PORK Perspectives: A Minute with Edward Seed
PORK Perspectives is a recurring column that provides business and leadership strategy tips from some of the pork industry’s finest. Meet Edward Seed, vice president of global sales and marketing for Pharmgate.
When Edward Seed, now vice president of global sales and marketing for Pharmgate, began knocking on doors in Canada and the U.S. about 10 years ago with a new product no one had ever heard of, he wasn’t sure what doors would actually open.
“Here I was representing a very small company, which nobody had ever heard of, representing a first product, and starting to survey the markets,” Seed said. “I was so impressed that customers were prepared to open their doors and help. Obviously, they wanted to hear what we were, who we were, what we had and how it might help them. But they were also absolutely generous in giving time and support.”
It’s those people that he met during the start-up of Pharmgate Animal Health that are still his most loyal customers today. And they are more than that, he says. They are very good friends. Since then, the company has continued to grow and expand its customer base. Seed shares his views on mentoring, leadership, strategy and what he’s learned during his career at Pharmgate.
Q. How did you find your way into the swine industry?
A. I completed my degrees from Pretoria University in South Africa in animal science and animal nutrition. My first job in the early ‘80s was with Elanco as a technical service and development person. I later joined Roche in South Africa in 1988, and was put onto their international management development list, which meant a number of international appointments around the world every three to four years. I was transferred to Switzerland in 1992 and in my second international assignment got to lead the animal health business in Europe. I then moved to the U.S. in 1998 to manage the North American animal health sales and marketing operations. In 2000, Roche sold its animal health business to Alpharma and I managed international sales and marketing operations. In the early 2000s, the company was sold a couple times. I stepped away during this time and Colin Gray, the founder of Pharmgate, which is owned by the largest manufacturer of chlortetracycline in the world, began talking to me about their desire to move from being a supplier of active pharmaceutical ingredients to forward integrating into the North American market with a product range and direct contact with customers. Gray approached a couple of colleagues and I to help him do that from 2008 to 2010, and that was how Pharmgate was established.
Q. Tell me about your business.
A. Pharmgate has been through a major evolution since the company started in 2010. We've evolved from this idea of being the chlortetracycline supplier to being a company with a fairly broad product line of about 30 products, including antibiotics, therapeutics and biologics. And we’re continuing to look for a couple of others to complement the product line as well. We are a small company, and we like it. We try to be the best that we possibly can be in terms of delivering product to customers in the most efficient and ‘easy-to-do business with’ manner.
Q. What does it take to succeed in multicultural environments?
A. I've come up through a very international career and worked in multicultural environments the majority of the time. Over the years, I’ve learned what it takes to do that. You need to have a very collaborative approach. For example, adopting a European approach with a team of people here in the United States or other parts of the world won't necessarily work. People have different ways of doing business, there are different cultures and different value systems, and you need to be able to respect that.
Q. What is your business philosophy?
A. From a product point of view, we want to have a broad enough array of products to be relevant to customers. From a business process point of view, we strive to be lean, uncomplicated and easy to do business with. From a personal point of view, I want to be fair. Everyone needs to make their business work, but we want to see a little bit of fairness in the operation, too.
Q. Describe a typical day on the job for you.
A. A typical day involves a lot of multitasking. In my role, that can vary from high-level strategy development and interacting with the technical teams, to product management and working with customers and our sales team. We have a well-established business in the U.S., Canada, and international markets like Latin America and the Asia Pacific Rim. 2020 was a busy year launching products, primarily our vaccine products, in the international markets. I would typically intersperse this with a lot of travel to both trade shows and technical conferences as well as contract negotiations with customers. When the pandemic struck, we quickly adjusted to finding ways to keep customers engaged through virtual meetings. We offered training programs that have worked well during the last few months and we’ve been using digital platforms more to conduct our initial contracting discussions for 2021.
Q. How does your company help and work with its customers?
A. We are in the fortunate position to offer a range of products, both antibiotics and vaccines, which are broadly used across the swine industry. For us, it really starts with working with the technical decision makers of our customers to help them determine how best our products fit into their health management protocols. It mostly happens through discussions – our veterinarians speak to their veterinarians. But we also will run some diagnostics for them, potentially place products for them to evaluate and monitor progress to see how all the products best fit in. We’re here to make sure that customers actually can derive the most value out of our products. And then the next step is determining how we can streamline the supply chain to get our products where they need to be as efficiently as possible.
Q. What has helped you grow your sales and marketing team?
A. I think everyone who works for us enjoys the camaraderie of a relatively small company. We really do try and keep an atmosphere of teamwork, brainstorming and collaboration in conducting our business.
Q. What keeps you up at night about the swine industry?
A. Foreign animal disease is a big one. I’m not an authority on the subject, but that's certainly on my mind. There are many continually evolving pathogens out there. Our job is to make sure that our vaccines are cross protective against evolving strains of those types of organisms. Provided the swine industry is responsible about continued antibiotic use, I believe it will largely satisfy both the regulatory and consumer concerns thrown its way. I think we have achieved a good balance at this point in terms of using medications judiciously, only when required, following all the safety protocols, and ensuring both human health and animal welfare.
Q. What is one of the greatest opportunities in the swine industry today?
A. Under the current environment, the big opportunity is the export market. With the tremendous natural resources that the U.S. has when it comes to food production, it’s certainly a land of abundance. We see technological efficiency advances made year by year, which allows us to produce pork more efficiently, more economically and continue to compete in the international stage for pork supply. We know export opportunities will change when Chinese production gets back onto its feet and recovers. But at the moment, there is an opportunity over the next couple of years to continue the expansion and continue producing pork profitably.
Q. What do you enjoy most about your job?
A. Dealing and negotiating with customers. As an animal scientist, it’s one of the few careers where you can choose how much time you spend behind the desk and in the field. I’ve always managed to get out and meet people in the flesh and talk animal production with them – what they are encountering, how they see things. We don’t always have all the answers, but we work hard to bring new ideas to the industry based on that firsthand contact with producers, veterinarians and other decisionmakers.
Read more on Page 2 about Seed's strategy on earning respect and getting a start-up company rolling.
