A new medical equipment supplier, Homestead, has officially opened its doors in Newmarket.
The business, which supplies oxygen, mobility equipment like walkers and grab bars, and medical devices like CPAP machines, celebrated the grand opening of its location at 17305 Leslie St. today, Oct. 7.
One of the owners, Geoff Patton, said he never imagined himself in this position.
As a former professional hockey player, he didn't expect to return to his hometown of Lindsay, Ontario or run a family business.
Patton’s now in-laws opened Homestead in Lindsay in 1997 and the business has been going strong there for the past 25 years.
He met his wife and they decided as a family that this is what they wanted to do, too.
“I never thought I’d be doing this but it’s been fantastic,” Patton said. “We’re a very close-knit family, we’ll all be a part of it.”
He does have experience in the industry, having worked as sales manager for one of their manufacturers.
Now his focus is to further grow his family’s business and after considering a few markets, they chose Newmarket.
“In Newmarket, the population is very vast. There’s no one directly in Newmarket that does what we do,” Patton said.
He added that they also saw it as “an opportunity to get into a new community, to help the community, so people aren’t having to travel, they can come in to see us.”
He said they hope to serve the York Region community and clients up to an hour-and-a-half outside of Newmarket.
“It is very important to get there in a timely manner to make sure we are serving our clients,” Patton said.
However, that service has been impacted by recent government funding changes to CPAP devices.
“The way we’ve done business for 25 years is serving our customers, giving that little extra. The government keeps taking that from us. I want to grow, I want to get bigger, I want to employ people and be a part of the community, but again, we need volume to be able to keep up with all these cuts,” Patton said.
He said that the funding cut, which went into effect Oct. 1, makes it more challenging to provide teaching and training for their devices, but that’s not a part of his business he will compromise on.
“I don’t want to change our business. I’m not ever going to be that person that drops equipment off at the front door and leaves,” he said. “I want to make sure it’s set up, put in place, make sure the client’s happy and make sure everything is looked after before we leave the building.”
According to Patton they will navigate through the funding changes and come out of it.
He said in the future he hopes to continue growing the business beyond their two locations.
“I would love to get Newmarket up and running and again grow off of what we are doing and how we’ve built our business,” he said.
