- May 23, 2025
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Kerriann Greenhalgh is a chemist based in Pasco County with a love of research and development who has built a multimillion dollar wound care business. She's won multiple government contracts worth millions, sold her products in Publix Super Market stores and employs nearly two dozen sales reps and employees.
And it all started with a single, small cut.
Over a decade ago while a student at the University of South Florida, her partner got the cut in an awkward place on his hand and the inability to properly care for it resulted in a staph infection.
Realizing this was a problem she could solve using a polymer technology she’d developed in grad school at the university, she got to work developing a spray that becomes a breathable bandage for everything from insect bites to pressure ulcers that doesn’t require any changing for three days.
In the process, she’s learned who her clients are – and aren’t — and what it will take to get her company KeriCure to the next level.
It’s not uncommon to see homes with plenty of acreage and critters in Pasco county. In some ways, Greenhalgh’s property is no different. Three dogs, a cat, roosters and chickens, tortoises and a pig named Maple co-exist with her now-husband and two children. Referring back to 2012, the year she started KeriCure, she remarks, “I always joke that I birthed two babies that year and KeriCure came first. KeriCure beat [my son] Nolan by two months.”
What sets her home apart from others is the building in the backyard. Her commute to work is a 30-second golf cart ride past the chickens and pig, through a treeline that brings her to her research lab — a place where plenty of work gets done but is also a veritable playground for the scientist.
Although the product is manufactured offsite at SmartScience Laboratories, there is still plenty of it floating around the test lab.
“I love seeing the results, you know. I love wiping out a plate of bacteria that's like, ‘Oh, look at that. I killed it all!’ Creating it and being faster than the competitors and helping in seeing the wounds go from this big thing to this itty bitty little wound and seeing it heal,” Greenhalgh says, “I love doing that and seeing the effect of what you created in a lab, in a petri dish, or in a test tube and then seeing it turn into how it actually affects the real world.”
The main drivers of KeriCure’s revenue are Amazon sales, which make up approximately $150,000 in annual revenue and two Department of Defense contracts that constitute $3.2 million over three years and $1.4 million over 2 years, but it took some time to get to this point.
Back in 2017, Greenhalgh had KeriCure in 2,500 retail stores, mainly Kroger and Publix. “When Publix calls and says they want their liquid bandages on their shelves, it’s kind of hard to say no,” she says.
However, the costs to her time were proving to be too much. “It was very expensive to stay in the stores, it was very time consuming for me, specifically, to manage those and the ads and manufacturing costs and doing BOGOs and doing pop ups,” she explains, “It just was very consuming of my time, and I wanted to develop more technology and products so that we could have a more robust platform for wound care.”
Thus the decision was made to pull out of retail stores and go fully online. Now, products like Natural Shield for cuts and scrapes, Champion Seal for Liquid Bandage for horses and livestock and Tough Shield silver liquid bandage for pets are sold around the world in places like Canada and China. Amazon handles the distribution and so far there are no concerns regarding tariffs.
In 2019, KeriCure decided to pivot into the medical space and, after some delays due to Covid, it is here Greenhalgh plans to spring into the next phase of the business.
“This year is all about driving sales growth and getting awareness, product awareness, out there. We're hoping to see a big increase in terms of our medical sales,” she says, noting that marketing and sales really aren’t her strengths.
However, she is excited by the enthusiasm that greets her products by doctors and nurses.
“When you're talking to consumers about the liquid bandage they're like, ‘Okay, yeah. Like, sure, I guess I need this,’ but when the docs and, especially the nurses, grab onto it immediately, and they're like, ‘Wait, I just have to spray it and that's it?’ I'm like, ‘Yeah, that's it.’ Their faces kind of light up, which is really cool.”
As the business grows, the plan is to increase market share to entice a larger company to partially acquire KeriCure so it can pay out the first round of family and friends investors who saw the potential of the company thirteen years ago and raised $500,000. “It's about time they saw a little bit of a return,” she says, noting that she hopes to get $2 or 3 million in the partial acquisition to support the the stock buyback as well as invest in sales and marketing for the military and advanced wound care markets.
The goal of the partial acquisition is to have a partner who can provide both capital and industry knowledge to help KeriCure continue to grow and Greenhalgh can focus on what she does best– research and development of products.
To that end, what excites her most about the future is what brought her to this point: “Knowing that we're helping.”
