Focus On: Quest Products’ growing presence
Officials at Quest Products want to make it harder for consumers to go to the doctor — and easier to buy self-care products at their favorite retailer.
They said shoppers can utilize the privately held Pleasant Prairie, Wis.-based company’s burgeoning number of products across eight different brands to avoid the hassle, not to mention, the expense of a doctor’s visit. Those products include Clinere Earwax Cleaners and ear care kits, OraCoat XyliMelts for dry mouth, Alocane Emergency Burn Gel and SunBurnt after-sun lotions.
“We are very much a manufacturer of self-care products,” said Mark McGreevy, senior vice president of business development at Quest. “We believe the future of health care is self-care. We offer the consumer a wide range of products that will solve a need where they would otherwise might have to go to a doctor for treatment.”
“The result is a savings for the shopper, in both time and money and, of course, more sales for our retail partners. We think it is a win-win for everyone involved.”
Quest is not alone in this thinking. Over the last few years, retailers from CVS Pharmacy to Walmart and even independent players have been setting up their own healthcare departments and services to offer consumers less-expensive alternatives to visits to the doctor’s office or even a hospital. The goal, many said, is to get more shoppers into the store looking for these high-margin services.
Suppliers also are looking to cash in, with many seeking the right merchandise assortment that will solve a need for consumers and help retailers stand apart as leaders in the self-care movement.
Quest is certainly at the forefront. The company produces about 40 SKUs across its entire portfolio, which also includes the brands Clinere, OraCoat, Alocane and SunBurnt, as well as AlcoHawks, CopperFixx and ProVent. The privately-held company has about 50 employees split between its headquarters and distribution center in Pleasant Prairie and a manufacturing facility in Seattle.
“I think retailers should just look at our track record,” McGreevy said. “We are growing at a double-digit rate and we have brands that are extremely unique and protected by patents. And, the demand is there. We offer incremental products that will help them drive sales in these categories.”
That is backed up by what McGreevy calls “cost-effective advertising,” where consumers can be engaged through digital and social campaigns, as well as sampling through medical sites that will help drive consumers to retailers for purchases. For example, he said that Quest employees attend between eight and 10 dental trade shows a year to educate dentists about its dry mouth products.
Educating the entire community is vital to the sustained growth of this category. “We are trying to educate consumers, retailers and even the medical community about what we offer and what that means to them,” he said. “We have a great team of people here who understand the challenges of the self-care category and how it should be merchandised at retail stores. We want to work with retailers to show them that this is a partnership with a mutually advantageous opportunity for sales and growth for all parties.”
What today is an emerging player in the over-the-counter self-care market started in a very different way. Founded in 2001 by Don Ryan, who remains Quest’s founding owner and partner, the company initially was created to help inventors of health-oriented products bring their items to market at mass retailers.
“The goal was to find unique products and help the inventor of these products with marketing, distribution and sales to get them to market,” said McGreevy, who joined Quest eight years ago after a long 20-plus year career at Reckitt Benckiser and Durex Consumer Products. “Most of the people we worked with were entrepreneurs who did not understand the consumer or the retailers they had to work with. We had the relationships with retailers and we know how to properly reach the consumer.”
With that experience, over time Quest was able to build a portfolio of more than 300 different lines that needed the company’s help to expand its reach. “Eventually, we bought some products from these entrepreneurs and, at the same time, started to organically build our own brands,” McGreevy said.
That all changed nearly three years ago when Quest teamed up with the Promus Equity Group, a Chicago-based private equity company. First, with the financial support of its partner, Quest leadership decided to forego its longtime distribution business model and immediately embarked on a strategy to build its own brands under the “Quest umbrella of products.”
Then, the company started to look for acquisitions that would enhance the existing product line. OraCoat and SunBurnt were quickly acquired in 2019, and McGreevy said that further acquisitions, possibly including one “large one that I can’t talk about yet” in a month or two, are definitely in the company’s plans.
“We have big plans here,” he said. “We want to communicate to the world that we are most definitely not a small company. We are a big player in the self-care category, and we plan to move at a steady pace of organic growth and about two acquisitions a year, as well as supporting our existing lines.
“We think that with the current trends and the consumer’s desire for more self-care products and our strategy to grow our business, we can double or even triple our business in the next three to five years. It is a very exciting time to be part of this growing company.”