Woman driven to succeed from the bottom up

Feb 1 2010 by Peter McCusker, The Journal

After leaving school at 16, Sharon Griffiths took a string of jobs before being hired as a part-time credit controller at The Specials Laboratory in Northumberland. Seven years later, she is managing director of the £16m drugs company. Peter McCusker reports.

SHARON Griffiths says her old school friends wouldn’t believe what she does for a living – in fact they would probably have “reservations” when they discover she is managing director of a pharmaceutical company, she chuckles.

“I left school straight away, I got As and Bs in my science exams, but I was never the most committed student.

I did my education after leaving school.”

Griffiths, 33, is now the boss of fast-growing North East success story The Specials Laboratory which is based in Prudhoe in Northumberland.

She drifted into waitressing on leaving school at 16 and then secured a position as a trainee manager with a hotel company.

“I was deputy manger by the time I was 20, but I was living in Wolverhampton and working 70 hours a week and decided to quit. I left with no job to go to and came home to Tyneside.

“I am a very driven person, once I get started on something. I am prepared to start at the bottom and work my way up.

“What I liked about the hotel business was the book keeping, and when I returned to the region, I enrolled on an Open University course to get a certificate in accountancy.”

Griffiths secured a job with Nike as a credit controller at its Sunderland operation in Doxford Park, but it wasn’t long before it closed this site, and with Griffiths now pregnant she declined the opportunity to relocate to Nike’s new home in Amsterdam.

She took a year off to be with her daughter Erin, now nine, then came the opportunity to join Specials in Prudhoe as a credit controller for two days a week.

At the time, Specials employed 20 staff. The company’s then-owners Fiona Cruickshank and Brian Dougherty spotted something they liked in Griffiths and gave her the opportunity to go full time and take Association of Chartered Certified Accountants exams.

“I did not really want to go back full time, but after a couple of years I was finance manager and by July 2004 I was heading a team of 10.”

The Specials Laboratory is one of the region’s success stories which was started by business partners Fiona Cruickshank and Brian Dougherty in Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary in 1999.

It grew quickly, now has annual sales of £16m and employs 135 staff making unlicensed medicines for the retail pharmaceutical and hospital markets.

The medicines are known as specials because they are used to treat patients who fail to respond to normal prescribed drugs.

In late 2008, the two founders sold the business to Irish-based United Drug for £20.1m, with a further £4.5m over two years if profit levels are achieved.

By the time of the sale, Griffiths had progressed to general manger and shortly after the sale, the new Irish owners appointed her as managing director.

Griffiths had been made general manger in 2006 and in a short space of time she undertook a complete overhaul of the company, leading to major improvements in the speed and efficiency of the operation.

At the time, Specials worked to a 48-hour turnaround on orders, but Griffiths’ changes ensured that it soon raised it game and the firm went from being able to hit a 24% 24-hour turnaround for orders to 90%.

Specials is now capable of producing 15,000 formulations and adds around 10 new ones every day.

Each order goes through 15 checks before being dispatched. Its customers currently comprise of 250 hospitals and 6,000 pharmacies. It estimates the total market it is competing in is worth around £150m a year.

Griffiths is buoyant about the company’s prospects, expecting to achieve double-digit revenue growth for the foreseeable future.

Having risen through the ranks and witnessed the company’s growth at close quarters, she says the key to its success and future ambitions is its people.

“Our customer retention is 99% and our staff retention is 97%,” she says.