With a proximity to New York City, a supply demand at the University and two major regional hospitals, Cen-Med Enterprises finds its home in New Brunswick.
Cen-Med, a health care supplies company, chose New Brunswick as its base because it prides itself on being able to establish close relationships with its metropolitan area customers, said John Inzero, the company’s director of marketing.
“You know how you see on the news sometimes how doctors still make house calls? Well, we’re like that. We do that,” he said. “Every client has our cellphone numbers as well as business, and we’re able to provide really good service anytime. Even in a moment’s notice, if need be.”
Inzero said he believes it is Cen-Med’s direct loyalty and dedication to the customer that will set up the company as an illustration of the kinds of businesses needed to turn the economy around.
By placing emphasis on altering formal business rules and tactfully building on a diverse, skilled staff, Cen-Med strives to provide personalized attention to its customers as opposed to larger businesses, said Rizwan Chaudhry, vice president of sales and marketing at Cen-Med.
“[In bureaucratic businesses] everything is just calling centers,” said Chaudhry, a University alumnus.
Cen-Med’s marketing strategy is a two-tiered system of internal and external outreach, Inzero said.
Internal entails constant phone calls with corporate accounts nationwide and checking on supply and demand, he said. External outreach means they will occasionally visit clients in a routine cycle, so clients are never left in the dark.
“[Big supply companies] are dinosaurs and we’re mammals, servicing other mammals,” Inzero said.
Other than fostering close customer service relations, the company plans to further give back to its Metropolitan area customers through developing an internship program, open to University students, he said.
The program would be designed so students would not have to work in a tedious field for too long, but instead would move from the internal operations of the company to the external, from generalized to specialized, Inzero said.
Since Cen-Med is small, he said the skills an intern would pick up are unquantifiable.
The company began as a project in Rizwan Chaudhry’s mother Shakila Chaudhry’s basement in Brooklyn, N.Y., Inerzo said. As one of Inc. Magazine’s top-50 retail companies, Cen-Med services 2,000 manufacturers from a New Brunswick warehouse with only 24 employees.
“It is not just 24 employees, though,” he said. “Those 24 employees represent significant growth. We’ve added 12 employees to our company over the past three or so years, doubling our staff.”
With the support of her husband, Shakila Chaudhry’s project grew into an establishment with the same level of drive to provide for its customers, Rizwan Chaudhry said.
“My mother was the first girl in her village, actually, to be educated,” Rizwan Chaudhry said. “It was frowned upon in Pakistan, so from the beginning she had the drive to excel.”
Some local residents were supportive of Cen-Med’s mission of tight-knit, close customer service toward economic recovery.
“It seems logical to me,” said Lynne Sulton, East Brunswick resident and Amber Lion Antique’s employee. “Obviously customer service has to be the most important thing to companies like that or they’ll lose their customer loyalty.”
