First shot at the market was late 2002/ early 2003 - Pan Pharmaceuticals - a manufacturer of complementary medicines, such as herbal, vitamin, mineral and nutritional supplements.
My wife, who had at one stage been given the last rights after a 10 year battle with cancer, eventually won her battle through using alternative methods to the mainstream doctors and medicine. Pan was a perfect fit - we thought it was karma.
It had been in business 40 years - had 40m in the bank - and was about to start manufacturing in Vietnam with a vastly lower cost and higher margin. The market loved it. It had risen from $1.10 to $1.50. I just happened to be looking at the screen when in the space of 30 seconds it went $1.50 $1.45 $1.40 $1.30 $1.10 $0.90....I knew something must be wrong so I tried to sell, but it was frozen and I kept pressing the sell button over and over but no response.
Turns out they'd started dabbling in pharmaceutical medicines (unannounced to the market of course) and their quality procedures weren't quite up to scratch. After one batch, you have to clean the equipment thoroughly, before the next batch of different items, or else the wrong ingredients can get mixed together. Not critical when you're dealing with vitamins, but critical with pharmaceuticals, and about 10 people who had used Travacalm almost died. Pan lost their license.
Some nights I still wake up in a cold sweat, pressing the sell button.
Lessons learnt:
1. Diversify
2. Never invest in a company unless it has strong management
3. Never trust the Government. Pan were audited each year - employees told the auditors what was happening. The Government did nothing.
Wore the dunce hat for 15 years, before I grew the gonads to now have a second crack at the market. So much to learn. So many mistakes made.
