Ballert Orthopedic :: Newsletters and Articles

Ballert Molding Helmet Exhibited at National AOPA Conference
By Carl Holzman

As part of a broad promotional campaign to sell its cranial molding helmets to other O&P businesses, Ballert sponsored a vendor’s booth at that national convention of the American Orthotics and Prosthetics Association(AOPA), held in Chicago October 9 through 12.

After receiving clearance from the FDA in June 2001 to manufacture molding helmets to treat positional plagiocephaly, Ballert became one of only a handful of companies in the United States with the regulatory approval to continue manufacturing the devices.

Among companies with similar FDA clearance, Ballert is one of only four that provides manufacturing services to other O&P companies.

A Marketing Challenge
Because this is Ballert’s first foray into the business of “central fabrication” (a term that describes the manufacture of devices for other companies), Ballert faced a twofold challenge. We had not only to launch a new product but also to introduce ourselves to an industry that did not associate Ballert with central manufacturing services.

Ballert met this challenge on several fronts. We first upgraded our webpage, adding features about our helmets and our manufacturing services. We then restructured the website to make it more available to search engines, so that anyone searching for cranial molding helmets would be directed to Ballert’s site.

Ballert next registered and got listed with oandp.com, a popular website for practitioners looking for information about vendors and manufacturers. In response to our efforts, oandp.com even established a separate category for manufacturers of cranial molding helmets, with links to their websites.

Early last spring, after completing these website enhancements, Ballert mailed an introductory brochure to over 900 U.S.-based O&P facilities highlighting our manufacturing services for cranial molding helmets.

The response rate to the mailing and the website was positive, and from these responses significant new business materialized.

The AOPA Conference
These marketing efforts were capped at last week’s AOPA conference with an attractively outfitted booth showcasing Ballert’s fledgling molding helmet business.

In the large exhibit hall, convention attendees were drawn to Ballert’s automated PowerPoint slide show highlighting the advantageous features of the Ballert helmet. The slide show incorporated state-of-the-art animation to illustrate some of the features contributing to the successful outcomes experienced by Ballert’s helmet patients.

The Ballert Helmet: Ahead of the Rest Gene Bernardoni, RPh., CO, BOCO, owner and manager of Ballert Orthopedic, explains the advantages of the Ballert helmet to an interested attendee at the AOPA 2002 National Conference in Chicago.

Surrounding the slide-show screen were heart-warming photographs of some of Ballert’s helmet babies, while actual helmets of various styles were exhibited on dolls’ heads.

The many interested practitioners and technicians who stopped by the booth received an information-packed folder inside a plastic bag imprinted with a portrait of one of our helmet babies (see last page).

Under the motto, “The Ballert Helmet: Ahead of the Rest,” Ballert fielded inquiries and answered questions from a host of curious convention attendees. Over the three-day conference, the record-breaking attendance approached 2000 people.

The interest shown by the attendees in the Ballert helmet was gratifying for all those who invested time and energy in preparing and manning the booth. The challenge now is to convert the many leads into satisfied Ballert customers.