A prototype in the back of an RV is an unusual invitation to a business meeting. It asks people to step away from their desks, look at something unfinished, and say what they think. For Norman Sharples, that was part of the point. COPAN took a specimen-processing prototype on a 35,000-mile North American roadshow to collect feedback from the people who might eventually use it.
There is a pleasing lack of ceremony in the arrangement. A product can look rather convincing under exhibition lights. Take it to someone else's workplace and the questions become less polite, more practical, and considerably more useful. Will it fit the way we work? Will it work with what we already own? What happens when we need something different?
Sharples has spent much of his working life around that conversation: the point where an invention meets a customer with a perfectly reasonable list of objections. His career stretches from laboratory work and technical support to building distribution relationships and leading a business across the Americas. The distance between a promising idea and a useful company has been his professional territory.
The first name on the payroll
In 1994, Sharples co-founded COPAN Diagnostics with Daniele Triva. The business represented the Italian COPAN Group in the Americas. Sharples was its first employee. It is an economical founding story, free of theatrical furniture: two co-founders, an international connection, and one person initially on the payroll.
The distinction matters. A subsidiary has an existing organization behind it, but it still needs a place in its own market. A name familiar in one country must be introduced in another. Customers need a reason to listen. Distributors need a reason to commit. Geography adds its own paperwork and its own misunderstandings.
The partnership joined an Italian organization to an executive whose working experience crossed Europe and the United States. Over time, COPAN Diagnostics became the setting for almost three decades of his career. Staying that long makes the job larger than a launch. The people hired later, the relationships maintained, and the decisions handed to colleagues all become part of what the founder has made.
A customer should not need a treasure map
By January 2010, a seemingly modest piece of company news offered a view of Sharples's priorities. COPAN had launched a redesigned website. The announcement described training videos, studies, brochures, technical information, and company news brought together for customers. Sharples, identified then as executive vice president, emphasized intuitive navigation and easier access to information.
“We wanted the new site to be more intuitive,” he said. It is a refreshingly ordinary ambition. Websites can be monuments to the organization that commissioned them. A customer generally has a smaller ambition: finding the thing they came for before the coffee goes cold.
The resources included material in multiple languages and educational videos requested by customers for training. That detail gives the redesign a practical purpose. A sale begins a relationship in which questions keep arriving. Making the answers accessible is part of serving the account. The website belongs in his story because it shows attention to what happens after the introduction and before the next conversation.
Making room for other people's equipment
In 2015, COPAN and Beckman Coulter expanded a distribution agreement covering additional products and territories. The agreement gave Beckman Coulter distribution rights in 21 markets across Europe, North America, South America, and Asia, including Japan and China. It was a partnership with both commercial reach and a technical dimension.
Sharples's contribution to the announcement concerned open platforms and the ability to connect with other systems. The language was technical; the underlying business question was familiar. Customers already have equipment, investments, and established routines. A new purchase has to enter a room full of previous decisions.
For a founder developing a market, compatibility can be part of the sales conversation from the beginning. Every additional requirement placed on a buyer becomes another decision that buyer must defend. An arrangement that works alongside existing platforms offers a different proposition. Sharples's comments put integration at the center of the partnership, beside the expansion of its geographic footprint.
Twenty-five years, several eagles
At COPAN Diagnostics' 25th-anniversary celebration, Sharples received a sculpture called Valor, made by California wildlife artist Kitty Cantrell. The company described a pair of eagles inside a clear Lucite eagle form. It was an elaborate way to mark a long stretch of work. A conventional office clock would have had difficulty competing.
The gift's explanation was about the people around him. The inner eagles represented his team and what they could accomplish together. There was an individual recipient, but the meaning attached to the object extended beyond the person accepting it. That is a useful distinction in a company anniversary: the founder gets the sculpture; the room contains much of the achievement.
The announcement appeared in January 2020. Two years later, Sharples was included in The Healthcare Technology Report's Top 25 Biotech CEOs of 2022. The recognition put his name among executives leading quite different businesses. Beside the anniversary gift, it provides another marker of a career that had lasted long enough to be measured in both public recognition and colleagues' thanks.
A list captures a moment. An anniversary captures duration. Between the two sits the less photogenic work of remaining useful to an organization as it changes. The roadshow, the website, and the distribution agreement belong to different moments and different scales of business, yet each concerns how a company meets people beyond its own walls.
Liverpool travels well
Sharples is from Liverpool and studied at Liverpool John Moores University. His education included Medical Laboratory Sciences and a master's in Clinical Bacteriology. His personal enthusiasms include Liverpool Football Club, live music, and occasional themed 5K races. At COPAN, team activities included the Carlsbad 5000, mud runs, and an annual bowling competition.
A bowling competition gives colleagues a second set of standings to discuss. It also supplies the office with a form of expertise that rarely appears on a business card. The person with the impressive title still has to get the ball down the lane.
There is another glimpse of continuity in a LinkedIn post about meeting Gerjan de Jonge and Dennis Scheepmaker at ADLM. Sharples described friendships in the business lasting more than 40 years. The wording is brief and affectionate. A conference can be a place to meet the next customer; it can also be where people who have known one another for decades find a few minutes together again.
The handover has a date
On February 2, 2023, COPAN announced Sharples's departure as chief executive and the appointment of Fabrizio Mazzocchi, effective January 9. Sharples described the decision to leave as difficult. He said his focus during 2023 would be supporting the transition and preparing the organization for new leadership.
“The decision to leave was a very difficult one.”Norman Sharples, February 2023
There is a different kind of responsibility in that last assignment. The founder who once occupied the first employee's position must help someone else occupy the chief executive's. The dates make the change precise. The emotional scale is harder to compress: almost three decades, followed by the practical business of handing things over.
COPAN Group chief executive Stefania Triva thanked him for his contribution and pointed to the executive team and staff who would continue under Mazzocchi. Her remarks placed the transition within an organization that would keep operating. A company built from the ground up eventually needs to stand through a change at the top.
A smaller team, a familiar conversation
Sharples's current work is with Giant Sequoia Marketing, where he is executive director. Based in Carlsbad, California, his public professional profile now points to that business. Its work covers business strategy, market entry, marketing, and distribution. Gabby Franco Sharples brings a background in marketing leadership, brand development, events, and operations.
The firm presents his experience building networks in the United States, Canada, and Latin America as part of its offer to companies entering new markets. European manufacturers looking toward the United States are a particular focus. It is work close to the commercial questions that accompanied the founding of COPAN Diagnostics: whom to reach, how to reach them, and what support will make the relationship last.
Giant Sequoia also gives Lucy and Gigi, two golden retrievers, space on its team page. They joined the team in 2020 and 2021. Their listed responsibilities bring a welcome sense of proportion to a page full of executive experience. Some colleagues arrive with distribution expertise. Others have already settled the question of whether visitors should receive an enthusiastic welcome.
The new setting gives Sharples another way to use a long career. Advising a company means helping its people make decisions they will have to carry out themselves. The recurring question remains close to the one behind that North American roadshow: what does the customer actually need? After years of building a business around the answer, he has taken the conversation into another company.