Marketing on a Budget: An Internet Launch

Like many small companies, LAM Pharmaceutical Corp. was founded on the belief that it could inexpensively commercialize a product that would prove clinically superior to competing offerings of major drugmakers. So far, so good. The eight-year-old, ten-person firm recently won FDA's clearance to begin marketing its first product—a proprietary gel formulation of hyaluronic acid (HA) that management figures has taken $15 million to develop. HA is a natural substance known to be a major component in the interstitial fluid between cells.

LAM believes that its LAM IPM Wound Gel will yield consistently good healing results, largely because of the formulation technology behind it. The gel contains a 2.5% concentration of sodium...