By KIM WILLIAMS
We may market our infamous ingenuity, but it comes with a price only overseas investors seem able to afford.
Just ask Richard McCulloch, managing director of Glenfield-based McCulloch Medical New Zealand.
McCulloch Medical's latest product, a pump-action manual resuscitation unit, has captured the attention of overseas medical experts and universities, but has yet to take off here - despite gaining international recognition at an inventors' exhibition.
Lack of domestic interest is a price paid by many small businesses in this country, Mr McCulloch said.
"We cannot launch and market this worldwide, because we do not have half a billion-dollar corporation with hundreds of people to help market the product," he said.
He wanted to license the manufacturing of the product and/or sell the intellectual property in New Zealand, but he did not think there would be buyers here.
"Unfortunately our name isn't Johnson & Johnson or Roche. We walk in and people say `who the hell are McCulloch's?'th"
McCulloch Medical began life as a division of McCulloch Products, specialising in household plastics for 17 years.
The business was started in 1973 by Mr McCulloch's parents, Ray and Norma, while he was still in secondary school.
The switch to developing the Breath of Life resuscitation unit came after Richard McCulloch helped a woman who had collapsed on a roadside in 1990.
"I pulled over and she had no vital signs, and I had to make a judgment call as to whether to give this person CPR or not, and it was pretty awful because she had blood all over her face and broken teeth," Mr McCulloch said.
"We thought then that we really had to get some equipment in the vehicles, so we looked at what was available by way of resuscitators, but we couldn't believe how much they cost, and how crazy the design was."
The medical community was less than enthusiastic about the Breath of Life, so Norma McCulloch did some creative thinking and pitched the resuscitator to the animal market - with great success.
"Basically, we had to think again because there was no market here, and we'd been asked by a couple of farmers whether we could make a unit for calves, and so we did," Mr McCulloch said.
The resuscitator underwent trials at Massey University and it took off, going on to win a number of prestigious international awards, including Best New Farm Product at the Royal Welsh Agricultural Show (1996) and the Leyland Cup Best Product of Show in Balmoral, Ireland (1997).
"Going sideways to the animal market was a very smart move - a very smart thought on Norma's part," Mr McCulloch said.
"They just loved the idea that the damned thing worked."
There is no difference between calves and humans as far as resuscitators go.
"It's the same for us as it is for a calf or a foal," Mr McCulloch said.
Though it might seem like a bit of a fairytale, the financial logistics of the exercise resembled a Grimm Brothers' version rather than Walt Disney's.
The McCullochs initially earmarked three months to develop the resuscitator, but that eventually became three years, at a cost of $600,000 - not including time costs and patented costs, estimated to be at least another $100,000.
"We started by selling off personal property - mine and [wife] Deb's land," Mr McCulloch said.
Ninety-five per cent of McCulloch Medical's business is overseas and roughly 20 per cent of that is seasonal, depending on the agricultural market.
McCulloch Medical's animal products are exported to Australia, Canada, the United States, Britain, Japan and Europe.
The business employs up to 20 casual staff who come in when required.
"Just about all of them have worked for us for years, so they know exactly what they're doing.
"That doesn't make it easier in the marketplace though, especially in a geographically challenged nation of only 3.8 million people."
The company missed out on business because it was not near its main markets.
"Overall, there is not the support needed.
"It is coming through, and that's great for new businesses, but businesses like ours don't actually fit into some of those categories because we've already done this and done that," he said.
"There have been very little efforts by way of real incentives for people who are real ideas people who also have the ability to take an idea and turn it into a functioning product.
"But in New Zealand there just has not been the support for people like that - for businesses like that."
For all that, the McCullochs have had some tempting offers.
One Kansas-based company has offered to buy out the animal side of the business altogether.
Now the McCullochs want to branch out on the personal side of things.
Norma wants to retire, Richard wants to go back to university, and Deb wants to put to good use her recently gained honours degree in social work.
Resuscitator big overseas
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