FEBRUARY MARCH 1999 
STORIES
GRADS TEAMED UP TO START A THRIVING BUSINESS
By Joy McIlwain
Special to the Florida State Times
Bill Peterson Jr., son of the former FSU football coach, remembers well the first time he met Marshall Hunt.
Growing up in Tallahassee, both boys were ardent Little Leaguers on opposing teams.
"I really wanted a chance to go to the Little League World Series up in Pennsylvania," Peterson remembers. "But that day Marshall hit two home runs, knocking us out of the competition."
"I didn't forget about that for a long time," he says, laughing.
Both boys went to Florida State. Both graduated. And now they're on the same team, hitting entrepreneurial home runs.
Launched in 1990, Hunt and Peterson's Atlanta-based Horizon Medical Products (HMP) is the world's second largest manufacturer and distributor of vascular access products. These devices deliver medication, blood products and nutritional supplements to millions of patients with cancer and other serious diseases.
In just eight years, Hunt (B.S., '79) and Peterson (B.S., '78) have built from scratch a medical supply company with 200 employees, $90 million in annual revenues, three offices, a distribution network that spans the globe and a listing (HrznMed n) on the National Association of Securities Dealers stock exchange.
Not bad for a startup.
The Horizon story begins in 1990 when Hunt, a marketing and finance graduate, was working for a company called CMI engaged in the manufacture of pacemakers. When an opportunity arose to purchase the company, Hunt called his old friend Peterson, who was working as an accountant in Louisiana, to talk him into joining the venture. Eventually, it all came together and the two former Kappa Alpha fraternity brothers became co-owners of CMI. Hunt and Peterson saw a need for a more efficient distribution system in the vascular-access products market and decided to take the plunge.
Today, HMP manufactures and distributes a wide array of ports and catheters that carry life-saving drugs, nutritional supplements and blood products to patients. The medicine is delivered through either a port, a small rounded metal device implanted into the body, or a catheter attached to a vein.
"We built the business around selling certain kinds of products," says Hunt, who goes on to explain the value of expanding into manufacturing. "Once you make the product, you have a business no one can take away from you."
Horizon began the expansion in 1994, by acquiring companies that were manufacturing the ports and catheters it was selling.
Both men, now 42, credit part of their phenomenal success to lessons gleaned from Florida State.
One was the importance of persistence, sometimes against great odds.
"Clearly, that's what has helped us excel," said Peterson, "and it's probably the singular trait we look for in others now. If you're persistent enough, you will eventually win."
Hunt and Peterson both want to give something back to their alma mater, and a few years ago they began to recruit Florida State grads. Currently, some 20 graduates dot the employee roster, with another six or seven employees with a Tallahassee connection.
Director of Marketing Jeff Hopkins (B.S. '93) was the first FSU grad hired at HMP right out of school five years ago. A number of job evolutions later, he's still there, flourishing under the Hunt/Peterson management style.
"They just give me the assignment and let me run with it. They really put a lot of trust and faith in me, which makes me that much more determined to give it my best."
Where do they want to be five years from now? "The premier vascular access products manufacturer in the world," Hunt is quick to respond. "A $400-million company," says Peterson. Yet both men, who have each lost a parent to cancer, have another mission.
"At the end of everything we do, we realize there's a human side to all this," Peterson says. "The ultimate user is the patient. It gives us a good feeling to know that patient is a little better off because of these products."