After announcing its intention to expand in the United States, Ian Bolland spoke to PolarSeal to find out more about the company’s strategic move.
PolarSeal recently announced its expansion into the USA – tell us where abouts in the country you will be expanding to?
We will be based and operating out of New Jersey in the United States of America. This location enables us to perform our distribution services more effectively on a national and international level.
The USA is a massive market, how tough a nut is it to crack – so to speak?
Entering any market is difficult, taking into consideration business functionality, operational best practices, as well as financial and legal. Every market and continent have their own ways of working, so a company’s success within that territory is hugely dependant on their research, knowledge, and most importantly their adaptability. We believe our existing customer base, site location, strengthened partner relationships, and growing market knowledge will aid us in making the right calls going forward within such a dominant region. This move has been in the pipeline for many years now, and we are beyond excited to begin this new chapter with agility and enthusiasm.
This is part of your five-year expansion plan, what stage are you currently at? And what can we look forward to over the coming years?
Over the last year or so, we have expanded our warehousing, onboarded new capabilities and machinery, hired incredible talent, and now look to replicate these previous successes within the USA.
Furthermore, we have invested heavily in digital and cloud-based operations, bringing automation forward and reducing manual input which can be time consuming and eats into company resources. We will very soon be launching a custom-built platform that automates our customers’ orders, like ordering a package on Amazon, we have replicated this model for the converting and contract manufacturing segment.
Our team are working extremely hard behind the scenes as we put other markets in our line of sight, and we look forward to these announcements in the coming months and years.
What can you offer the American market?
PolarSeal is a 100% medically focused flexible material converter and contract manufacturer. We discover, collaborate, and solve the challenges of our customers worldwide, and this is only achieved due to our focused service offering. Being solely focused on the medical market, we can bring decades of material and adhesive knowledge for stick-to-skin solutions, combined with the experience and passion of our team. Our processes, production lines, logistics networks, are all specifically centred around serving the medical device market, making us a unique partner.
You already have a customer base in the US market, but what challenges have you encountered there that are similar, and those that are different to elsewhere?
Operating outside of your territory is difficult, especially when it comes to the shipment of finished goods such as liquid hydrogels for example, which can be heavy in bulk, and costly. With expanded facilities in new territories, these types of operations become a lot easier with proximity of location no longer being a barrier.
Additionally, time zones become an issue with international customers. If you are to communicate effectively and efficiently, business hours need to align. Frequent and seamless communication is critical to any project or company success.
Finally, and it is a simple one, but face-to-face representation is a key factor to take into consideration and one that is ignored too often.
Anything else you’d like to add?
We are extremely excited to offer a new market our unique and focused service offerings for the medical flexible material arena. We will continuously evolve as a company to ensure that we are always provide more to our customers. With news ways of thinking outside of the norm, we believe we can add value above what is expected.