Man who rescued business from hospital bed

Nov 10 2008 by Iain Laing, The Journal

Andrew Mernin meets the chemist who emerged from a life-changing accident with an Olympic dream and a multi-million pound global business.

AS Dr Tony Flinn lay in his hospital bed having endured the toughest summer of his life, his fledgling business empire looked all but doomed.

A horrific road accident had left him with 20 broken bones, a brain haemorrhage, a collapsed lung and a spinal cord injury.

Meanwhile, as the keen triathlete digested the news that he could no longer walk, he was also informed that his close friend and business partner Dr Steve Bone had lost his battle with cancer.

But those two devastating twists of fate in the summer of 2003 did not deter the Onyx Scientific chief executive, and the state of his company meant he had no time to indulge in self pity.

The business he and Dr Bone had spent years of struggle to get off the ground was hanging on the brink of extinction.

Regardless of his bed-ridden state, Dr Flinn had to take action to rescue the flagging pharmaceutical services company.

“I was looking at the business when I was in hospital and I could see it going down hill. I could really see it going backwards and things were happening which I wasn’t happy about. That was a really strong motivator to get me back into business.”

Fortunately for the 60 people employed by Onyx in Sunderland today, he did take action and the results are a multi-million pound operation with footholds in various international markets and plans for expansion.

The drug development company now has clients in the US and Europe and supplies six of the world’s largest pharmaceutical firms – a far cry from the business plan drawn up nine years ago by two pals who had recently lost their jobs.

The company started life when Flinn and Bone were both made redundant from pharmaceutical firm Chirex in 1999.

“Chirex was doing quite well when I joined it, but they made some silly decisions and they had to cut costs through one round of redundancies.

“I had already been looking at the possibility of starting my own business. Steve was made redundant about a month after me so we spent time trying to put a business together.”

The symbiotic partnership worked well since Bone was a technical specialist whereas Flinn – although a qualified chemist – had drifted into the sales and marketing arena. He originally studied chemistry to PhD level in Edinburgh, but after various scientific research posts, realised he would prefer to work in the corporate, rather than academic, environment.

“I just lost interest in doing work for the sake of it and wanted to do something tangible, not blue sky stuff.”

Among several commercial roles, the Newcastle-born chemist found himself working for ICI in Billingham after a spell in Oxford.

“The problem there was that ICI just wasn’t committed to that business and you could tell it wasn’t a long term solution. They were just using it as a cash cow and were not investing in the business any more.”

Perhaps it was the poor company management he witnessed at ICI and Chirex, which taught him about the pitfalls of running a business.

And all the expertise he had gained in his career before launching Onyx Scientific was tested to the absolute limit as the Sunderland firm struggled to find its feet.

“The first year was a big roller-coaster and was pretty hairy. We thought we had something at one moment and then we didn’t and it just got harder and harder as time went on.”

As well as re-mortgaging his house, Dr Flinn spent that first year of “unmitigated misery” on the hunt for investment to raise the £1.2m needed to start the business.

He and his business partner outlined two possible investors, however, neither was able to provide Onyx with what it needed.

“We were looking for around £500,000 from an investor and talked to two groups. The first one would only give us £300,000 but the other one had no problem with giving us the full amount. They were two wealthy individuals who would each put in £250,000 themselves – one of them was a control freak and the other was much more laid back.

“We went with the second group, and by this time we had spent a fortune on lawyers to get to completion but the whole thing went belly up and one of the guys couldn’t invest and so we had to retrench.”

In the end, Dr Flinn was forced to start the business on a much smaller scale than the original blueprint.

After heavy losses in year one, it was turning a profit by 2002 – although Onyx’s second year in operation was not without crisis.

“We had gone with new brokers who had actually done a bad job so at one stage we were going around with no business insurance and so you can’t trade without business insurance, so the business nearly collapsed because of that.

“We spent a frantic time trying to find a new company that would give us the business insurance but the business nearly folded.”

Then came 2003 – the toughest of years for Dr Flinn and his blossoming business. “Because of everything that happened that year – me in hospital, Steve dying and a dip in the market – we had to make some big cutbacks that year,” he says.

“Steve knew he was on the way out and I had a conversation with him from my hospital bed on the phone. He knew about the accident but he was too ill to come and see me.” Dr Flinn’s return to the office just months after the accident which knocked him off his bicycle and changed his life forever is indicative of man driven by the business he created.

His swift recovery is all the more impressive given that, according to medical statistics, only 18% of people who suffer spinal cord injuries ever return to work.

“Just because I’m in a wheelchair, I’m perfectly normal,” says the modest CEO who is more intent on looking forward than dwelling on the tribulations of the past. Today the business looks to have a bright future both at home and across the globe.

In the UK, US and Europe, Onyx as carved itself a niche in the pharmaceutical market somewhere between drug discovery and commercialisation. The company has a growing international reputation as an expert in the manufacture of new drugs and has identified a service area in which it studies and controls the physical form of a new substance.

And the £4.3m-a-year firm, which employs 30 people with chemistry PhDs, is currently looking to extend its reach throughout the world.

“We have sales people going round the world and are just trying to get into the Australian market at the moment but the US is the biggest potential market for us,” he says.

Meanwhile, he rules out a push into the lucrative Asian pharmaceutical sector. “Japan is the only Asian market for us but its too hard to get work there so we’re not even trying, it’s just too difficult.”

In his personal life, Dr Flinn has ambitious plans of his own.

After being forced to give up his hobby of competing in triathlons, he chose to make his name in another sporting arena – sailing.

He spent much of last year in training and even came close to representing Great Britain at this year’s Beijing Paralympic Games.

“I’m going to try to get into the 2012 squad and I’m quite confident about getting in the team. I was in the [initial] squad for Beijing but as the squad developed the more experienced sailors get selected.

“I’ve got a long way to go before I get to the top but I’m looking at putting a team together for a three-person Keelboat.”

Such is the budding Olympian’s focus on making the London 2012 squad, he has even cut his working week down to four days to allow for training – a serious message intent considering the commitment he has shown to his job in the past.