Products & ideas for the laboratory professional.
Issue link: https://opticallabproducts.epubxp.com/i/538327
OPINIONS ONE-TO-ONE 6 july 2015 opticallabproducts.com Jim Grootegoed, Professional Editor, OLP, interviews Steve Swalgen, National Director–Lab Business, Santinelli International, Inc. Q. What does your role as National Director– Lab Business entail? How does it ft in with the company's overall mission? A. Around 2003, our wholesale lab business began to mature with the growing success of our frst-generation SE-9090 industrial tabletop edger. I was handling our retail ECP efforts via our direct sales team up to that time while also shepherding our growing lab footprint. We knew it was time to dedicate select ener- gies, both sales and technical, to what we determined was a growing opportunity for our breadth of fnishing technologies. I took on my current position in November of that year and since then have been fortunate to put our product and service imprimatur well within most aspects of the U.S. wholesale lab market. JIM: WHAT PRODUCTS DO YOU PROMOTE AS LAB PRODUCTS? STEVE: Our complete Nidek Co., Ltd. product portfolio, whether in edging, tracing, or blocking, has been adaptable and sought after by much of the wholesale market, especially since our SE-9090 technology received the OLA Award of Excellence in 2004. Even highly specifc "design-centric" tabletop edging technologies (such as our ME-1200) that were devel- oped for high-end retailers doing complex jobs have been adopted for specialty cells in labs nation- wide. Our automated edging systems have now evolved to second-generation dual edging systems (AES-2200 and ADS- 2200) and we've become the gold standard nationally for tracing with our LT series of tracers. JIM: DOES THE SUPPORT OF LABS DIFFER INTERNALLY FROM THE SUPPORT OF ECPS? STEVE: One of the frst areas we Santinelli's 5-Axis Xtrimer SE-1 Milling Edger System. STEVE SWALGEN began his career with Santinelli International, Inc. as Director of Sales in January 2001. Prior to that, Steve was an experienced senior executive in the medical device and biopharmaceuti- cal industry for 16 years, during which time he served as Vice Presi- dent of OEM Sales at Pall Corpora- tion (NY). Since joining Santinelli, Steve has also served as a Board Member of the Optical Laboratory Association (2009-2013) and played a key role in its transition to the Optical Lab Division of The Vision Council. The Xtreme-D LT-1200 is a fully automatic tracer with high- curve frame trace capabilities.