Biopure Strategy Analysis
Biopure's two products, Hemopure for human use, and Oxyglobin for animal veterinary use, both represented a new blood substitute based treatment for managing patients' oxygen requirements in a broad range of potential medical applications. The main issue that is plaguing Biopure is how the possible launch of Oxyglobin will affect the future launch and pricing strategies of Hemopure, which could provide a larger return for their investment.
Biopure's strength lies in their ability to market its blood substitute products for both human and animal use. Biopure has a product that has been approved by the FDA for animal use and has the intellectual property that will allow them to protect their product for two to five years before other competition can enter the market using similar technoloy. The company's main weakness is that it has not received FDA approval for Hemopure, and there are other competitors that could beat Biopure to the market with their own version of a blood substitute. Another weakness is that Biopure has not done an extensive study to see how accepting the current market is to a human blood substitute, when in fact the blood donation system that is serving the market is accepted practice at this time.
Biopure has the opportunity to release a product (Oxyglobin) that will give them the experience in bringing a product to market and establish a sales force that can promote the product. The release of this product will allow Biopure to generate positive brand equity about the new technology that will in turn promote the future release of Hemopure after the FDA approval. This buzz will allow physicians and hospitals to learn more about the lifesaving benefits as well as cost savings that this product has. This will help create a broader acceptance of the new product. I feel that this will allow Biopure the opportunity to establish some market dominance. Another possible opportunity is that Biopure is designing a product that will put an end to the rigorous test that is performed on donated blood. This will reduce costs to the consumer and establish a blood source that could be used by everyone. Blood typing would be a thing of the past. Biopure would also be addressing the issue of the shelf life of donated blood. The final opporutunity that I would like to address is that of the IPO. The release of Oxyglobin could have a positive affect on the IPO because the public would see the success of this product and possible relate it to the release of Hemopure. The Oxyglobin release would also provide Biopure with their first realize profits.
