Chamber Celebrates WishBone Medical’s New Headquarters
By Leah Sander
InkFreeNews
WARSAW — WishBone Medical has officially taken up residence in its new building.
The Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce had a ribbon-cutting for the pediatric orthopedic company’s new building at 100 Capital Drive, Warsaw, on Thursday, June 3.
The business had moved there last year. However, COVID-19 delayed the celebration.
The ribbon-cutting was followed by several speeches, including those by U.S. Sen. Todd Young, R-Indiana, and WishBone Medical Founder and CEO Nick Deeter.
Young praised Deeter for what he has accomplished.
“This is a great occasion for a number of reasons,” he said.
“The economy’s opening up, you can just sense it’s palpable, the optimism that people feel about this state and about the community and more specifically the people here feel about the future of this company,” Young said.
“I mean I’m the father of four children and it’s one thing to work for a successful company but candidly to me it takes it to another level of excitement .. that you’re providing valuable services or goods to help out children, so that they can realize their full human potential,” he said.
“There’s a reason this company WishBone is located in Indiana,” he said. “It’s because we’re full of great people. We have a tradition we should be proud of and we’ve cultivated the muscle memory of accomplishing great things together and I really want to celebrate that teamwork here,” he said.
Deeter shared some basics about the four-year-old company he started, which is the 12th such one he’s launched. The business focuses entirely on devices for children, with a range of products used for patients with scoliosis, traumatic injuries and other orthopedic-related issues.
“We have products to fix kids from the clavicle down to the foot and ankle,” he said. “We distribute now in 23 countries outside the U.S. Our largest manufacturing company, we own our entire supply chain at this point, our largest facility is in Istanbul, Turkey.”
He noted the company has around 185 employees.
“We’re growing very rapidly,” he said. “During the pandemic, our competitor grew at minus 2% for the year. We grew 30% during the pandemic.”
Deeter later told InkFreeNews that he credits that success to shipping out the parts and tools medical professionals need for surgery in compact, sterile kits.
He detailed innovations the company’s working on.
“We now have what we call our differentiating technologies that we will be launching over the next 12 to 18 months, but the one that’s most exciting I think in that group is the first total hip for children,” he said.
He shared why he enjoys working in pediatric orthopedics.
“The beautiful part about orthopedics is we actually fix kids,” he said. “It’s not like other parts of medicine where it’s you know you try this, you practice that and hope it works. We really can just fix them. And so it’s very gratifying to come out to the waiting room and recovery where you talk to the parents, because they’re scared to death, even more so than the child. And once you get bitten by that bug, it’s hard to leave it.”