KEITH SULLIVAN IS HAVING A VERY good year. He was recently named Chief Commercial Officer and President of North America of ZELTIQ® Aesthetics, and launched a $45M direct to consumer program. After a meteoric rise in the company since he joined in October 2012, he is more than ready for his next challenge: helping ZELTIQ change the industry standard of what aesthetic providers can expect from medical technology companies.
Founded in 2005 in Pleasanton, California, ZELTIQ Aesthetics (ZLTQ) has been dedicated to the development of a non-invasive fat reduction empire. For anyone who has been living under a rock for the past decade, their signature technology utilizes Cryolipolysis® that was designed to target only fat cells, leaving the skin and other tissue intact. Drs. Dieter Manstein and R. Rox Anderson at the Wellman Center at Massachusetts General Hospital conducted the initial Cryolipolysis research.
In 2009, they received a CE Mark and in 2010, they got their first FDA green light. The company had a bright future and went public in October 2011, to the high hopes of early investors. Regrettably, post IPO they had a disappointing downward slope and missed their numbers for the next two quarters.
Executive Officer, having previously served on the Board since 2009. At that time, CoolSculpting had 400 systems installed internationally. At that year’s ASLMS meeting, dermatologist Jeffrey Dover of Skincare Physicians in Chestnut Hill, MA, who served on the medical advisory board, introduced Mr. Foley to Mr. Sullivan. As they say, the rest is history. Sullivan joined ZELTIQ on October 1, 2012 as Senior Vice President Global Sales, and 6 months later, he took over marketing as well. In 2012, the company fell short of their projections to Wall Street and revenues had basically stalled. ‘Our job was to figure out why the product was not where it should be,’ said Mr. Sullivan. ‘So the first thing we did was to change the focus
of the organization from trying to generate revenue to trying to generate outcomes.’ ‘Treatment to Transformation™’ was their first big brainchild.
But, as Mr. Sullivan explains, ‘It was only on a one-off basis, and doctors would sometimes adopt it and sometimes they wouldn’t. My job was to get it out there on a broader basis and make it a focus.’ In 2014, they reached their first major milestone of a cool million treatment cycles, and the following year, they hit the 2,000,000th mark. Fast forward to 2016, and over 11 years, the company has strategically grown the CoolSculpting brand to be the #1 noninvasive fat reduction procedure with 3 million cycles performed globally, leaving many other fat reduction technologies in the proverbial dust.
‘100% of the time when I walk into an event, and someone asks me what I do for a living, and I say that I work for a company that removes excess fat, they all want to know where they can get it,’ he says. ‘Most days I really love my job.’
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