Moore Medical Goes Directly to Jails

New Britain, CT-based Moore Medical Corp. is headed for the big house — or at least its catalogs are. The $137.8 million medical and dental products cataloger is stepping up its penetration into the corrections marketplace.

Moore Medical, which has been targeting correctional facilities with a separate title since 1999, this summer inked a new multiyear agreement with the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), one of the country’s largest providers of detention and corrections services to the government. Under the new deal, which extends the companies’ two-year-old agreement and runs through 2007, the cataloger will continue to provide support and procurement services to the 59 facilities owned and managed by CCA. Moore Medical also has an agreement with Pelham, AL-based Southern Health Partners to provide supplies for inmates in 28 correctional facilities nationwide.

According to Moore Medical CEO Linda Autore, the corrections market “is probably the single biggest area of growth for us.” Moore Medical’s corrections catalog has increased from 16 pages in 1999 to the present 48-page book.

The catalog, which sells basic health products such as aspirin as well as complex diagnostic equipment, typically mails to the purchasing agents at the correctional facilities. One of the more unusual challenges in marketing to the audience is the merchandise packaging, Autore says: “We must be careful that nothing can be made into a weapon, even down to the foil we use on certain products.”