Tiolat Oy announces new name and expansion plans

On August 20th, Tiolat Oy, manufacturer of the iCare Tonometer, underwent a makeover and changed its name to iCare Finland Oy. In a conversation with Ophthalmology Times Europe, newly-appointed CEO Ari Tiukkanen outlined the reasons behind the recent name change, and discussed how the new name fits into the company's plans for the future.

"When it was founded, in 1996, the company's focus was R&D. In 2003, the first products were brought to market, and were very successful. Tiolat, however, remained a 'pull' company, whereby our customers had to seek us out: the company had no defined strategy, and no market awareness. It was still owned by Antti Kontiola, MD, who had founded the company," explained Mr Tiukkanen. "All this changed when Dr Kontiola sold his company to Done Solutions plc, a public company listed on the Helsinki stock exchange.

"The new owners appointed me as CEO on March 1, 2008, and I reassessed the company and saw its potential. We are now planning to leverage our existing products and expand: we will remain focused on R&D but we also plan to introduce strategic brand marketing activities for the future.

"Up to now, we haven?t got the most of the technology we own (I say we 'own' it because we innovated it) but we want to change that in the future and get new products out onto the market," said Mr Tiukkanen. "We want to optimize what we have now, so we're refocusing on R&D, outsourcing manufacturing to remain flexible and introducing a much more comprehensive marketing strategy.

"We took the name of our most successful product because it's such a good name: it's known all over the world. So many others would like to use it, loan it, buy it or even steal it, so we're confident we chose the right name," chuckled Mr Tiukkanen. "Besides," he continued, "We had nothing to lose because the old name meant nothing, whereas this is already recognizable. It fits very well into our new strategy of clearly defined brand marketing, especially since we now plan to concentrate on the iCare brand."

iCare Finland Oy has moved to new premises in Espoo, Finland; the company has also relaunched its website, www.icarefinland.com, and redesigned all of its promotional materials to reflect the new company philosophy.