Fundamentals of Pharmacy BUS 345

This week was our final class as well as our final presenter, Beth Schively, Marketing Director of Scapa Healthcare and a graduate of WNE. I’ve heard Beth speak before at a pharmaceutical business luncheon, so I had a little knowledge about what she did and who she worked for. Scapa is a global strategic outsource partner of turn-key, skin friendly adhesive solutions for the healthcare industry. Scapa Healthcare partners with market leaders to design, develop, manufacture and commercialize innovative medical device products. One of Scapa’s competitive advantages is that they will not compete with their partners. Scapa does not sell to the end consumer, they work directly business to business. Their biggest competitor 3M does compete with its partners because they’ll bring their competitors adhesives to market, as well as their own. Both products could be side by side on the shelf. Scapa sees this as a plus for them because their customers feel like they aren’t being cheated. Beth ...

This week, unfortunately Beth Schively was not able to attend Tuesdays session. Luckily though she rescheduled for next Thursday. We did have the presence though of talking with Carolyn Cary who works at Aetna. I know from the beginning I had several questions for Carolyn. For one, since I’m from Connecticut, I was curious if she could shed some light on why Aetna decided to leave Hartford. And for obvious reasons, New York city has more talent and technology. But New York will also provide Aetna with nearly $10 million worth of incentives in the forms of property and sales tax credits, among other benefits. In addition, I know other classmates of mine, as well as myself, had questions about the recent merge Aetna had with CVS. Just a week ago, CVS Caremark bought out Aetna, and Carolyn is excited for the change. Katelyn asked the question, “Will we see more mergers and acquisitions going forward, is this the new trend for companies?” and Carolyn said yes. Companies are looking for b...

This week we had speaker Justin Racine director of marketing and Ecommerce at Geriatric Medical Supply. Justin is a WNE alum with an interesting background. When attending school, Justin was a marketing major, pharmaceutical business didn’t exist yet. While in school Justin worked at a golf course part time to make some money in school. As graduation was getting closer and closer he knew he needed a marketing internship to graduate and working at a gold course wouldn’t cut it. Justin approached his boss and told him that he loved the job he was at but needed a marketing internship. Lucky for Justin, his boss also worked as the general manager of the supply division at a medical supply company and was able to get Justin a marketing internship that would pass for credit. Justin worked at the medical supply location for the summer and was given an objective to create a trifold brochure on the how-to and general information of the use of adult diapers. He did such a good job and everyone...