Seaford’s 31st Anniversary
Internal Interview
Thursday, November 24, 2022
Seaford Pharmaceuticals is a proudly Canadian company founded in 1991. Since then, we have been dedicated to developing and marketing specialty healthcare solutions to Canadians and abroad.
Tamara Seales, president of Seaford Pharmaceuticals Inc., is proudly carrying on the legacy established by her father. We interviewed Tamara to learn more about the 31 years of success at Seaford, helping HCPs access the best treatments to help their patients.
To watch the video please click on: Seaford 31st anniversary interview, Tamara Seales
Q-and-A
What accomplishments are you most proud of at Seaford?
First of all, I’m proud that as a homegrown, privately owned Canadian company, we have sustained year-over-year growth for no less than 31 years. That is an accomplishment in and of itself, as less than 20% of Canadian firms survive past their 10th birthday, not even speaking of their 20th or 30th birthdays!
Secondly, I am proud of the establishment of our hospital division, which is a few years old.
Thirdly, I am proud of the advancements made by our product development team, which has worked diligently to fill Seaford’s product pipeline. As a result, we are planning the launches of a number of products, including our first prescription product in 2024.
What values has Seaford relied upon to sustain 31 years of growth?
Firstly, quality and efficacy. Maintaining quality and efficacy of our products is the cornerstone of our foundation. We have always ensured that we bring excellent products to market, and this has enabled us to build a solid and professional reputation amongst Canadian health care providers. We have been able to leverage our reputation with HCPs to introduce new and interesting products over time.
Secondly, tenacity, endurance and grit. The Canadian pharmaceutical marketplace has high entry barriers, which include a world-class regulatory system that can at times be quite unforgiving, a vast geographic space to navigate, as well as provincial differences, and of course competition. Without tenacity, endurance, and grit, we would not have been able to overcome these challenges, even as we continue to navigate them to this day.
Creativity and a nimble mindset. We have been able to leverage our size as an asset to overcome challenges by responding quickly to market opportunities. At times we have taken a somewhat unorthodox pathway to market success not by copying what others have done, but by establishing our own pathways to success.
What have been some of your most challenging obstacles and how has Seaford overcome them?
Over the years, we have had many challenges, both internal and external.
Internally, we have had our share of regulatory and quality challenges, as is par for the course in our industry, primarily as a result of either Health Canada’s evolving interpretation of regulations or us taking on products in different categories, or a combination of both. These occurrences required us to revamp our quality systems whereby we made them more robust and established an in-house quality team to not only address current quality issues but to anticipate and mitigate future challenges.
A challenge that has been brought on by external forces is related to supply chain, as a result of the pandemic and global shortages of components. We actively addressed this by working closer with our partner suppliers to understand their pain points, increasing our frequency of communication, and providing them with micronized forecasting models as well as support with sourcing APIs (source materials).
As a smaller employer, we have had our share of staffing challenges, and as we all know talent acquisition and retention is an ongoing concern for the entire industry. In some ways, this is a challenge which is the result of both internal and external forces. We understand that providing a positive, nurturing, and rewarding environment is key to talent attraction and retention. We have addressed this by doing our best to select new team members who we really think are a good fit for Seaford, therefore increasing their chances of success. We have also implemented training and development, and incentive programs for our staff. It’s important for us to play to our strengths and to focus on staff who value the entrepreneurial environment we have cultivated at Seaford.
What is the corporate culture and how does it support your successes?
At Seaford we have worked diligently to create a culture based upon the three pillars of excellence, accountability, and collaboration. These pillars are reinforced from the top of the organization with our corporate goals all the way through to individual employee goals, and they are similarly aligned with our performance management system. In addition to this, we have felt that it is important to celebrate individual and group successes, as we have long recognized that, especially in our industry which is very technical and heavily regulated, there are many ways to fail and as a result wins can be few and far between.
Diversity is a significant part of our success, as we have always and presently continue to have staff from multiple walks of life, recognizing that in our plurality lies our creativity and resilience.
We also have a very hands-on and entrepreneurial approach to our work style and actively encourage our team members to emulate the family style approach to our culture that we have had from our inception.
What is Seaford focusing on for the future?
We have lots of exciting plans for the future, including expanding our hospital division and our export division, as well as launching more Rx products in the therapeutic areas we presently have a footprint in.