is more the 'Gyro Gearloose' here within the company, so he does the technical development of new products. If it's products that are more straightforward I can pick this up as well. I look at what components are needed and how we can make it and everything around it. So what is needed to get a product sales-ready."
What drove your parents to do this in the garage in 1993?
"It was born then from an ideological idea, to sell air and water filters in Africa. To have better access to drinking water. It soon turned out that it was a very noble idea, but there was no way to earn a living from this. So then they started making other products and the 'Easyrider' was the first product they sold."
What has been the reason for you personally to get into the business here?
"The least inspiring version is: I don't know any better. I've never had a side job anywhere else either, I've always hopped around here. I am lucky that my dad and I get along super well, both privately and professionally. For me, it was a logical and natural step to move on here. The moment I realized I wasn't going to make it through my studies in engineering physics, I came along with the idea of focusing on spare parts in 2015. And I really saw a future in that, because nobody would do it the way we do it. With that in mind, we went for it 100%."
What have been important insights for you in recent years?
"When we were the OEM supplier and only had to pay attention to cost price, it was always a struggle. If we wanted to add parts to a product to increase safety, it would cost an extra dime. In the end, they felt that dime had too big an impact on the price. Through years of pressure on price, we have noticed the following: price is important, it has to offer an advantage over the original product, but what we have learned is that your reliability and good service is even more important. We get orders all over the world, purely because we guarantee that what the customer buys will actually fit on the equipment they have. We have learned that customers really value that. With larger customers, we see that price is also important, but around that, by not working with heavy purchase contracts, you build up a favour factor. And then you see that when products are not interesting in terms of price, they still order these products from us. Purely out of convenience, because they know that with us they will get it right, that there is always stock and that it is of high quality."
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