Minnesota Technology Magazine - Winter 2007
Package Deal
Eden Prairie-based DDL is doing big business in the medical device packaging realm.
—Frank Jossi
When automobile makers want to flaunt the toughness and safety of their vehicles, they often crank out one of those commercials in which a crash test dummy survives a violent smashup with barely a scratch.
When a heart surgeon receives a medical device from the likes of Medtronic or Boston Scientific, the package that the life-saving product arrives in has gone through the equivalent of the crash test dummy test. Quite often these days, Eden Prairiebased DDL Inc. is the company that helps provide both the testing of that packaging, and the actual packaging of such products as pacemakers, catheters, and hip replacement devices.
The explosive growth of the medical device industry has been a boon for DDL, as the company has seen annual revenues increase 25 percent every year since 2003. The 35-employee business jumped from Minnesota’s 50th-fastest growing company in 2005 to 42nd place last year, according the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal.
Patrick Nolan, the company’s 52 year-old cofounder and chief operating officer, says the increase in business comes down to more and better marketing. “We’ve had a good, steady growth rate that began in 2003 when we hired a new marketing firm and began more marketing initiatives,” he explains. “Those marketing initiatives— direct mail, print, advertising—pointed people to our Web site, where we captured more qualified leads.”
Moves by DDL on other fronts brought in more business as well. The company cofounded the Medical Device Resource Group, a Minnesota-based organization made up of similar firms supporting the industry. By doing so, DDL got more exposure among its peers, all of which work closely with the medical device industry. The association also markets its members to the industry, which has delivered leads to DDL and others.
Clients that use DDL’s service bring product packaging to the company’s laboratory, where the hermetically sealed and selfsterilizing packages undergo tests involving shocks, dips, vibrations, and abrasions of the sort they might suffer during transit. The testing is particularly important since medical devices can cost from $20,000 to $30,000 each, and one badly designed package can result in a series of expensive losses to a company.
Though Nolan likes to say DDL is a “generalist” in the package testing arena, more than 80 percent of the company’s revenue comes from the medical device industry. He’s not complaining, however. “Without a doubt, the growth of Boston Scientific, Medtronic, and St. Jude’s has impacted the amount of testing services they require, and they have hired DDL for that,” he says. “They can’t handle it all internally, and that has been good for us.”
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