The Heart of a Company

What makes the FlaxorX model innovative is not the idea of flavoring medicine -- a practice that has been applied, unsystematically, by other pharmacists in the past -- but the idea of choice. Children are able to select from a menu of 42 flavors. The options include such appealing flavorings as strawberry cream, root beer, and chocolate silk pie; pharmacists pipette in the recommended amount. "Choosing their own flavors makes the process fun, and once the child has made the choice, he's invested in it and is much more likely to take the whole prescription," says Kramm. "He'll take it even if tastes crappy because he doesn't want to admit to his mother he was wrong."

Stores pay on average $800 to $1,000 each to join the program, which gets them the 556-page formulary, in-store marketing materials, and a rack of small glass vials filled with plummy-purple grape and pearly peaches 'n' cream. Refills cost about $10 a bottle. "We're like Gillette," says Neiss. "We make our money off the reorders."

The company has been expanding its line: In 1999 it introduced flavorings for veterinary medications (Kramm tastes all those too), and it's developing pour-on flavors for special-diet dog and cat food. In the human realm FlavorX recently launched PediaPop -- a lickable, flavored electrolyte replenisher for kids with diarrhea. Far more ambitiously, Kramm and Neiss are talking with a small drug company about creating a branded line of over-the-counter medicines that would apply the Baskin Robbins methodology to off-patent medicines. "We would label it FlavorX acetaminophen, for example, and with each bottle there would be different flavor packets you could buy," says Neiss, an animated guy who is caf to Kramm's decaf. "You could just pick a packet off the rack and add it yourself."

FlavorX runs lean, generally developing new products with deeper-pocketed pharmaceutical companies. The company also outsources manufacturing and deploys a young, chiefly part-time sales force to talk up the brand among doctors, who in turn urge pharmacies to buy the systems.

Only one area is impervious to economies: testing, on which the company has spent more than $1 million. Beyond ensuring safety, testing is an important barrier to entry that protects Kramm's company from competitors who might want to copy its model. "Each flavor has to be tested with each medication, and there are more than 400 medications, so it's a huge hurdle for any start-up," says Kramm.

The company's brand equity and proprietary formulas, as well as the scientific validation meant to intimidate would-be competitors, make FlavorX an attractive acquisition target. "I get calls once a month or so from someone asking if we're interested in selling," says Neiss. "But we're building so much value in the company that it would be silly to sell when we're at this high-growth stage. Right now, the grand scheme is to go public. Hopefully in two to four years. Hopefully."

Once a boutique service in a single store, FlavorX is now offered in about 10,000 chain pharmacies, 1,500 independents, and 300 hospitals. The progress of the company's human inspiration has been less sure. At age 11, Hadley Kramm can say barely 30 words, uses a walker or wheelchair, requires support to sit up, and still wears diapers. "Hopefully, by the time she's 12 she'll be potty trained," says Kramm. He pauses. "I never thought I'd be saying that. 'By the time my child is 12 she'll be potty trained.'"

Hadley's disabilities have had little effect on her Audrey Hepburn looks: elfin, silky-browed, with the tender vulnerability of beauty easily bruised. At the Kramm home on a March afternoon, she is dressed in a diaphanous red top, pink-trimmed sneakers, and blue jeans that barely crease as she totters stiff-legged across the playroom floor, her thin hands clutching the back of a chair. "Say your name, Hadley," Kramm coaxes his daughter. Gamely, Hadley pushes out the h, but the rest of the word collapses into a plaintive sound too tenuous to be called a sigh.

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