All of the 503B’s tout their “reliability”, but they all have difficulty supplying all of their customers all of the time. Several of our competitors have put customers on “allocation”, supplying only a fraction of the products that their customers order. They have constant problems with backorders. In some cases, they have “fired” their smaller customers simply because it wasn’t worth the time and resources to provide products. This has led to a cynicism in the market about 503B’s, and, (even worse), an acceptance of poor performance from the 503B suppliers.
At Wells Pharma, we have recognized this as a vulnerability of our competitors, and we understand that if we can prove our reliability, it will give us an advantage. Our salespeople are trained to stress our committed supply process, and our production and fulfillment teams are held accountable. Our production-planning department schedules production based on our current customer’s demand and forecasted usage, and our fulfillment department will not send out any products to new customers unless we have more than enough inventory to completely fill orders from our existing customers.
That means that there is a delay in providing new customers. We have to get their forecasted usage into our planning process, complete production, and get it through testing and quarantine before we can sell it to the new customer. However, this usually works out fine because the new customer has to go through their inventory from the old supplier before they can start taking products from Wells Pharma. Since both of these processes take 3-4 weeks, the timing is seamless. However, we do overstock our inventory, so if the new customer is in dire need of product(s), we can usually provide a limited supply in the short-term.
Another advantage is Wells Pharma’s ability to produce from API (powder) in times of drug shortages. While our main portfolio consists of Sterile-To-Sterile products only, we have a compounding suite that is entirely dedicated to API drug production. This means that when there is a manufacturer shortage of a drug, we can seamlessly pivot to API production and keep a reliable supply of that drug on the market for our customers.
As discussed earlier, our Committed Supply is one of the advantages of working with Wells Pharma, and it is why Committed Supply is one of the Wells Pharma “5 C’s to Success”.
Please visit our website, and “C” the Wells Pharma difference for yourself!