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Manufacturing executive Walt Leise III, in one way, is a poster child for the failings of doling out public funds to a private company to hire people in the name of economic development.
Yet Leise, in another way, working without government assistance, is also a poster child for the determined, resourceful and never-say-die entrepreneur.
Leise’s saga began in 2010, when his then startup, Sarasota Medical Products, received $360,000 from Sarasota County in return for a promise to hire and maintain 61 full-time jobs by September 2015. The company, a year later, obtained an SBA loan for $1.6 million and another $1.6 million from a private equity firm.
The funds and hires were intended to support Sarasota Medical Products in its new contract to supply a Largo company with private label medical products, mostly devices for wound care and infections. But Leise, in an early October interview, says the company it hoped to work with instead attempted a hostile takeover of Sarasota Medical Products. The deal collapsed.
With work dried up, Sarasota Medical only hired 12 people from 2010 to 2015. It fell 49 jobs short of its commitment — even though it already had the county’s $360,000. (Sarasota County has since revised its economic development policy; funds are no longer disbursed until performance-based goals are met.)
In 2015, county officials reached a deal with Leise to get back some of the funds he received in 2010. The total, based on 49 missed jobs, would have been $196,784. But through a clause in the new arrangement, Leise was given a jobs extension period through April 2018. Sarasota Medical hired about eight more people — it now has a payroll of 20 employees — that went toward satisfying some of its county debt.
Leise also paid back Sarasota County $100,000, with the final payment coming earlier this year. “The county really worked with us on this,” says Leise.
Leise was able to pay back the county, and hire more people, because over the past three years he’s repositioned Sarasota Medical Products. Now the company, he says, sells its wound care products to some 20 clients, using proprietary technology and customized packaging, among other features. The diversification has paid off, says Leise, with annual revenue up at least 30% a year the past two years. He projects 40% growth in 2018 and up to 50% in 2019. That kind of growth, he adds, could mean hiring at least another 20 people. Leise declines to disclose specific revenue figures.
Another accomplishment: GrowFL recently named Sarasota Medical one of 50 companies statewide to watch in 2018.
A onetime U.S. Army attack helicopter crew chief with a doctorate in molecular biology and biochemistry, Leise relishes the turnaround at Sarasota Medical. “We went from a company that wasn’t going to make it and one that owed the county money to being named one of 50 companies to watch,” Leise tells Coffee Talk. “That’s a big thing.”
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