Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - October 2008 - (Page 28)

Erol Frik, chairman of the board, Dr. F. Frik Dr. F. Frik’s roots date back to before World War II, when your grandfather was in-licensing Bayer products in Turkey. Today you continue to be solely an active distributor for several multinationals. Explain that business strategy. We are the only company in Turkey with our turnover with no manufacturing plant of our own. It was my grandfather’s decision and vision to not establish our own manufacturing plant, which turned out to be a disadvantage at some point, but then later turned out to be an advantage. It’s a touch and go issue but right now I tend to think that it’s an advantage. of your marketing expenses and financial expenses, you’re left with absolutely nothing. In February your company made a licensing agreement with Labopharm for the painkiller Tramadol. How do you set yourself apart given that other versions of Tramadol are already succeeding in Turkey? We are hungry to find new products and new partners to grow and Tramadol was chosen as a pilot product with Labopharm to enter the Turkish market. The decision was based on multiple parameters rather than just marketing. It sounds like an advantage, especially since you have so many partners, including Lamberts, Apogepha Arzneimittel Gmbh and most recently Labopharm. What therapeutic areas are you most interested in? The number one factor for us is a higher profit margin product. It has to have a higher selling price per box because I’m sick and tired of selling one million boxes and making €500000 and after you get rid Your company has grown 100% each of the last three years and expects 50% growth for 2008. And all this with a portfolio of about a dozen products. What I did when I took over the company was set up a three-stage growth plan. The first was to see what we have in our product portfolio — like the old legacy products from Solvay (a former licensing partner) — and see how much money we can make from those. We needed to generate some cash to be able to invest in more products. The only way to increase sales was by using clever marketing skills and pure mathematical analysis of where we were strong and where we were weak so that we could correct ourselves. So we carefully analysed the Turkish market and we found out that we were making some gross mistakes in certain areas, like putting sales reps in parts of Turkey where there was no market potential. Right now we’re at the second stage because we have about 40 products pending registration at the Ministry of Health. That process began about two years ago and all 40 products are starting to come out now. The third stage will be when we actually have those products and they generate enough cash for us to do what companies like Mustafa Nevzat are doing — investing in the higher tech products and niche products and the future of technology. were actually planned to hit the market in March are still waiting at the government reimbursement commission. These types of things always happen when you're dealing with the government organisations and those are the things that are just beyond your control. Something else that would be beyond your control is a downturn in the market. Given that you’re exclusively focused on Turkey, how do you offset a potential slowdown? How do you prevent yourself from becoming vulnerable to a takeover or competition from China or India? “If you can’t beat them, join them.” There may be advantages in being single because it gives you freedom, but there are advantages in being married as well. Why is the 2008 forecast less rosy than the past three years? If we’re lucky we’ll grow about 60%. This is all because two or three products that 37 Last words Who said what in pharma’s last four weeks 3 News The monthly round-up of European stories 6 Calendar Upcoming events in Europe and around the world 7 BioFutures Gerhard Symons on the dark side of Russian healthcare

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - October 2008

Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - October 2008
Contents
News and Analysis
Calendar
BioFutures
Strategy Fundamentals
Executive Recruitment: Small Company, Big Career
Executive Recruitment: Instant Pharma
Named Patient Programmes
Executive Review: Turkey

Pharmaceutical Executive Europe - October 2008