DeWITT — Danlee Medical Products, Inc. of DeWitt on Aug. 21 announced it has signed an agreement to acquire SonicBrite, a brand that is focused on the cleaning and disinfecting of dental appliances. Under the agreement, the SonicBrite brand will operate as SonicBrite, LLC, a subsidiary of Danlee Medical Products, Inc. Danlee Medical didn’t release […]
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DeWITT — Danlee Medical Products, Inc. of DeWitt on Aug. 21 announced it has signed an agreement to acquire SonicBrite, a brand that is focused on the cleaning and disinfecting of dental appliances.
Under the agreement, the SonicBrite brand will operate as SonicBrite, LLC, a subsidiary of Danlee Medical Products, Inc.
Danlee Medical didn’t release any financial terms of its acquisition agreement.
Sisters Michelle Keib and Cindy Cooper operated SonicBrite between locations in Liverpool and Rochester.
Keib and Cooper equally owned Smile Brite Distributing, LLC, the company that distributed SonicBrite, which has since been dissolved.
Danlee Medical had been “exploring the possibility” of a new business venture for several years, says Joni Walton, founder and president of Danlee Medical Products.
“The only thing that I really acquired was the assets of the company, which [include] the customer list, some inventory, and the trademark of SonicBrite,” says Walton.
She spoke with the Business Journal News Network on Aug. 22.
“Danlee is obviously in the medical industry, so I felt that the dental [component] … is just a good complement to what we do,” she adds.
Walton believes the acquisition can open up a “whole new market segment” for the company.
Danlee has access to other dental supplies, so the firm can offer its customers more options than just the SonicBrite product, she says.
“There’s two markets here. There’s the end-user market, who’s the person out of their home and then there’s also the dental offices,” says Walton.
SonicBrite, LLC will operate as a completely separate entity from Danlee, and Walton is projecting a revenue stream of about $350,000 in its first year of operation, she says.
The new subsidiary might require the company to add a few employees in the coming year, Walton noted.
Danlee Medical anticipates the SonicBrite product will be available within a month.
“We’re saying 30 days to get our website up, get the product ready. There’s a little bit of a process to produce the product to fill bottles and kit the components together,” she says.
Danlee Medical has a production department that also organizes Holter kits for monitoring heart rhythms.
Founded in 1994, Danlee Medical Products, Inc. is a provider of medical and cardiology supplies.
Connecting buyer and seller
John Osta, a local business consultant, contacted Walton after reading a profile article on Danlee Medical Products in the April 11 issue of The Central New York Business Journal, Walton says.
They had a short meeting in which he indicated, “I have something you might be interested in,” as Walton recalled it.
He asked if Walton had ever thought about acquiring another business. She indicated she had, if she considered the entity “the right fit.”
Osta and Thomas Agnello, a business consultant and partner with Madison One Clearinghouse Network who was involved in selling the business for Keib and Cooper, contacted Walton and provided details about SonicBrite.
“Right then, I just knew,” she says. “This is something I’m interested in. This is a fit. … I just thought the dental arena would be a perfect fit and complement to what we already do,” she says.
Walton met with Michelle Keib a few weeks after meeting with Agnello. They signed the acquisition agreement on Aug. 20, says Walton.
“We actually started searching for someone to purchase it a year ago,” says Keib.
The Manufacturers Association of Central New York introduced Keib and Cooper to Agnello with Madison One.
Keib spoke with the Business Journal News Network on Aug. 25. Walton didn’t know Keib or Cooper prior to the acquisition, she says.
“We started [SonicBrite] 10 years ago, and it was always our intention to build it up as large as we could and then to put it in the hands of someone larger,” says Keib.
Keib currently serves as national sales manager at Hale Manufacturing Co. in Frankfort.
Cooper is working in a sales position for OneSource Solutions in Rochester, which had served as SonicBrite’s fulfillment warehouse, says Keib.
Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com
