Built in Our Backyard: Fort Worth company providing solutions to sticky problem
Eosera is a North Texas company that manufactures and supplies drops to help dissolve earwax.
by Sophia Beausoleil · 5 NBCDFWNorth Texas is full of innovators, movers, shakers and entrepreneurs. A company Built in Our Backyard in Fort worth is providing literal solutions to a problem that impacts everyone when it comes ears.
Along the 5000 block of South Fwy in Fort Worth is a building with purple letters called Eosera. Inside the factory are conveyer belts that push little white bottles down the line with a solution that solves a sticky problem for many.
"Nobody was innovating in the ear care space, yet every human has two ears just like they have two eyes," said Elyse Stoltz Dickerson, founder and CEO of Eosera.
She and her co-founder Joe Griffin, created the company in 2015. She said after she was laid off form a global medical company for eye care products, she and Joe realized there was an un-met medical need when it comes to ears.
"It was really doctors that said earwax impaction is this condition that affects millions of people every year and drives them actually to their doctor's office to have earwax removed, and we thought that was kind of insane. Like why can you not just remove your own earwax?" said Stoltz Dickerson
They went to the drawing board, partnered with UNT Health Science Center, got a laboratory space and worked to find a solution to the sticky problem.
"We kind of went back to school. We just started studying medical literature, studying patents, and trying to understand what earwax is and how do you break it down," she explained.
Nine months later, they found a formula that worked over and over again to dissolve earwax in about 15 minutes.
“And we wanted to bring something more effective to market, and so we sort of changed the whole category by saying we're going to bring you a product that works in one treatment versus a product you have to use twice a day for four days," Stoltz Dickerson explained.
Over the past ten years, the company which started out with two people, has grown to more than forty.
“I still can't believe it, honestly," laughed Stoltz Dickerson.
Eosera manufactures, assembles, and ships out its Ear Wax MD and other products from its Fort Worth Facility.
“I think we forget as consumers in America that pretty much everything on the shelf is built by human hands," she said.
Their products now stock the shelves of about 28,000 stores nationwide.
“It's surreal, honestly, like I'm, you know, I'm just a normal person. I get up and go to work every day and then I still get chills when I walk into a store and see our line of products on the shelf and think, oh my gosh, we did that," said Stoltz Dickerson.
As an entrepreneur, she said her advice to others with an idea, especially if it offers a remedy to a problem, is to go for it and never hesitate to ask.
“I would say you have to take the first step. And if you just sit in isolation and try to do it yourself, it's never going to happen," said Stoltz Dickerson.
The company created the Eosera Foundation to help encourage other women entrepreneurs go after their big idea.