VOLUME 14 NUMBER 1 ■ COLUMBIABUSINESSREPORT.COM
Part of the
JANUARY 18-31, 2021 ■ $2.25
network
All aboard
Silver Airway begins flights to Florida from CAE. Page 2
Troubled waters
S.C. Ports Authority, Wilson file labor complaint. Page 3
Growing portfolio
Nephron receives approval for non-respitatory drug. Page 4
Go To Lawyers
Special section honors S.C. legal standouts. Page 15
INSIDE
Upfront................................. 2 SC Biz News Briefs................. 3 In Focus: The Year Ahead....23 List: Financial Brokerage Firms..................................24 At Work...............................29 Viewpoint............................ 31
FILLING
A NICHE
Rhino Medical Supply provides a different avenue to PPE
Lance Brown, president and CEO of Rhino Medical Supply, founded the personal protective equipment distributor in April to help meet the needs he saw of small- and mid-sized businesses which needed hundreds, not millions, of masks or gowns. Brown and his partners, all with varied business backgrounds, hope the connections they are making during the COVID-19 pandemic position them to remain a trusted distributor once the need for PPE is no longer as acute. (Photo/Provided)
By Melinda Waldrop mwaldrop@scbiznews.com
W
hat Lance Brown doesn’t know can, as the CEO and president of Rhino Medical Supply is rapidly learning, end up helping him. Nine months ago, Brown was not in the medical supplies distribution business. He was running a credit card processing company, Swype Fast, when he became aware of an increasing need for personal protective equipment throughout South Carolina and across the country. “When COVID first hit, the supply chain
was decimated,” Brown said. “The bigger the state, the bigger the hospital system, the more priority they had. The smaller the state, the smaller the hospital system or health care system, the less priority they had.” Brown had no experience to speak of in manufacturing and distribution, but he wasn’t dissuaded. In May, he founded Rhino Medical Supply and began coordinating orders for masks and gowns from his garage. Brown, along with partners Elliott Haney, Tripp Robinson, Charles Vartanian and Rashad Brown, took aim at a specific niche in the hospital, health care and education industries.
New brew in town
OG Roastery serving up coffee and opportunity in downtown Columbia. Page 6
“When we first started, unless you were ordering 25,000 or 100,000 or a million, you really couldn’t help anybody,” he said. “The smaller (hospital) systems and schools, they don’t need a million or even 20,000 of anything. They just need hundreds. One of our missions was to be able to help and cater to the smaller- and mid-sized systems that weren’t getting allocations. “We determined back in May, in order for us to be here after COVID, we have to position ourselves differently and take on more of a distribution model versus just a sales model.” See RHINO, Page 13