Start-up scrubs in

03/28/2011

(Orlando Sentinel) - Ben Favret, 45, is president and CEO of Vestagen Technical Textiles, an Orlando start-up that makes a line of lab coats and scrubs designed to protect health-care workers from blood and contaminated body fluids. He spoke with Sentinel staff writer Linda Shrieves.

CFB: Your background is in pharmaceutical sales. How did you start a company that sells antimicrobial scrubs to doctors, nurses and healthcare workers?

Having sold antibiotics, I built up a large network in the infectious-disease community. And working with infection-control people, I began to understand the problems for the health-care worker and for the patient. Because medicine has advanced a lot, for a lot of diseases, like cancer, we have these chemotherapeutic agents that are very effective, but a lot of times, what ends up killing people are infections.

CFB: So how did you wind up in the garment business?

A dear friend of mind, Alan Reed, runs the transplant center at the University of Iowa — and his brother is in the garment business in New York. His company does a lot of work in sportswear and they were working with Schoeller, a Swiss technology company, to make technical textiles. We were in Orlando talking, and the idea of applying those technologies to health care came up.

I said, let me talk to some of my friends. It's a cool technology, but does it solve a problem in health care? When I talked to several doctors who are infectious-disease specialists, I said: 'What's going on in the medical field? Are textiles contaminated?' And they all said, 'It's a huge problem, an emerging problem.'

CFB: There are other companies that make antimicrobial scrubs and medical apparel. What makes your product different?

The idea of antimicrobial textile is nothing new. When you have antimicrobial textile, the perception is that you're reducing the amount of contamination on the garment. The problem is, if the shirt you have on is treated with an antimicrobial, and someone spills blood or urine or vomit on it, there's not enough antimicrobial in the fabric and, if it soaks through the garment, your skin still gets exposed to it.

But what makes ours different is it has a fluid barrier — so liquid literally beads up and rolls off it — and yet it's breathable and comfortable. It also contains an antimicrobial. And we've done the research to show it works.

CFB: You had just opened your factory in Haiti last year when the earthquake occurred. That disrupted business. Why did you decide to stay in Haiti?

We could have gone elsewhere, but we said, let's support the people of Haiti. The destruction at the facility was minimal. They were back up and operating in two months time. Other than losing power — and the inability to get things in and out of the port for a while — they didn't lose a beat.

CFB: You also decided to donate Vestex scrubs to medical volunteers going to Haiti. Was that the perfect field test for your product?

Well, we didn't do it to test our goods; we did it to help people out. But we were thinking about the situation — because it's really hot down there, it rains a lot and the doctors were treating patients in conditions that weren't ideal — it was almost like a war setting. The patients may have open wounds and they aren't in sterile conditions and you need to reduce the transfer of infection. So it was a great setting for our technology.

CFB: Handing out free scrubs to doctors going to Haiti works nicely as a goodwill gesture. Did it lead to word of mouth endorsements — and how important is that?

Clearly word of mouth is very important, especially in the medical community. And today, with social media, those types of stories help a small start-up company a great deal. We need people who have used our product to be our champions and tell other people about it.

Click here to read the full story: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/os-cfb-talking-with-0328-20110327,0,5130124.story

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