OIS Podcast Ep #367: A Fast, Fun Future, with Warren Foust and Magda Michna, PhD, Staar Surgical

Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having us.

It's a great question. First of all, thanks for having us. We're so excited to be here. You said at the beginning amazing and talented, which is what Magda is, and so that's part of how I got to STAAR. Thanks for the shout out about Dr. Hovanesian and Jim. That was kind of our hazing, I think, as we came into this. It was a great job. I loved it. So much fun. Listen to it twice. They're so great and have been so welcoming to us. So that's one thing I know we both share: we love the ophthalmic community. So thank you for having us. Look, on DTC, I'm so excited because this is really the only company that's providing this avenue by which we're trying to help our refractive surgeons grow their practices. DTC advertising is expensive and it's complicated. We have an amazing group of marketers who have done a great job under the leadership of David Kormanski to guide us there and make sure that we're using dollars in the right way. But what we've seen is on a national level, not just in the US, by the way, national level in China where we started with DTC marketing, and everyone I think understands the success that we've had in China, which is great. We want to emulate that now in the US as we've done in other markets around the world. What we see is when we turn a market on, we have incredible adoption. Patients are coming into physicians' practices and saying, 'I want an EVO ICL in my eye.' Then after they get it, when the surgeon makes that decision, we see 99.4% patient satisfaction, which we're really proud of. I saw that at ASCRS the other day. That's just phenomenal. The physicians out in the community, they've even mentioned to me how excited they were at the celebrity brand influencers that you brought on board. So there is a lot of appreciation, I think, for the treatment.

That's right. We're handling it in-house, and we're proud of the fact that we have the talent in-house to do it. We've had amazing campaigns. The Nick Jonas campaign, I think, was really important, but now we've just signed, and we had the press release on Thursday, all three Jonas Brothers are now going to be engaged with us as we're supporting their tour, which is going to kick off out of New York in August. So much more to come from a direct-to-consumer advertising perspective. We love it. Our customers are telling us they love it. I had a customer come and hug me today to say thank you for trying to drive patients and to be in a company that's going to drive patients for their refractive practice. A happy EVO ICL patient makes a happy surgeon and grows a surgeon's refractive practice.

Yeah, we'll tell the team. They're amazing. So thank you.

Yeah, it's a great question. Look, we've had tremendous success outside the US. I mentioned China before. China is a little bit of a different type of customer than the very, very segmented in many ways customer that exists in the United States from a standpoint of independent practices that may operate very differently than a big system like IRE. In China, with that said, we also have big private equity groups and venture capital max situations we need to address differently than we might an individual woman or man that's practicing in Cincinnati, for example. So what we're trying to do is customize solutions for each one of those types of customers that can engage with us. We're really happy that we have programs. The best way to access that is to reach out to local leadership and talk about what would be specific to a customer's needs. For example, someone who wants to start with EVO ICL, we have programs where we can do a fast start and get them up to speed, one from a training perspective because it's important. We want to make sure that we train the surgeons so that they can deliver the best outcome for their patients, so we take a lot of time and care to do that. But we're also interested in partnering with that physician as they solve for needs that might be in their practice. Maybe they're going into an office-based setting where they want to operate in their office. We can in some ways assist with that. We can in some ways have opportunities to help educate their potential customers or potential patients. So again, we customize those for each one of our different surgeons, but we're excited about delivering that to them.

And look, if we do it right, we have these national campaigns. I mentioned the Jonas Brothers, and there are others too. We have social media marketers that are helping drive traffic to these customers. That, assuming there's a certain volume commitment, and we'll ask for a volume commitment because we believe that the technology warrants it, then we have at that next level, at the more local level, the ability to partner with customers, and they love it.

Yeah, look, I love what Magda said. You talk about reflection. We had a chance to go to Monrovia together and see the manufacturing facility up there. If you haven't been in the car with me, I normally have a seven and nine year old in the back of the car, getting in traffic in LA. We're lucky to be alive. That's a true story. But look, first of all, my wife Stacy and I anguished over the decision. I love the time that I spent at Johnson & Johnson, an amazing company filled with incredibly talented, lovely people that are my family in a lot of ways. So taking this step outside to come to a place like STAAR was hard from that perspective, but it was easy from the standpoint of STAAR is an amazing company. What has been built before us, absolutely the challenges that they've gone through since 1982 to get us to where we are now, it's spectacular. So I'm so excited just to be part of an organization that has endured all of that and has now put themselves on this trajectory for explosive growth. I'm talking growth outside the US already documented in the public domain of 20 plus percent, but at market levels we're growing double digits in every market, in some cases double. So it's just exciting. The people are talented, they're committed. When I had a chance to see that, it was obvious. It's a fun place to work. It's one of our values. We sat down as a leadership team, we aligned on some values: empowerment of our people, driving a fast sense of execution, so we want to do things fast, and fun was one of them. We have others, but I just don't want to leave that piece out because I think where you work and who you work with is important. So 100%, that's everything.

You're welcome. Thanks for having us, and thanks for all that OIS does. Looking forward to seeing you again soon.