Jennifer Bartels never thought that her efforts to cure her toddler’s diaper rash would lead to a long, rewarding quest.
But in early May, Bartels and her business partner, Gina Herrmann, received word that their company, pH R&D, had been registered in the Food & Drug Administration’s database for the sale of over-the-counter skin-care products.
The incontinence skin-care market is valued at $8.2 billion annually nationwide, not including retail. With the cost of treating skin-care disorders at hospitals and long-term facilities reaching $262 billion, it’s also a prime market to tap.
Those figures, however, are not what prompted Bartels to experiment with, and ultimately develop, CoolBottoms.
“The whole thing started six years ago when my 2-year-old got a horrible, blistering diaper rash,” says Bartels, a Hammond resident and the mother of two. “I talked to a pediatrician, and I also bought every product available on the shelves, but nothing helped it.”
At the time, Bartels also was studying the nitrification of water and its effect on pH levels in her aquarium. Using her knowledge of chemistry, she created an innovative way to cure her son’s diaper rash, a cream that adjusted the skin’s pH levels.
After applying the cream, Bartels noticed that her son’s rash disappeared within hours. She wondered if a similar product already was on the market; her research revealed there was nothing available like the cream she had developed.
Bartels made steady progress over the next 18 months, writing and filing her patent, which went through a dead period from 2004-07, when industry giant Johnson & Johnson considered the proposal but was not willing to develop the product.
Then, through the LinkedIn web network, Herrmann, a Colorado pediatrician who had created a similar salve to alleviate her own son’s diaper rash, contacted Bartels in 2008.
“I had often recommended a home-remedy mix of antacid and barrier cream to my patients’ families to cure diaper rash, and decided it was time to try it for my son,” Herrmann says. “It worked. I thought to myself, ‘Why isn’t this readily available to everyone?’”
Herrmann also conducted a patent search, which resulted in her finding Bartels. The women formed their own company and set out to find a developer for their product.
Financing their efforts turned out to be the biggest challenge of all. Bartels describes the futility of her overtures to lenders for capital investment.
“Every bank and capital company wanted real estate and hard assets as collateral on loans,” she says. “Patents are worthless in securing funding. Armed with intellectual property alone, we couldn’t get any banks to talk to us.
“None of the Louisiana-based capital companies we contacted were interested in us at all,” she adds, noting that capital investment in innovative Louisiana products is crucial now in the aftermath of the 2005 and 2008 hurricanes and the ongoing Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
The availability of risk capital in Louisiana for such business innovations remains sparse. The state’s Angel Investor Tax Credit program expired last year after the Legislature ran out of time to renew it. A small group of angel investors took advantage of the program before its expiration, including those who bankrolled the development and manufacturing of CoolBottoms. pH R&D also has attracted interest from out-of-state capital companies.
With their help, Bartels and Herr-?mann have developed their own product line, including CoolBottoms, NeutrapHor and Skin Aid 9.2, for the incontinence skin-care market.
“Every little step along the way took money,” Herrmann says. “We started out with a formula for a cream, but we needed to find a manufacturer and chemist to make it. There were initial fees to do a test formula, and each time we tweaked the formula, we had to pay for its reformulation.
“There were costs in graphic design, creative packaging and literature; consultant fees to help us meet compliance with FDA regulations; and lawyer fees. Not to mention money for liability insurance up front.”
And despite the challenge to find funds, Bartels now believes that the outcome works in the company’s best interest. With fewer investors, she says, the company has only a minor dilution populated mostly by doctors and health professionals. Four physicians, including Herrmann and her husband, who is a plastic surgeon, have purchased percentages in the company.
“We now seek people who offer more than money to the company in the form of expertise, medical influence, or some other intangible more valuable than cash,” Bartels says.
CoolBottoms is the first diaper-rash product to use pH mediation to deliver relief and eliminate redness. It is available at independent pharmacies in Hammond and also on the Internet at coolbottoms.com. The cream has been sold in 10 states, and Bartels and Herrmann currently are talking with Sam’s Club and Walgreens about further retail distribution.
But the real validation of the entrepreneurship between Bartels and Herrmann has come with their development of NeutrapHor, a cream for incontinence-related skin disorders. The demand for the product has spiked at 17 long-term care facilities in metropolitan Denver, where it has received extremely positive feedback. Nurses and patients claim it alleviates conditions such as eczema, excoriations, burns and dermatitis.
“That was our moment of truth, to see how we were actually helping patient care,” Bartels says. “The patients kept asking us to send more and more cream. We’re having excellent results on incontinent skin issues. We think our products will be effective on some skin conditions in a way that other products aren’t.”
A third product, Skin Aid 9.2, received its trademark earlier this month and should be on the market by the end of the year. A registered over-the-counter company in Fort Worth, Texas, manufactures all three products.
Bartels is optimistic about her company’s products; she projects sales of NeutrapHor will exceed $111 million after five years. Success has been a long time coming, considering the obstacles of searching for a developer, soliciting capital and navigating extensive FDA regulatory procedures.
Her advice to budding entrepreneurs? “There is no substitute for perseverance—not knowledge, not money, not expertise … nothing,” she says. “If you have an idea, write it down, do the research and be prepared to be rejected.
“You won’t be successful unless you prove there is a market for your invention. Know what that market is, and how big it is, in dollars. Visualize where you want to go with the invention and who will buy it. Stay with your vision; it’s your best chance of success.”
