Transcription of Jim Greatorex for the show Sports Medicine, #92
Dr. Lisa: As a doctor in the community, I’ve known about Black Bear Medical for many years. When I heard that they were starting to do something new and innovative, I got very excited because I know that people who are interested in the health of the people of Maine are an innovative group. Today we have with us in the studio Mike Chapman, who is the director of marketing and sales, and Jim Greatorex, who is the president of Premier Sports Health, which is a division of Black Bear Medical. Thanks so much for coming in here today and having a conversation with me about this exciting new work that you’re doing at your store.
Mike: We’re very excited to be here, Dr. Lisa.
Jim: Yeah, thank you for having us.
Dr. Lisa: You’re wearing these great shirts, the Black Bear Medical shirts. I was in your store and this whole idea of the Black Bear is very Maine. You’ve been in the business 25 years here in Maine, so talk to me about that.
Mike: Black Bear Medical started out as a little tiny store on Forest Ave. Through the years we’ve grown now to our third location, which is down on Marginal Way. We have 13,000 sq. feet, a 5,500 sq. foot showroom, which is full of lots of innovative health-related products. We have certainly our … we’re known for being there for the seniors to stay at home and be safe. Then we now have our new division, which is our Premier Sports Health. I think we might have made up that word. We’re pretty excited about that.
In that division we have products for people who are active, athletes, they are people who want to get back into the game, maybe they have some pain related issues that are keeping them from doing it. We have some holistic pain products which we’re also very excited about, that work and they help people get back in the game.
Dr. Lisa: So what you’ve had to offer before and you still offer, this is still a big part of what you do, is ways to help people stay in their homes longer, help older people, maybe sicker people, people who have needs like wheelchairs and durable medical equipment they would call it. Now you’re getting towards people who they are out and about. You want to keep them out and about, out of their homes doing active things. It’s a slightly younger group, in general, I would think.
Jim: It is. The demographic I think prior to bringing some of these new products was 55 plus. Now we’re looking to focus on the 25 to 55 market as well, staying active products that will help people stay pain-free and support their well-being.
One of the new product lines that we’re very excited about is sports compression products. You may have seen in the Olympics many of the athletes wearing sleeves. What compression can do … and a compression product is basically a sleeve that is tight, and that you wear it … generally it’s used on your lower extremities.
What it does is it helps your body get the fluids to go through it at a 40% more efficient rate. If you’re in an athletic event that has some endurance involved, you may see your endurance increase due to the compression helping your body with the blood flow and the fluids going through, getting all the way back up to your heart from your legs.
Dr. Lisa: This is something that as a physician I’ve used for many years, is this RICE algorithm, which was always Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation for an injured body part. You’re talking about this compression element, that’s to help healing but also to help people’s performances.
Mike: It helps performance. There are actually products that help people before they are in an athletic event, during and recovery afterwards. There’s a lot of especially socks that you can wear afterwards that will make your recovery period be probably twice as quick as it might be without. Quite frankly, in Europe compression stockings are used from birth. They put their children into the long colored black socks. That’s why you see the Europeans walking around, we make fun of them, with their long black socks and their shorts and their sneakers. Quite frankly, if you really take a look they’ve got healthier legs than we do. So they may know something we don’t.
Dr. Lisa: You brought with you use some of these products. I think you’ve talked about some of them. You have some strength tape also, in addition it looks like, is that a triathlete suit? What are some of the things that you are carrying that you would like to tell the people who are listening about? I think they might find it useful, given the number of really fit and well individuals who like to listen to our show.
Jim: Yeah, so one of the things that we’ve started to carry is … which most folks may have heard of going to PT, is kinesiology tape. This actually is through a company called LifeStrength, and it’s called StrengthTape. We have started carrying this. It’s good for any type of injuries on the knee, shoulder, things where you may have pulled a muscle. What it does is it helps keep your muscles in place and help have the memory to heal in that place, rather than to be out and strained and irritated. This is a cheap way, inexpensive way I should say, to help support strains and pulls and things that need … that could need physical therapy, but this is a way to manage it at home and keep you doing the things that you want to do.
Dr. Lisa: Or people who’ve been to physical therapy and they’ve had it taped before, and they know generally where it needs to go. Then it’s something they could continue doing on their own. That’s another thing that we saw in the Olympics. I remember seeing volleyball players with all this stuff all over their shoulders and wondering what that was. It was the kinesiology tape.
Mike: Right, yeah.
Dr. Lisa: What else do you have?
Mike: We did bring in some of our compression apparel. We think of compression oftentimes and we’ve mentioned stockings, but we also have full suits for folks that are doing endurance in marathons or triathlons. We have cycling shorts. There’s also ski socks, which having good blood flow through your feet when you ski, a lot of people are cold with their feet and it actually is … I’ve used them. I just started to use them this year. It’s a big difference in how comfortable your feet are and it helps keep them warmer with the compression socks for your ski boots.
