Newport Beach-based private equity investor Strathspey Crown Holdings LLC has established its first “lifestyle medicine” company and landed one of Orange County’s most prominent medical device investors and executives as its chairman.
William Link, a managing director in the Newport Beach office of Menlo Park-based venture capital firm Versant Ventures, has been named chairperson of Alphaeon Corp. The new company is the brainchild of former Allergan Inc. and Bausch & Lomb Inc. executive Robert Grant, who will be its chief executive alongside his duties as chairman of Strathspey Crown.
Alphaeon will seek a place as a licensee, operating as a middleman of sorts between device makers and doctors in the plastic surgery, ophthalmology and dermatology fields. It also plans to offer services such as medical practice management, among others, to doctors or medical groups.
Link’s Influence
Link has been involved in the device sector for four decades as an entrepreneur and investor, and he is a member of the Business Journal’s OC 50, an annual list of the most influential members of the local business community. His influence tracks back to his success as founder of American Medical Optics Inc., which started in 1976 and eventually evolved into Santa-Ana based Abbott Medical Optics (see story, page 3). He also founded Chiron Vision Corp., which he sold to Rochester, N.Y.-based Bausch in 1997.
Versant is not an investor in Alphaeon, “and I do not anticipate such a relationship in the future,” Link said.
He said his interest in Alphaeon stemmed from what he characterized as “the seamless, close relationship that can be established between a company and physicians when all products are self-pay.”
Alphaeon has other executives besides Link and Grant.
Chief Financial Officer Mitch Hill was most recently with Cameron Health Inc., a San Clemente-based maker of heart defibrillators that was bought last year by Boston Scientific Corp. for more than $1 billion.
Its executive team also includes veterans of Allergan and two companies that Canada-based Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. has either already bought or is in the process of acquiring: Bausch and Medicis Pharmaceutical Corp., which was based in Scottsdale, Ariz.
The new company will be the first to take shape under Strathspey Crown, which was established in 2012 to invest in what Grant has called “lifestyle medicine” businesses that aren’t covered by any form of insurance. He said Alphaeon is negotiating with more than 30 companies for licensing deals.
“We’re licensing products and technologies and combining them with services,” he said. “In some cases, we’re in very late-stage negotiations.”
Alphaeon will announce its first product in coming weeks, Grant said, adding that it would be in the medical aesthetic arena.
The company plans to keep its manufacturing partners’ branding for individual products, “but the packaging will note exclusive licensing and fulfillment from Alphaeon,” he said.
Services besides practice management will include financing for patients to pay for procedures through Alphaeon Credit. That’s part of the focus on self-pay procedures, which relieve doctors of dealing with insurance claims and worries about reduced reimbursements.
“Presently, there’s not a single company that focuses 100% on self-pay procedures,” Grant said. “That is a big difference from where all the other companies are.”
Companies such as Irvine-based Allergan, one of Grant’s former employers, and Valeant, which has OC origins, offer a mixture of self-pay and insurance-reimbursed products.
Market Segments
Alphaeon will concentrate on several market segments and aim at patients in their early 40s who are users of laser treatments and injectable cosmetic drugs like lower-face fillers and neuromodulators, according to Grant.
Market segments include beauty, wellness—which concentrates on so-called “nutraceutical” products—and “performance,” which will encompass products in the vision and sports medicine/orthopedic categories, he said.
Strathspey Crown’s previously announced partnership with Arlington Heights, Ill.-based American Society of Plastic Surgeons and its subsidiary, Plastic Surgery Business Solutions Inc., was a key to the formation of Alphaeon, according to Grant.
“What that allowed for us to do was to be able to go and meet with manufacturers on a global basis who would like to be able to get access into a market” of plastic surgeons, he said.
Strathspey Crown’s agreement with the professional society and its subsidiary involves joint investments and work on group purchasing and licensing, practice management services and co-marketing, and public relations campaigns.
The society represents some 7,000 plastic surgeons nationwide and received an equity stake in Strathspey Crown as part of its agreement.
Alphaeon also plans to sell directly to doctors, with an emphasis on board-certified specialists.
A consumer marketing campaign is also planned for select broadcast and print media and will have celebrity endorsers, said Grant, who previously served as president of Allergan’s Allergan Medical unit and ran Bausch’s Aliso Viejo-based eye surgery business.
“The Alphaeon brand will be a brand that will be synonymous with wonderful patient outcomes and experiences, for aspirational outcomes and experiences. And in addition, it will also be delivered by board-certified specialists,” he said.