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Rooted in Relationships
The story of Calvert Holdings began in the early 1970's with Calvert Laboratories, a company that developed out of one of the first contract research organizations in the pharmaceutical industry.
Dr. Richard Matthews, a product developer working for a large European pharmaceutical company, wanted to move his family back to their roots in northeastern Pennsylvania and felt he could start a specialized operation in a small lab offering preclinical testing services to his colleagues spread throughout the big pharma industry. In the United States the bulk of this growing industry was housed in the New Jersey corridor where Matthews envisioned and built his lab. And since many of the experts in the field knew each other, Matthews was able to activate his network of colleagues who needed lab services to provide business for his new company. Thus, the roots of Calvert Labs began on the basis of individual relationships and a trust that independent contract services could be provided at the same level of quality and expertise as in-house operations.
Enabling Entrepreneurs to Thrive
Calvert Labs has helped shape the contract research industry, which has largely replaced in-house development operations of big pharma. But perhaps more importantly, CRO's like Calvert Labs have precluded the need for these services at newly formed biodiscovery companies, which often are struggling to obtain investors, acquire and direct staff, do development and testing, and consider marketing – all while focusing on their core science.
Calvert Holdings CEO Russ McLauchlan saw the need within the pharmacology industry to build on the benefits and conveniences offered by companies like Calvert Labs, and as he developed the Holdings, he did so with a strong and clear desire to support the entrepreneurial instincts of the drug and device development industry.
Expanding Services to Emerging Biodiscovery Companies
During the course of developing Calvert Laboratories into a premiere toxicology lab, it became evident that the particular need that McLauchlan had seen for Calvert to serve emerging biodiscovery clients was much broader than the research contracts. More and more young companies visited to ask for advice. Often they did not have the money to pay for Calvert's time and skills, but they had heard that Calvert had helped many new companies prove their technology to a point where investors emerged to support further work. McLauchlan turned his energy toward creating and developing Calvert Research Institute, a business unit separate from Calvert Labs but based on the same principles of advancing technologies emerging from start-up labs or academic institutions.
Small, Fast, and Light
Calvert had found a playing field, but needed to innovate ways to better serve young, under-funded biodiscovery groups in order to bridge the gap between discovery and the point at which investors became interested in funding their work. More technical, managerial, and marketing skills were required, and there needed to be a way to either obtain outright funding or find an innovative and helpful way to assist start-ups in financing the inevitable costs of developing a new technology.
Calvert Holdings decided to do it all, but in a way that took advantage of the very thing unavailable to big pharma: the ability to move quickly and change direction at a moment's notice. Coupled with the idea of the rootedness in relationships, these characteristics caused Calvert to acquire Carolina Securities, Inc., a small and innovative boutique broker/dealer with a strong reputation, and begin to build a network of the hungriest, pioneering service sector companies needed to round out the drug development cycle. Together, these became the Calvert Research Institute.
But rather than consolidating all the various companies, Calvert Research Institute, true to its Holdings origins, only brings into the company a selected few, and concentrates its energy on maintaining excellent working relationships with the independent strategic partners needed to accomplish any given objective. Thus, a start-up operation can come to Calvert Research Institute and get all it needs to move its science along the development cycle.
A Variety of Innovators
If you have looked around our site a bit you may have noticed coffee is another passion of ours. What does coffee have to do with biodiscovery? It has only a little to do with coffee (although we are proven aficionados) and everything to do with a service niche and Calvert's innovation in the area of business development models.
Calvert CEO Russ McLauchlan first conceived the idea of offering a fully-managed coffee amenity to business owners, property developers, and other people who provide high-quality services and benefits to clients or tenants. There's little market remaining for high-priced coffee shops, but putting a classy, image enhancing, consumer-demanded amenity into locations where people work, play, or visit, was a way to turn the business model away from retail coffee competition and into a professional amenity that venue operators could use to enhance the image and marketability of their own product. To that end, we applied the same business acumen, expertise, and investment to Calvert Coffee Systems as we have to the biodiscovery business; the result is an emerging Holding that shines.
It's Calvert's belief that this way of thinking and doing business easily crosses the boundaries between diverse and unrelated fields, and we are rapidly proving it. We aren't only for biodiscovery; we are for innovators. We are determined to help emerging businesses succeed.
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