Valuemed Celebrates 30 Years The company launched when the world was changing, but then it turned the tables and challenged what the industry could be. by Nerissa McNaughton
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aluemed Professional Products Ltd. was born on the cusp of a changing world, and thanks to visionary Candi Johnson, president and COO, the company flexed, adapted and thrived. Now, 30 years since its humble home office beginnings, Valuemed is a growing Canadian manufacturer and distributor of top-of-the-line healthcare products and equipment for the entire continuum of medical, dental and alternate healthcare professions. Operating from a 30,000 square foot distribution facility in Edmonton, and with warehouse and branches in Saskatchewan and Ontario, the company’s 40 employees work to deliver products quickly to any location in Canada, including very rural communities and major urban centres. From diagnostic, treatment and interventional products, to coffee and tea, Valuemed is the one-stop-shop supplier that pairs premier products with outstanding support and customer service. “I founded Valuemed in 1988 because I had been working with a variety of different health care related companies and loved the business. I believed I could build it and used the opportunity to start with supplying examination gloves to the healthcare market when those became an essential tool in infection prevention,” says Candi. “I was working fulltime, but I took an
opportunity and started the company by working on it during the evenings and weekends. I was never afraid of hard work or change, and failure was not an option.” Remember, this was the ’80s. Not only was the internet non-existent (the primary communication mode was a landline telephone and a fax machine), the expectation for women with young children was to go into established marketing models, not to build something from nothing and then compete for clients and product distribution rights. But Candi’s vision quickly paid off. Within months, she opened a warehouse, and in 1993, her husband Wayne joined Valuemed fulltime. “There was a lot of shipping, receiving, box moving, paperwork – things that we just couldn’t get done on evenings and weekends anymore,” explains Candi. Wayne’s fulltime commitment was the beginning of what morphed into a family company. Their son Chris joined the company fulltime in sales in 2003 and today, he works as the sales director. The company has seen many periods of very rapid growth: a major location change and an expansion into the
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