The Enduring Legacy of RestoraPet
This story is about a man who is no longer here. So let’s start with a man who is.
Brian Larsen describes the features of the gleaming stainless steel equipment that is rapidly filling the new manufacturing space of his company, RestoraPet. Every week, the direct-to-consumer business ships several thousand bottles of its supplements, which improve the health and energy of aging animals. A machine running the length of one bright-green wall will be able to churn out around a million units a year once a custom 250-gallon mixing vat is delivered.
Larsen leads a quick tour of the glassed-off lab where he is developing a horse spray—intended to promote wound healing—for a client. Contract manufacturing—now just 5 percent of the business—is rising along with RestoraPet’s profile. “I give them the rights but not the exclusivity, so I can come out with my own topical horse product if I want to,” says Larsen. “The R&D that benefits our clients also benefits us.”
This is a breakout year for RestoraPet. The 15-employee company, based in Gaithersburg, Maryland, is projected to produce revenue of $10 million in 2020, up from $2 million in 2019. Growth is being goosed by an infusion of several million dollars from well-heeled angels, most significantly Morton Meyerson, the former CEO of Perot Systems. Meyerson mentored Michael Dell in Dell Computer’s early years. Now he performs that role for Larsen.
At one time, Larsen—who at 33 is youthful and bearded, with a kind of ascetic-hipster vibe—seemed destined for a career in medicine or chemistry. At age 10, he studied the Physicians’ Desk Reference for fun. At 15, working as a cashier at a local Target, he spent his breaks bugging pharmacy employees to quiz him about medications. Eventually, they gave in and hired him as one of that company’s youngest-ever pharmacy technicians.
Then, when Larsen was 19, his beloved Siberian husky broke her leg. At the vet’s office, the family learned she was riddled with bone cancer. “Bandit was the most loyal, incredibly intelligent dog you could imagine,” says Larsen. Watching her painful decline planted the seed that this would become his mission in life.
In Larsen’s spartan office, Bandit’s ashes rest in a plain wooden box on a table by the desk. The box is flanked on the right by a framed photo of the husky and on the left by a photo of Larsen holding a package that contains the company’s follow-up submission to which, in 2015, considered RestoraPet for the
