Growth of Diplomat Specialty Pharmacy Creating Thousands of Jobs
May 13th, 2010
Growth of Diplomat Specialty Pharmacy creating thousands of jobs
By Sally Rummel - Tri County Times
Phil Hagerman, pharmacist, of Fenton, always knew he wanted to work for his father.
Now, he and his father, Dale Hagerman, 82, and their family business, Diplomat Specialty Pharmacy, are at the center of one of Michigan’s “biggest and best” news stories of the last decade, chronicling the unprecedented growth that was spawned by one historic Fenton business — the downtown Fenton Drug Store.
Founded by Paul Bottecelli in the ‘40s, Fenton Drug Store was not only the area’s most respected pharmacy, it also housed a popular soda fountain and busy cosmetic counter. “Phil used to work unloading boxes in the soda fountain when he was 8 years old,” recalled Dale, who joined Bottecelli in operating the store once he graduated with a pharmacy degree from Ferris State College. “All the kids worked there.”
Soon, this neighborhood drug store expanded into the Flint area, becoming known as a family of drug stores called the Ideal Pharmacy Group. When young Phil graduated from Ferris in 1975, he hoped to join his dad in the family business, but didn’t know if there would be a place for him because of a faltering economy at the time. Meanwhile, his father had sold his shares in the company of four stores, and kept only one of them, Diplomat Pharmacy on Flushing Road. “It was the biggest one of the group, but not the busiest,” said Dale. “But there was a lot of potential.”
“Potential” was what young Phil saw in his family’s sole pharmacy, and he poured his heart and soul into it. “Phil was pretty aggressive,” said Dale. “He was eager to keep the business growing. I always told him that if he would get as excited about running the company as he was about running the fraternity, we were going to do some great things,” quipped Dale, referring to his son’s commitment to leading his college fraternity, first as vice president, president and then alumni president.
Through the doors of Diplomat Pharmacy, Phil, now its president and CEO, has led the nation’s largest privately held specialty pharmacy company, with the help of two senior vice presidents/owners, Jeff Rowe, R.Ph and Steve Chaffee, R.Ph, who have been on board since 2004. Phil’s sister, Debbie (Hagerman) Ward, was also involved in running the family business, retiring three years ago.
Phil was one of the first pharmacists to get involved with hormone therapy in the late ‘70s — before PMS was a household word. He was also one of the pioneering pharmacists in treating AIDS patients as early as the ‘80s, before anyone else understood the global medical significance of this devastating diagnosis.
Additional forays into specialty veterinary pharmaceutical applications created another new niche for this young pharmacy — one that was not being fulfilled by any other businesses. Today, a full 50 percent of Diplomat Specialty Pharmacy’s business is in cancer-fighting (oncology) drugs.
“We were out-servicing other pharmacists by extending ourselves into specialty areas,” explained Phil. “We built our reputation very quickly by having what doctors needed on our shelves, even if it was a $3,000 per month cancer drug that other pharmacists didn’t want to handle because of limited distribution. We told doctors that we’d stock everything their patients needed, but they would have to help us find the patients who would use it.”
Doctors and patients began to come out of the woodwork. “As a company, we custom-make more than 6,000 prescriptions every month,” said Phil. “We’ve become one of the five largest compounding companies in the country.”
With a presence in all 50 states and U.S. territories, Diplomat Pharmacy has offices in Flint and Grand Rapids, Cleveland, Ohio, Chicago, Ill., Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Los Angeles, Calif., with an office in New York City slated to open in 2011. Currently, more than 400 people make up the Diplomat Pharmacy family of employees, but all that is about to change.
With an almost 10-fold growth in business in the last three years, Diplomat Specialty Pharmacy is poised with a “growth footprint” that includes 1,000 new jobs in the next five years, 1,800 jobs in the next 10 years and 4,000 new jobs by the year 2028.
“We actually experienced a 20 percent increase in business every year from 1993 through 2004,” explained Phil. “Our wildest growth has taken place since 2007 — we’ve increased business by 917 percent. We’ve already added 10,000 new patients just in the first four months of 2010. It has been a very exciting time for us.”
In 2009, Diplomat Specialty Pharmacy was named to INC. Magazine’s list of the 500 fastest growing, privately held companies in America.
Thanks to a huge forward vision by the Diplomat Pharmacy executive team and recent tax incentives from the state of Michigan, Diplomat Pharmacy will move its headquarters into a 340,000 square foot building on the site of the Great Lakes Technology Center in Flint.
“Diplomat University” is already in place to train a new workforce and re-train its existing workforce, according to Phil.
But the Hagerman family is most excited about what this growth will mean to the state of Michigan and their hometown of Fenton. “Instead of people leaving Michigan, we’re bringing executives into our state from other places. They’re buying houses here in Fenton and will contribute to the tax base of the city.”
These days, Phil’s father, Dale, is more likely to be found out on the golf course with his wife of 60 years, Jan, who used to work at Fenton Drug Store back when she was a senior in high school.
Phil still credits his dad for all of the success he has enjoyed at the helm of Diplomat Pharmacy. “Dad always told me that if you take good care of people, good things will happen and everything will fall into place.”
He’s now passing on those lessons to another Hagerman generation, including daughters Jenni, 30, of Linden, a doctor of pharmacy and college professor and Megan, 28, a dentist who will be returning to school this fall for her orthodontics degree. He and his wife Jocelyn are also parents of a son, Tommy, 9 and a daughter, Taylor, 7.