Parker Labs - Protex

Interview with Tom Rottenberg on Protex Ultra

You're gonna talk to me about ProTax.

I'm gonna take, I'm gonna do all the heavy lifting here. I'm gonna talk about the other. I'm just saying I, I said, I can stand in front, stand up and talk in front of a hundred people. It doesn't bother me right now. You're messing them up. Stand where you're gonna stand. Oh, you didn't say that. You ready? Ready. Here with Tom Rottenberg, who's National Sales Manager for Parker Laboratories.

Now it's well known that Parker Laboratories provides acoustic coupling gel like the Aquas 100 and the Thermos. So gel warmer to warm it up so it's not too uncomfortable and too cold on us as patients.

But Tom, what a lot of people may not know about are disinfection products. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Surely. Actually the product that we're featuring at this show is our Protex Ultra available in a soft pack and also a canister. It has a four minute kill time. There is no alcohol, bleach or any harsh solvents in the product. It has been approved by almost all of the major ultrasound manufacturers. Also, it's safe to use on my ultrasound machine, safe to use on your ultrasound machine, on your probes, on your cables, and virtually any surface in the facility as long as it's non-porous.

That's important 'cause I know that if you put alcohol on the transducer cables for example, it shortens their lifespan.

It certainly does. So this is gonna help protect them and save that expensive equipment.

Perfect. It does kill over 40 different pathogens and it does kill 99.9% of bacteria within 15 seconds. 15 seconds, 15 seconds. Although we need the full four minutes to kill everything.

Okay. So to kill everything, this means I wipe it on a surface and just leave it, just leave it wet until it dries. I don't really need to do anything else. I don't have to wipe it off again, do I?

No, you do not. And it will not leave a white residue behind or anything like that, some of the other products out there on the marketplace do.

Gotcha. Gotcha. And what about the spray bottle? The spray is actually our original formulations. So that is actually a 10 minute kill time. But some people prefer to use the spray 'cause they wanna spray down their entire table, which is good. Spray the countertops, spray countertops, spray the room in general, spray the whole place down.

Gotcha. So they will use this, but it is a 10 minute kill time for the sprays.

Okay, great. It sounds pretty interesting and certainly everybody these days is interested in how to prevent infections in hospitals. There's just too much in the news these days. Absolutely. So this looks like a good solution that you provide. And one of the changes we made to the Protex Ultra Canister here is a new top. The old one was a little more difficult to get the wipes out or if you pulled too many out it was tough to put it back in. So we went to this so that if you do happen to pull out too much, you can still just push it in and still be able to close the lid.

Great. Ergonomics. We're trying. Tom, thank you very much. Lee. Thank you very much. You bet.

Discussion on Sales System and Distributors

Had we do just the system, I've been through this before, it's a nightmare. The air is human to really screw things up requires a computer. And the worst part about, for me, the worst part about, it's the sales department. We are an afterthought. We are not even.

Yeah, but you're the guys who pay for everything. Right?

I know. But we're the afterthoughts. So there's another section that they haven't even finished developing yet, which is for sales. 'cause they had to worry about doing the guns to scan product in, ship it out, billing.

Now, this is gonna be a dumb question, but I don't know the answer. Do you sell directly or do you go all through your distributors?

All through distributors. I shouldn't say that. We do sell to like Orlando Health, but it's crazy that they do because we charge them full list price and freight. They could do better through one of our dealers and we tell them so. But they can. Yeah. But then, like my old Cone Instruments that got bought stuff and now they're selling the private label gel stuff.

So Bill, you know Bill Kale? Of course. Okay. So Bill calls me the other day having a lunch. But, so I mean, Bill and I always got along real well after he went ahead with his private label. So he calls me just the other day and he says, Tom, it's Bill from Cone Instruments. Well Bill, what can I do for you? I'm like, Hey Bill, how you doing Bill? What can I do for you? I was just really, it's like I noticed in your voice that he goes, really? It's not something I really wanted to do. We're not, it's not gonna take away from Parker Lab's business. I'm like, come on. How can you tell me that? I said it is gonna take away from.