Dr. Lisa: That’s good to hear, because my feet always get cold when I’m skiing. Sometimes it keeps me from skiing. Maybe the idea is not to stop doing what I’m doing, but to change it and to add in something that might be helpful.
Jim: We had one of our first purchases, they wrote a testimonial. The gentleman oftentimes or pretty much always will have cold feet and they don’t warm up until the afternoon, and never can get a good fit in his boot. He purchased a pair of the skiing compression socks and made sure to write us a testimonial the next Monday, and told us that he did not have the same reaction. Feet were warm, he felt comfortable in his boots, felt refreshed at the end of the day. It’s nice to hear testimonials that folks are actually using the products and getting the results that they are intended to.
We also have cycling shorts, which are obviously there’s a lot of that going on out there, folks that are cycling, staying active. Again, we want to be able to be the place where they come to get the expertise they need and the products that they’re looking for. We are competitively priced, too.
Mike: Generally speaking, with cycle shorts or with any of these product garments, you can get them at a local sporting goods but they’re not compression. Graduated compression means that it’s tighter at the bottom and it gradually gets less compression as it goes up your body. A lot of the brand name products that are out there now are just one compression. They’re okay, but this is actually taking it a step further to the next step up and the next quality.
Dr. Lisa: This is something that in medicine we use all the time. After surgery we’ll use compression socks on a patient because we don’t want them to get a blood clot. Now they’re actually taking this information and they’re moving it from helping sick or post-surgical patients get well to, “Let’s help well people be even more well,” or help improve their performance as you’ve talked about.
Mike: I actually wear the … Most people think about compression socks, they think about their grandmother with the big seam going up the back and that, “Oh my goodness, I never want to wear that, have to wear that.” Well, from a general health standpoint it’s great for your legs. I’m still active. I’m in my early fifties and I still run, I still play sports. I’ll tell you, a day that I’m going to run I will always wear my compression socks beforehand. There’s a big difference in how great my legs feel during the run. They help your performance and they’re comfortable and now they’re even stylish, which is very important. You’ve got to make the colors match.
Dr. Lisa: I think that is really important. Because I know when I was pregnant quite a while ago they would have me wear these stockings to prevent swollen feet, because I was being a doctor and on my feet a lot. They were not stylish. They were not stylish stockings at all, and it really cut down on my clothing choices. I think for people who are wanting to … who are young and active and want to stay healthy, to have these sort of options available now is really great. What else do you have there?
Mike: We have carried bracing products all along, so thinking knee, ankle bracing, back brace, but what we’ve decided to do is up the quality level of the bracing that we carry. So many folks are looking for that brace that they want because their ACL is torn and they don’t want to get surgery or they can’t afford to get surgery. We have braces available for that type of injury that can support the knee, continue the activity. We have a gentleman that purchased a knee brace because he does not have an ACL and he continues to ski. He needs a high-end knee brace. We also we even have the knee braces for folks that stay active, they don’t have arthritis, they don’t have the ACL injury but it’s for prevention of that.
If you are playing basketball, you’re playing football or baseball, high impact potential sports where you could face an injury, this is helping to protect the ACL and other ligaments within the knee. We’ve gone from just more of a good brace to a good-better-best lineup, and we feel pretty happy about the quality of products that we have in the bracing department. Ankles is also a key joint that is frequently injured. The level of product available is somewhat limited in the low end, and so we’ve really got some nice new technology for ankle bracing that we are excited about also.
Dr. Lisa: How can people find out about what you are doing at Premier Sports Health and Black Bear Medical?
Jim: We currently have everything on the blackbearmedical.com website. We do have a website in process specifically for Premier Sports Health, and it’ll be premiersportshealth.com where we will have all of our sports medicine products on there as well as a shopping cart. Folks that come in get measured for what they need, and if they want to buy recurring orders they will be able to do that right through our shopping cart.
We also are getting out there and promoting it through all different forms of media, making sure folks know that we are not serving just the elderly demographic now, we are opening up to a new younger demographic. Our brand is not just for stay-at-home products, it’s about getting out and being active. You will hear us on the radio, you will see us on TV, you will see us on the website, I’m sure print media you’ll see us out there.
You’re welcome to come in anytime, we’d love to show folks around the store. It’s very common when folks come in the store, they either don’t know about us because they haven’t needed our products or they only think of us as the elderly stay-at-home type products. It’s fun to bring people in the store and show them the new products.
Dr. Lisa: Your store is right off of Marginal Way?
Jim: Yeah, we’re located right next to World Gym on 275 Marginal Way. We also have a store in Bangor as well, that’s carrying these products. Then eventually we’re hoping to bring it down to our New Hampshire store and open up a retail location down there.
Dr. Lisa: We’ve been speaking with Mike Chapman who is the director of marketing and sales, and Jim Greatorex who is the president of Premier Sports Health, a division of Black Bear Medical. Thanks for coming in on our Father’s Day show and talking to us about the ways that we can use some of your products to stay healthy and be out there in the world.
Mike: Thanks for having us.
Jim: Yeah, thank you.