Allyn regales audience with history lesson

CNY Business Journal (1996+), Dec 14, 2001 by Kropf, Annemarie

SYRACUSE -A little creativity and a lot of patience helped Welch Allyn, Inc. get its start - outside a Chicago restroom.

When William Allyn spoke recently at the School of Management Building at

Syracuse University, the chairman and CEO of Welch Allyn Ventures spoke about

the history of the company and its successes. His presentation was one of The

Martin and Phyllis Berman Distinguished Lecture Series.

When the company first started in 1915, it had no means of distribution for its diagnostic sets, Allyn said. Every week, Allyn's grandfather would travel to a different city by train. Desperate for distribution, Allyn traveled to the American Medical Association's conference in Chicago, bringing only a tablecloth with him. He was able to obtain a card table, and parked himself outside the men's room door. As the physicians went to the men's room, Allyn was able to sell his products.

"So that's how Welch Allyn got started," he said, "just outside of the men's room in Chicago."

Since Welch Allyn is not a common household name, Allyn said, he gave his audience a quick tour of the company that spans four generations.

"The first generation were real survivors," he said. "They got it going. The second generation set the stage. The third generation, mine, takes technology and exploits it."

By 1939, Allyn said the company's survival was questionable, but World War II helped it out. Focusing on the war, the company supplied the military, but its

other customers got away. In 1950, the company hired its first engineer, and invented the odoscope, the device doctors use to look in the ear.

Over the years, the company worked on a variety of products, such as fiber optics, bar-code scanners, and video endoscopes, the mini-television cameras that can go in the body.

Allyn highlighted a few of the products, which were arranged on a table. Holding up a colonoscope, he asked, "Anyone here over 40? This is your future."

Delving into the sales of the company only briefly, Allyn said he always tries to achieve 40 percent in international sales. As Allyn demonstrated with a chart flashed on a screen, the company made well over $500 million in 2000.

Allyn says that the company's success is based on four "I's." "Nothing is more important than integrity," he said. "When customers don't have respect, we have nothing." Innovation and international are two other "I" principles. The last one is income.

"There's nothing wrong with that word," he said. "There's nothing wrong with asking, 'did we make any money today?"

Allyn's son, Eric, also took the stage to talk about where the fourth generation is taking the company. He is the franchise director for alternative care - alternative care meaning not hospitals.

"The way I view [the company] up through my dad's generation is 'if you have an orifice, we have an instrument,'" he said to laughter in the audience. "Our new philosophy led us to acquiring a number of companies and drove engineering.

"Our focus has been on more screening," he adds. "We believe that by getting better screening, we can take good care of people who are really sick."