Shared from the 5/14/2016 Albany Times Union eEdition

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Exec: Setbacks helpful

Founder of NAMIC U.S.A. says adapting is crucial to success

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Michael P. Farrell / Times Union

Philip Morse, who founded NAMIC U.S.A. and is vice chairman of the group that owns the Boston Red Sox, gives the keynote speech Friday at the Warren County Economic Development Corp. annual luncheon.

Queensbury

Asking a simple question changed the course of Phillip Morse’s career.

The founder of NAMIC U.S.A. Corporation, speaking at the Warren County Economic Development Corp. annual luncheon Friday, recalled a winter day in the late 1960s as a “watershed moment.”

Morse, then working at the U.S. Catheter and Instrument Company, recalled making a sales call at a Pittsburgh hospital on a Friday afternoon when a nurse asked him if he’d like to watch a procedure. He agreed, thinking that the extra time might open the door for future sales. The doctor’s first attempt to get fluids through a device failed.

After the procedure, when the patient and doctor left, Morse asked the nurse a question: Why did the device fail?

“I could have said, ‘Thank you very much’ and left, but I was really curious about why the product failed, and if I hadn’t asked the question … I wouldn’t be here,” he said. He and the nurse took the device apart, he said, and found that it hadn’t been cleaned properly from a prior procedure. “It was lightning for me.”

Shortly after, Morse drew up potential prototypes that would fix the problem, he said, and when his employer did not move forward with his ideas, he decided to start his own business. (His father-in-law, he recalled, “thought it was nuts.”)

But the company he launched grew into NAMIC U.S.A., and by the time Morse sold it to Pfizer in 1995, he employed hundreds of people.

At Friday’s luncheon, at the Six Flags Great Escape Lodge in Queensbury, Morse said building his company from operating out of a 300-square-foot office to making $1 million after a decade was a rocky path.

Morse, now the vice chairman of the Fenway Sports Group, the parent company of the Boston Red Sox, spoke to the value of adapting to change and unexpected obstacles.

Just a few years into the company’s existence, a small Ballston Spa business Morse paid to manufacture his products burned down with his prototypes inside. A year later, running out of money, he decided to sell other companies’ manufactured products to keep the company afloat.

“It’s difficult to convey the painful setbacks we had developing the products,” he said, adding, “in every adversity, there’s the opportunity for improvement.”

Key cash flow that helped launch in-house manufacturing came when David Sheridan, founder of National Catheter Corp., agreed to let Morse sell his products in the 1970s, Morse said. Morse called Sheridan a “self-taught genius.”

Today, Warren County is home to medical device manufacturers like AngioDynamics and C.R. Bard in Glens Falls. The industry has created hundreds of jobs in the area, nicknamed “Catheter Valley” after the fluid-removing device.

In an introduction, Queens-bury Supervisor John Strough said the county’s economy is healthy, “yet we’re working to be better.”

He spoke of the vibrant tourism industry that includes camping facilities, a sports complex, lakes and mountains. “We are open for business and ready for the future,” he said.

lellis@timesunion.com 518-454-5018 @lindsayaellis

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