October 20, 2002
Patient News Publishing Ltd.
Wayne Lavery, President
Karen Galley, Director
P.O. Box 822
Haliburton, Ontario
K0M 1S0
(800) 667-0268
Background
Patient News Publishing (PNP) was established in 1993 in response to a growing demand for Canadian dental patient newsletters. At that time, Mr. Lavery had 1 employee, 14 clients and was producing 27,000 newsletters annually.
Today, PNP has 35 full-time employees, several departments including sales, accounting, editorial, customer service, printing and distributing. The annual payroll will exceed 1 million dollars in this current fiscal year.
Revenues to July 31, 2002 will increase by over 103% over last year due to the expansion into the United States.
PNP is now the largest provider of dental newsletters in Canada. The company produces and mails over 10,000,000 newsletters per year from their facility in Haliburton County. This equates to more mail every 2 weeks than the local post office generates in 1 year.
Product
PNP is an all-inclusive service which allows the dentist to choose the editorial content and illustrations from an extensive library to create a custom newsletter specifically designed to market their dental practice. Each yearly subscription provides the dentist with up to 5 custom newsletters produced and circulated directly to his or her patients.
HCDC Involvement
In 1994, HCDC provided a working capital loan to assist with the implementation of a marketing plan, and to increase the library of dental articles. This was paid in full within 1 year.
In September 2000, HCDC approved a loan of $95,000 for working capital and a term loan of $30,000 for a down payment to secure property to build a new facility. This new building is expected to be 10,000 sq. ft.
The HCDC also assisted Mr. Lavery to access the PEMD Program to expand into the USA and introduced Mr. Lavery to the consultants available from the CTN. These professionals assisted Mr. Lavery in his search for a CEO.
As a result of Mr. Lavery's initiative, and consummate dedication to his business, PNP is now one of the largest employers and fastest growing businesses in Haliburton County.
Patient News Publishing was chosen HCDC's Entrepreneur of the Year at their Annual Meeting held in November 2001. We also nominated PNP for a provincial award from the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Trade.