Mr. Calesa: We define ourselves as a specialty pharmaceutical company; and you might ask yourself what makes the segment or us special. The pharmaceutical industry is the most profitable industry in the country. Companies make very large investments in research and development, which is a huge financial risk. In the specialty pharmaceutical segment you are generally focused in a particular segment of the pharmaceutical industry, and you are not taking the development risk of big pharma. Women First has targeted a segment of this industry ' women entering midlife. The reason is the enormous number of women in that demographic, as well as the enormous number of healthcare needs that these women have as they transition from reproductive years into menopausal years. Our company is able to generate revenue in this particular space. What we have done is to acquire pharmaceutical products from big pharmaceutical companies that either a) no longer promote them because they are not big enough, b) they have gone off patent, or c) mergers force divestiture. For one of these reasons, they sell products to specialty pharma companies like us. We have acquired several of these products, and we then promote them. We market our products with our own sales force and through other sales force relationships directly to OB/GYNs and dermatologists.
TWST: So the products that you have acquired or are likely to acquire
will be prescription products.
Mr. Calesa: Yes, that is our primary business, but we also have a
business segment that is nonprescription called As We Change. It is a
mail order catalog and an Internet business, and it is exclusively for
all the nonprescription healthcare needs of women. So what we have done
is focus probably 75% of our effort around the prescription side and 25%
of our effort or less around the consumer side, and between the two we
have built our business.
Tickers included in this excerpt: WFHC
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