Wharton Alumnae Strategic Partnership Lays Foundation of American Ecosystem for PPE

Dallas, TX, February 26, 2021 --(PR.com)-- MedEquip Depot (Dallas, TX) is pleased to announce a strategic partnership with SA Ventures (New York, NY) through their affiliate SA Work Wear. The partnership is designed to build a reliable and sustainable supply chain ecosystem for PPE made in the Americas.

The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted weaknesses in the global supply chain and American companies have witnessed major disruptions from Asia alongside pressures resulting from increased demand and security oversights. MedEquip Depot has long focused on supplying PPE from a stable, Americas centric supply chain perspective and the new partnership is reinforcing and securing the ability to meet local demand without influence from Asian markets.

The healthcare supply chain based on the Asia model is facing a major crisis due to backlogs across all transportation sectors. These bottlenecks are caused by a growing imbalance of imports vs. exports resulting in lack of shipping containers and fewer workers, by limitations in freight capacity on passenger aircraft due to reduced passenger travel, and by a shortage of commercial drivers caused by a dramatic increase in ecommerce. All transportation sectors are maxed out.

Given these trends, MedEquip Depot has been working to shore up the supply chain for the most critical PPE products with a focus on local sourcing. U.S. based manufacturing facilities are utilized first and followed by partners throughout the Americas including close neighbor facilities in Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala. To source high quality PPE from these areas in an efficient, safe, and highly controlled manner, MedEquip Depot and SA Ventures have partnered to create an end-to-end supply chain solution.

SA Ventures brings extensive expertise in the Americas-based supply chain model with strict controls over material sourcing, production, quality control and distribution. Lisa Rhoads (one of the founders of SA Venture Partners) and Raluca Banea (one of the owners of MedEquip Depot) are Wharton MBA alumnae, and they bring a shared vision of building the domestic supply ecosystem to support production of critical products for the U.S. domestic market. This helps mitigate the risk of a single-sourced global supply chain reliant on Chinese production while focusing on repatriating a high quality, cost-competitive ecosystem based in the Americas.

Through SA Ventures' strategic relationships with material producers and FDA registered factories in the Americas, the partnership ensures steady supplies without interruption of the global supply chain, whilst supporting customer needs at parity with Asian suppliers and quality of domestic production. Additionally, the partnership allows for the expansion of MedEquip Depot PPE product options while offering product design enhancement and customizations as needed. SA Ventures has already developed, for example, improved designs for isolation and surgical gowns, with excellent feedback from hospitals. The SA Team’s quality control processes and local production is focused on the complete chain of custody, providing comfort that the end user is receiving original product, mitigating the risk of counterfeiting that has and continues to plague the Asian supply chain.

Chiara Orlandini, Lisa Rhoads’s partner at SA Ventures, brings over two decades of experience working in the global supply chain for numerous sectors where her relationships bring a unique opportunity to PPE. Further, her fashion and technical design background adds the opportunity to customize and elevate PPE offerings, providing a truly American touch of innovation to PPE products.

MedEquip Depot is delighted to announce this strategic partnership with SA Ventures and both companies look forward to working with US healthcare facilities to provide more high-quality PPE options based in the US and the Americas exclusively.

MedEquip Depot is a licensed medical device distributor, supplying more than 1300 brands of medical products to 3000+ healthcare facilities across the United States.

SA Ventures operates at the intersection of design and technology, providing product design solutions through a reliable, high quality localized, domestic supply chain.

Points of Contact:

Raluca Banea | Partner | MedEquip Depot | Cell +1 469 620 0832
Lisa Rhoads | Partner | SA Ventures | Cell +1 917 975 6001
Chiara Orlandini | Partner | SA Ventures | Cell +1 646 726 8435

madeinamericasppe@medequipdepot.com