Celebrating 9 Years of Resolution Medical
In February 2012, Shawn Patterson and Steven Schmidt founded Resolution Medical with hopes of building a new kind of medical device company, laser-focused on listening to customers, providing timely manufacturable design solutions, and delivering an exceptional customer experience which ultimately translates into long term manufacturing partnerships.
9 years later, Resolution Medical has nearly 150 employees and a 36,000 sq. ft. vertically integrated manufacturing and design facility in Fridley, Minnesota, and a CEO in seasoned medical device leader Dave Blaeser.
To celebrate 9 years in business, we interviewed Shawn, Steven, and Dave on the company’s beginnings and prospects for the future.
What inspired you to create Resolution Medical and build it like you did?
Steven Schmidt: We saw a lot of good business ideas and products within the medical device space that didn’t have anyone to service them because they were too small.
We found ourselves saying: “This is a good product with lots of potential to benefit patients. Let’s go help that guy figure out how to get this to market.”
That led us to flip the standard model for medical device businesses on its head. Instead of owning the intellectual property, we assign all of the IP. This is one example of our unique, proven approach to partnering with our customers as we execute through the product development process ultimately bringing their products into manufacturing, to the desired clinical market and to improving patient’s lives.
Shawn Patterson: Our intentions behind this company are reflected in our name. We decided on Resolution Medical because we are bringing resolution to customer problems as an extension of our customers’ businesses.
We also wanted to create a culture defined by a work hard/play hard attitude mainly because Steve and I wanted to have fun at work and enjoy collaborating with our team to solve complex problems.
Were you able to achieve those earlier goals that you set for the company?
Shawn Patterson: I do think we have achieved these goals for the most part. We have a great reputation in the industry as a medical device company primarily in the development and manufacturing of finished devices (delivery systems and implantables).
I think our culture is wonderful, unique, and the primary reason we have been able to grow, attract, and retain so many high performing and talented team members. This continues to be one of the most important focus areas of the business.
Steven Schmidt: We knew that the definition of winning and succeeding was human capital, taking care of your people and your culture. With that spirit in mind, we hire the best people around us, mainly through word-of-mouth, and we try to take really good care of them.
We knew that if we got the right people in the door, this thing would explode down the road. Looking at the business now, we grew 70% this past year, which is primarily due to the vision, mission and big goals we set early on.
Why does the history of Resolution Medical matter to the company today? Where do you see Resolution Medical going in the next several years?
Dave Blaeser: Resolution Medical was founded on the idea of giving great people a great place to work coupled with the desire to partner with customers that were not going to get the level of service that we can provide. Today, this sentiment continues to drive our business.
The next five years will be interesting. We have witnessed tremendous growth over the last two years. We don’t want to become the largest engineering service provider at the expense of servicing our customers to their satisfaction, so our rate of growth will likely be consciously tempered.
We continue to heavily invest back into the business and buy capital in order to offer our customers a full suite of vertically integrated capabilities which is critical in manufacturing and delivering timely and cost-effective finished devices and sub-assemblies to our growing customer-base. We invested in 3,300 square feet of additional Class 7 clean room space and a Femtosecond laser cutter this year. We also continue to invest in human capital growing our number of associates to near 150, in spite of a COVID-19 world.
Most important to our future is maintaining our culture. We have cultivated a great place to work and most people know that it is a challenge to maintain culture in a rapidly growing environment.
Steven Schmidt: Shawn and I both had the same goal in life to help people bring their devices to market. Even though we have different styles we are still focused on resolving problems. That’s what has led to Resolution Medical’s success today.
About Resolution Medical
Resolution Medical is a private medical device company with a 36,000-square-foot manufacturing and development facility in Minneapolis, Minn. focused on providing innovative business solutions to the medical device industry with the highest quality, reliability, customer service, and with the resolution to continuously improve life.