Entrepreneurial success

Jeffrey Druzak’s tenacity and perseverance, combined with dedicated employees and the consistent growth of his business, are all reasons he’s been named the 2002 SBA Regional Entrepreneurial Success winner.

Druzak says Druzak Medical Inc. has a family-type atmosphere, and proudly recalls an employee who introduced the $18 million annual revenue company to a potential customer as “Team Druzak.”

“That’s why we’re successful.” he says, “The nomination could also be attributed to our ability to overcome numerous obstacles.”

Druzak has overcome several obstacles since Druzak Medical opened for business in 1990, including a three-and-half-year development process for the company’s fast and efficient Treetop Shopper, a Web-based, split-screen ordering system for physicians and nursing homes.

“I ended up starting and scrapping at least two other versions of the project before I finally came up with a design that worked. (It took) at least six different computer programmers. After the fifth programmer left for Chicago, I decided to build our own MIS department (and hire) our own programmer,” he says.

Personal loss has challenged Druzak as well. In 1992, one of his two partners, Janet Charland, the company’s business and accounting manager,lost her fight with cancer. Then Druzak’s son, Benjamin Jared, died at age 6 in 1995 from bacterial meningitis. Far from giving up, he continued growing his successful business and adopted three children from Poland in 1996.

“I consider ourselves an organic-style company. We also have the philosophy of developing long-term business relationships based upon trust and a mutual respect for one another,” says Druzak.

Amanda Lynch