“We don’t know what’s going to happen. We are tight on money. There is a chance things are going to get worse. If I’m going to work for nothing and people around here are going to work for little, we can’t stay in New York.” invested. While Gomez is the company’s president, Widmark helped give gravitas to its leadership by serving as executive chairman. New Wave started out with an office in the Bronx and then a cramped $3,500 a month, 700-square-foot office in Queens that was crammed with four employees and boxes of inventory. MOVING TO FLORIDA His investors wanted him to stay put, but Gomez made a proposal to move the company to Florida. “We don’t know what’s going to happen. We are tight on money. There is The clean room at New Wave Surgical in Pompano Beach
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a chance things are going to get worse. If I’m going to work for nothing and people around here are going to work for little, we can’t stay in New York,” he recalls arguing. He pointed out the company needed a couple of thousand square feet, which meant rent would be expensive. Some of the investors said they wanted the company to move to New Jersey or North Carolina where Widmark was. “Then the argument was, ‘I got to be happy to some degree, too. I’m not going to be happy in New Jersey,’” Gomez recalls. In 2009, he found 1,800 square feet in Coral Springs – half the rent and twice
D-HELP starts wth a metal core wrapped in heating wires
the size of New York, he says. “When I went to it, I said it was so big we will never need more space.” A lot of space was needed because New Wave decided to do its own manufacturing, Gomez says. The strategy was risky, but was somewhat born out of necessity. D-HELP was selling for $40 and the company was paying the manufacturer 75 percent of that, leaving little margin for profitability.