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Moving Where Your Markets Are: Bo Martinsen

 

Bo Martinsen’s Story: Bo Martinsen came to believe so much in the nutritional potency and market potential of omega-3 fish-oil supplements that he left his practice as a family physician to pursue entrepreneurial opportunity. And now, with its Omega Cure brand, Ambo Pharmaceuticals has begun to ride the growing wave of interest by American consumers in the well-documented positive effects of omega-3s.

“We’ve got an exclusive license for selling a high grade, no-smell, no-taste  of Norwegian-made fish oil to humans in its natural full-strength formulation in liquid,” Bo says. “Now it is easy to get an adequate and effective dose that will produce measurable health benefits.” That’s what now has the market so excited.”

Lest you think that Bo is a snake-oil salesman rather than a fish-oil salesman, consider both his credentials and the sound science behind omega-3s. Bo and his fellow physician and wife, Dr. Anne Marie Chalmers, were practicing in his native Norway in the mid-Nineties when patients kept asking them about dietary supplements. They did their research and concluded that omega-3s were the single best supplement that they could recommend.

Plentiful in the oils of certain fish including tuna and mackerel, omega-3s have been recognized by the U.S. government, the World Health Organization, and by many independent scientists as an effective provider of many medical benefits in humans, ranging from reducing triglyceride cholesterol to boosting the development of brain tissue and fighting chronic inflammation.  Other alleged benefits of omega-3s include reduction of joint pain.

But American and other consumers have been ingesting less and less fish oil over the decades as fish has disappeared from more diets. “So we saw dramatic results when people started using omega-3s, and we honestly felt that we could do more good by helping people get access to good-quality omega-3s at adequate dosages than by just recommending it to them in our practice,” Bo says.

At first, Bo and Anne Marie simply began recommending omega-3s to their Norwegian patients. But they saw a bigger market beckoning in America and decided to leave their medical practices behind in Norway and move to Sarasota, to start up Ambo Pharmaceuticals.

And now, Bo says, Ambo – selling mostly online and by word of mouth -- is on its way to $400,000 in 2006 revenues after posting about $250,000 in sales in 2005. That is without actively marketing the product, which Ambo plans to do in 2007.

Bo’s Key Move: Moving Where Your Markets Are

Bo could have ramped up his business in Norway. But for reasons of both entrepreneurial opportunity and lifestyle, he and his wife, an American, decided to place Ambo in Sarasota. And the move has paid off handsomely both for the couple and for the company.

While Norwegians understood fish oil better than Americans, Bo realized early in his venture that the United States actually would make a better market for omega-3 supplements. “People were more interested in supplements here, and yet there was also more confusion about supplements, which we believed we could help sort out by focusing on omega-3s,” Bo says.

At the same time, the couple wanted to locate a summer home in the American South – and there aren’t many places more pleasant than Sarasota, located about halfway down the Gulf of Mexico side of the state.

As they analyzed the possibilities for moving their fledgling company to the United States, Bo focused on Florida. For one thing, he decided that Ambo would demonstrate the efficacy of Omega Cure by proving its beneficial effects on racehorses – and central Florida raises many of America’s racehorses. Bo hired veterinarians to work with horse trainers to feed omega-3 supplements to the animals. “And in no time at all, these horses were winning all the major races,” Bo says.

So Florida made sense as a market and a permanent company location, in part, because Bo expected the equine market for Ambo’s products to continue to grow.

But Florida made even more sense for locating Ambo because of its human population! The target market for Omega Cure is boomers and their elders, and Florida is chock full of those people. And when it comes to Sarasota in particular, there’s a wealthier-than-average population that can more easily afford supplements – and tends to travel a lot, meaning their word-of-mouth about Omega Cure will spread more widely.

While most Omega Cure sales occur via the internet, in fact, Bo is finding more and more ways to use Sarasota both as a seed market and as a place to test promotion and marketing ideas on his key demographic. He and Anne Marie deliver lectures throughout the area, for example, and most Saturday mornings they can be found manning an Ambo booth at the farmers’ market in downtown Sarasota.

“Many people who visit the market are from the northern states, and they naturally ask if they can get Omega Cure online,” Bo says.

Bo’s latest marketing gambit is testing customer reception in golf pro shops for Omega Golf, an Omega Cure-derived drink. One Sarasota pro shop, part of a chain of several dozen around the country, perches a cooler of Omega Golf on its counter. “It could prove an interesting way of promoting our product,” Bo says, “because pro shops don’t carry any other supplements.”

Bo’s Bonus Insight

There’s nothing wrong with a false start. Before Ambo began selling purely omega-3 supplements, Bo misstepped by fielding a product that combined omega-3s with certain vitamins and minerals.

“It didn’t work; it was too complicated to market,” Bo says. Yet he quickly learned from his mistake, and his new approach ultimately resulted in a highly successful new product line.