February 3, 2014
Shop Talk
Q&A with Jeff Duchemin of Harvard Bioscience
Jeff Duchemin, President and CEO, Harvard Bioscience, Holliston
By Rick Saia
Harvard Bioscience is coming off a busy year. It spun off a division and cut about 50 jobs — or 13 percent of its workforce — just weeks after the publicly traded company declared a net quarterly loss of just under $1 million and a 3.7-percent drop in revenue for its third quarter, which ended Sept. 30. And, in the middle of it all, the Holliston-based manufacturer of medical devices changed CEOs when Jeff Duchemin replaced Chane Graziano, who resigned after 17 years.
What one thing enticed you into taking this job last year?
Well, the company name. The brand “Harvard” — it doesn't get much better than that in terms of brand recognition on a global basis. That was a very interesting and enticing brand to be representing. But if you look at the company, what we do that's unique and differentiating, we have great brands, along with the Harvard name, we have great innovation and we also have the ability to take our products to market.
The company went through a lot of change in the last year, one of the last changes being a realignment that cut about 13 percent of its workforce. Is that tougher to do when you're a new leader who has come in from outside?
Absolutely. Being in the job for two months and we take out 13 percent of our workforce is never an easy thing. It's something that we take very seriously. But we felt as though it was critical for our path forward in terms of building the right foundation, making sure we have the right skill sets to take the company where we think it's going and also freeing up some cash so we can reinvest it to the types of positions and the types of skills that we don't currently have in the organization.
How do you see the company's fortunes over the next two to five years with the growth in medical research, especially here in Massachusetts?
The research community has had a couple of difficult years. Many of our products are sold in the academic space, which is highly regulated through the National Institute of Health. Because funding has been down, it has had a negative impact to our business along with anyone who is in the life science research space. We feel as though things are stabilizing and we are looking forward to 2014, and actually seeing some growth coming to our business.
When your hiring was announced, you mentioned potential growth in foreign markets. Is there more potential there for Harvard Bioscience than here in the U.S.?
Once again … if you look at the market research that's available, the U.S. and Europe are probably going to grow in the 1, 1-and-a-half percent range in 2014. China could see 7 percent growth. So what we're doing is we're redirecting our focus to where the growth in the market is today. We're going to stabilize our U.S. and our European business. We're also going to emphasize our commercial operations in China to go exactly where the research funding is today.
Your most recent roles were with a couple of bigger players, Becton Dickinson and Corning. How much of a psychological transition is it for you to move into a role with a much smaller firm?
The one thing that makes it easier for me to transition into this role is this is a small organization. Some of the divisions I worked for at Becton Dickinson were small divisions. So this transition isn't that difficult for me. I did work for a large corporation — an $8.5-billion corporation — but coming here, the size of this business unit is really not that much different from what I was used to over the last 10 years at BD.
Harvard Bioscience has executed 25 acquisitions in 14 years. Do you expect the company to maintain that pace as part of its growth strategy?
Well I'm not sure that the pace will be 25. But we are emphasizing our acquisition strategy. One thing we will do, though, is, from a strategic standpoint, we'll probably look at different types of acquisitions.
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Shop Talk - Jeff Duchemin, Harvard Bioscience
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