Adding placement to recruiting brought him success

In a fit of what he now calls "supreme optimism and entrepreneurial hubris," ThreeWire Inc. founder Mark Summers told the Star Tribune in 2003 that his company would quadruple sales and nearly triple employment in 2004, thanks to a novel approach for recruiting patients for drug and medical device clinical trials.

It's a strategy that grew out of his original business model, which used radio, print and online promotions to market clients' drugs and medical devices directly to patients.

Alas, not only did the new strategy not develop as he'd predicted, but a client that accounted for most of the Eden Prairie company's 2003 sales of $2 million went away.

"And ThreeWire almost went, too," acknowledged Summers, 52. "The fact was, the market was in no way ready for our message," and the company was in no financial shape to promote the new business.

The numbing result: 2004 sales plunged nearly 75 percent, to $550,000.

But enough with the somber news. The fact is, the market finally got the message in 2005 and sales have grown significantly, albeit not to the $10 million level that Summers was projecting for 2004 or the $75 million goal he set for 2008.

In 2007, ThreeWire's revenues reached $6.5 million and are on track to approach $10 million this year. And employment, which stood at 17 when Summers made his rash predictions, has reached 67.

What's the catalyst? Like many of its competitors, ThreeWire uses a variety of advertising venues to attract patients to a client's products or clinical trial. But that's where most sales or recruiting efforts generally end.

ThreeWire takes it a critical step further, steering patients to a call center staffed by licensed nurses who screen them for medical eligibility and book appointments with physicians who use a client's products or are involved in one of its clinical trials.

Summers was right about one thing back in 2003: The clinical-trial recruiting business wound up driving the company's growth, accounting for 70 percent of 2007 sales.

Most of those sales involved recruiting for medical device studies. But now Summers has launched a new effort to add pharmaceutical clients seeking clinical study participants, recently hiring two veterans of the patient-recruiting business to lead the campaign.

The company's name reflects Summers' background as a naval flight officer, ThreeWire being the nickname for a perfect landing on an aircraft carrier. He likened the challenges he faced in 2004 to his experience in military aviation, which included hooking one of four wires strung across the deck when landing on an aircraft carrier.

It was not the first difficult stretch in the company's comparatively brief history. Summers started ThreeWire in 1999, convinced that his direct-marketing strategy, which included online promotions, would rapidly attract clients.

But then came recession and the dot-com collapse, and he was forced to take on any business he could find.

By 2003, 70 percent of sales came from a California medical device company for which ThreeWire was creating brochures, building websites and creating ads in medical journals. When that business disappeared, ThreeWire was on the verge of collapse. But Summers wouldn't give up.

He spent nearly a year cold-calling prospective clients about his clinical-trial service before there was a payoff: In January 2005 Summers was contacted by a Seattle company that was having trouble recruiting patients for trials involving a brain-implant device that restores arm function in stroke victims.

Six weeks later, a California manufacturer of an electronic device to treat gastric reflux signed on, and the company was on its way. Sales climbed to $1.3 million in 2005, jumped 60 percent to $2.1 million in 2006 and tripled in 2007.

To maximize the results, the company uses a dozen market research sources to study the patient groups a client seeks to reach: what magazines they read, what radio stations they listen to, what websites they frequent.

"Before we even buy a radio spot for a client, we'll know how many of a particular group of patients are listening to a specific radio station at a specific time in a specific area," Summers said.

There's an additional spot of good news: The growth of the clinical-trial business appears to be spurring the direct-marketing side of the operation, which generated nearly $2 million of revenue last year.