Corporate Retrospective 2007: Microliter

To discuss LCGC's influence on MicroLiter's success, I have to back up five years or so and tell you how I entered this market. My degree is in advertising design. I have worked with regional advertising agencies and was at a very large international advertising agency, producing graphics for a variety of industries. I came into this industry as a business owner producing advertising for a fledgling autosampler vial company, National Scientific Company (NSC). I was contacted by a photographer friend of mine who owns Woody Williams Photo, who had attended Pittcon in Atlanta in the late 1980s. He had met the owner of NSC on the show floor, and he communicated to Woody that he had a new product he wanted to introduce and needed an advertisement produced for his industry's primary trade publication, LCGC.

My first ad in LCGC was to introduce the Target Vial for NSC. My relationship grew with NSC until I took a full time position with the company where I studied and learned the market and its key players. During my stay, I introduced not only the Target Vial, but many other products including Target DP with a multipage, die-cut insert that catapulted the product to instant success.

To reach the entire customer base, I produced several multipage brochures, including my first project, a 270-page catalog. It was produced, by the way, with an Apple Macintosh II, with an incredibly large (at the time) 40 meg hard drive. It took about twenty 3.5" floppy disks to transfer the file. Unfortunately, many of the catalogs became obsolete because they were never mailed. At the time, NSC didn't have a list that could deliver even the small number of catalogs my company had produced.

To deliver future catalogs, it was clear that we needed a better means of delivery. My experience with one of the best direct-mail ad agencies in the world, Ogilvy & Mather, Inc. taught me I needed a high-quality, industry-specific mailing list, so I contacted LCGC to see if they would sell me theirs. NSC may have been the first company to purchase the LCGC mailing list to deliver their catalog to the market. I'm sure if I wasn't the first marketing person to request it, I was close.

Jumping forward, when I opened MicroLiter in my basement, I was questioned as to how I could reach so many people and be so successful from the start, and to me it was fundamentally simple, the O&M tried and true marketing B2B plan: Targeted Direct Mail, with brand support through a progressive ad campaign in LCGC.

Many times I am asked to advertise in other publications and as we have grown, MicroLiter has in certain vertical markets. We believe, however, that LCGC has been the vehicle that delivers the entire spectra of the market we want to reach and have relied on this publication as our base program. We have been able to select the right names and reach the right market in a timely manner. We use the advertisements we have placed since we opened, to keep MicroLiter's name in front of our customers in this market.

We congratulate the success that LCGC has achieved and believe that the publishers and the publication have been responsive to the needs of MicroLiter. We attribute much of our success to the marketing relationship and have become close friends with many of the staff. You will continue to see MicroLiter Analytical Supplies, Inc.'s name in the forefront of our industry through their consistent, superior delivery of information pertinent to our industry.

When I made the jump from ad agency creative director to the client side and ultimately owner of my own analytical supplies company, I never dreamed that I could achieve the successes that I have. This industry is interesting, alive, and cutting edge. You can count of LCGC to keep you up to speed on all that is important in the Science of Separation. And you can count on hearing about MicroLiter's new products in LCGC.

Kim Gamble

President, MicroLiter Analytical Supplies, Inc.