Clinical diagnostics
Hospital, reference and physician-office labs running tests every day.
Founder built · Operator led · Customer driven
The supplies labs can't run out of.
Oakdale Scientific brings together founder-built makers and distributors of lab plastics, glass, filters and reagents. Each company keeps its name, its people and its customers. We add the systems, scale and operating help to serve them better.
01 About Oakdale
Built by operators who know lab products.
Oakdale Scientific works with independent makers and distributors of the consumables laboratories order again and again: plastics, glass, filters, reagents and supplies. Your company keeps its name, its team and its customer relationships.
We have no fixed exit timeline. You work directly with the people who run Oakdale, starting with an Operating Partner who spent eight years building Calibre Scientific.
$26M→$400M+
Revenue at Calibre Scientific under founding CEO Ben Travis, now Oakdale's Operating Partner.
175+
Countries Calibre Scientific served under Ben's leadership, with a team of 1,200+.
$0→$1.5B
Revenue in three years at Vault Health's national lab business, where Kyle Tatz was Executive Chairman.
02 Products
The consumables behind every result.
Products labs reorder every week, made or distributed by companies that know their customers by name.
Labware
- 01Lab plastics & labware
- 02Scientific glass, vials & closures
- 03Pipetting & liquid handling
- 04Culture media & cultureware
- 05Specimen collection & transport
Chemistry & biology
- 06Diagnostic reagents, kits & controls
- 07Specialty & analytical chemicals
- 08Analytical standards & reference materials
- 09Filtration & separation
- 10Single-use bioprocess & microfluidics
Controlled environments & services
- 11Cleanroom & contamination control
- 12Contract development & manufacturing
- 13Specialty distribution & technical service
Make or distribute something labs depend on that isn't listed? We still want to talk
03 Customers
Who relies on these products.
Five end markets, one common need: the right product, in spec and on the shelf, every time a lab reorders.
Research & academia
University, government and institute labs, from the bench to core facilities.
Biopharma & bioprocess
Discovery, development, QC and manufacturing at drug makers.
Analytical & industrial QC
Environmental, food safety and materials testing labs.
Device & OEM supply
Components, materials and contract capacity for device and kit makers.
04 Approach
Scale, without losing what works.
We are building a group of strong consumables companies, each with more scale, better systems and faster service than it could build alone. We move at the pace of the owners and managers who join us.
Start with founders
We look for founder-built manufacturers and distributors with products labs depend on.
Keep what works
The name, the team and the culture that earned customer trust stay. We add resources behind them.
Fix the back office
Clean monthly numbers, modern systems and less manual work, so your people spend their time on customers.
Raise the service bar
Quality, fill rates and lead times customers notice on every order.
Grow with care
New products, new capacity and add-on acquisitions, only when they strengthen the core business.
05 Why Oakdale
Built around the owner.
In our experience, about 90% of a business is its people.
Your company stays your company
Your name, your people and your culture stay. Customers keep working with the team they already know.
We know the products
We speak vials, septa, filters and reagents. Our team has scaled lab and diagnostics businesses from launch to hundreds of millions in revenue.
Deal terms that fit you
A full sale, a partial sale or capital to grow are all normal paths. No heavy debt required, and no fixed date to sell.
Ownership you keep
Many owners keep a meaningful stake and share in what the group builds.
06 How it works
A straightforward conversation.
No banker required to start, and no commitment until you are ready. Here is what the first steps look like.
A first call
Thirty minutes, mostly us listening. Tell us about your company, your customers and what you want next.
Confidential from day one
We sign an NDA before you share anything. Your employees and customers hear nothing until you decide.
We come to you
Ben and the team visit your operation, meet your leadership and learn how the business really runs.
A clear proposal
Structure, ownership and your role, set out in writing so you can weigh it on your own terms.
07 Team
Operators and builders.
The team is backed by a senior bench of former chief executives and board members from across the lab products industry.
Ben Travis
Operating Partner
Ph.D. chemist and founding CEO of Calibre Scientific. Leads Oakdale's partnerships day to day.
Ben is a scientist turned operator who has spent his career building lab products businesses, and he leads Oakdale's partnerships day to day.
Ben was the founding CEO of Calibre Scientific, a diversified global provider of life science reagents, tools, instruments and other consumables. Over eight years, he led the company's transformation into a global life sciences platform, growing revenue from $26M to over $400M through 60+ acquisitions across North and South America and Europe, and building a team of 1,200+ serving customers in more than 175 countries.
Before Calibre, Ben was CEO of Anatrace, a high-purity detergent, lipid and custom chemical manufacturer, where he also provided scientific and operational expertise on life science acquisitions. Earlier, he spent eight years as Director of Life Science Reagents R&D at Affymetrix.
He holds a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Michigan State University and a B.S. in Chemistry from North Carolina State University. Ben lives in the Toledo, Ohio area.
Kyle Tatz
Co-Founder & Partner
Builder and board member. Former Executive Chairman of Vault Health and founding partner at Redesign Health.
Kyle is a healthcare investor, entrepreneur, board member and operator with a track record of building, scaling and acquiring healthcare technology and services businesses.
Kyle was a founding partner at Redesign Health, a leading healthcare investment and company creation platform. At Redesign, he led the firm's investment team, portfolio management function and strategic finance group. In this capacity, he raised and deployed over $750M in investor capital and launched more than 60 new healthcare companies.
Kyle also served as Executive Chairman of Vault Health, a healthcare and diagnostics company launched at Redesign, whose national lab business scaled to $1.5B of revenue in three years on the back of the first FDA-authorized at-home saliva COVID-19 test.
Prior to Redesign, Kyle was part of the investment team at Highfields Capital, a $13B hedge fund, where he invested across sectors such as consumer, transportation and financial services. He began his career in The Blackstone Group's Restructuring and Reorganization Advisory group.
He graduated summa cum laude with a B.S. from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied Finance and English. Kyle lives in Greenwich, Connecticut with his wife, two children and mini goldendoodle.
Sam Levine
Co-Founder & Partner
Operator and entrepreneur. Helped establish Redesign Health and co-founded Candid.
Sam is an investor, operator and entrepreneur who has started or led businesses that raised nearly $1 billion.
Sam helped establish numerous healthcare and technology companies, including Redesign Health. He has served as Head of Strategy and Operations at Seso, as Co-Chairman of Pax Labs and as Board Director at Mindbloom, and he co-founded Candid, an orthodontic MSO, where he helped drive the company to over $50M of revenue within 12 months of launch.
Earlier in his career, Sam was an investor at Eton Park Capital Management and an analyst in The Blackstone Group's Restructuring and Reorganization Advisory group.
He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania summa cum laude with degrees in Finance and Systems Engineering and received a Master's in Financial Economics from Oxford as both a Thouron Scholar and Man Group Scholar. Sam lives in New York City with his dog, Oshie.
08 Contact
Start with a 30-minute call.
Tell us about your company, your customers and what you want for the next ten years. We will tell you how Oakdale works and whether it fits. Most of that first call is us listening.
Every conversation is confidential.