This week I wanted to look for someone who has innovated the medical community so when I found Type Strong, I knew I needed to write about it. It’s founder Ryan Lecchi was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes his senior year of college in 2019. Ryan was very active in college and kept running into the issue of his CGM sensors getting knocked off while playing. The monitors are very expensive, and Ryan started using some other adhesive patches with some flaws and he thought he could design better ones. This is where he put his Mechanical Engineering knowledge to work. Eventually he was able to come up with a system to make the patches and soon after he released them to the public. Type Strong makes adhesive patches that go over most diabetes devices including the Freestyle Libre, Medtronic Guardian, Dexcom, Omnipod and Insulin Pump Sites. Ryan mentioned he had no idea what to do when it came to the business side of things. What helped him out was that he was very passionate about product design and functionality and on the outside, he seemed to know everything when it came to the business side. He was able to obtain the Covid-19 stimulus payment to start things off as well as support from his universities I2N an Entrepreneurship101 online program.
Early and Current Success:
At first it was slow going in terms of sales, selling only a couple of packs of patches per week. Now Type Strong has a huge online market in Australia and as of recently Type Strong can ship to most other countries. Type Strong is also stocked in other online retailers such as Diabetes NSW & ACT and many pharmacies across Australia. Type Strong was named as a top 4 Finalist in the Small Business category of the 7NEWS Young Achiever Awards NSW ACT in 2022. Type Strong as grown a lot since then and recently have gone into the business of selling pouches to hold insulin pens and needles.
Concluding Thoughts:
Type Strong is a perfect example of seeing a pain/need and innovating off of that which is very inspirational. I hope that this article can show that nothing is always easy, but nothing is impossible.
