Before Stefan Moser helped mold his clients’ prosthetics in his workshop, he had traveled to war-torn Angola and Lebanon in the 1970s to help fit landmine-stricken locals with artificial limbs.
Moser, who’d been trained in Switzerland, came to the United States in 1983 and founded Swiss Balance in Santa Monica in 1989 to help people who often had experienced a tragedy.
The company was hit with an unexpected tragedy of its own April 27. The 54-year-old Moser died after off-roading with friends in the Mojave Desert.
But Swiss Balance will continue. His sister, Franziska Balcaen, the company’s chief operating officer, will be taking over as chief executive at the end of the month. She has handled the administrative side of the business since its start and already had two years of prosthetics apprenticeship in Switzerland.
A few years ago, she said that her brother told her she would take over control of the company should anything happen to him.
“He was very good about having backup plans,” Balcaen said.
Otis Baskin, professor emeritus at the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University, said Moser’s succession plan is unusual because most people do not make one that early in life.
“Nobody thinks they are going die unexpectedly” said Baskin. “There are always other things that demand your attention every day.”
Moser’s absence will challenge Swiss Balance nevertheless. His sister said Moser was a tech-savvy entrepreneur, helping the office go paperless and adopt laser-scanning technologies to aid practitioners mold prosthetics. She added that the office also will miss his leadership because he prodded his colleagues to think independently.
Swiss Balance assembles and fits prosthetics for amputees and sells other products for injuries and rehabilitation. Doctors write prescriptions for what their patients need, then send them to Swiss Balance for a precision fit. The company then bills insurance for its services and products.
The company also works as a wholesaler as a side business. Swiss Balance is the sole U.S. distributor of Swiss-made Kunzli Support Boots and sells them to other prosthetics and orthotics clinics. The boots are used to immobilize ankles and feet like a cast after an injury and offer an alternative to traditional plaster casts.
Starting as technician
As Balcaen tells the story, Moser came to Los Angeles in hopes of looking for a job in prosthetics. He gave himself a deadline. If he could not find work in two weeks, he would go to Brazil and try his luck there. He quickly found a job as a prosthetics technician in Beverly Hills in 1983 and stayed. Though he was certified in Switzerland, Moser had to start from the bottom to become a certified American prosthetist.
Six years later, he founded Swiss Balance in a small brick building in Santa Monica on Santa Monica Boulevard, but the 1994 Northridge Earthquake hit and the company had to move.
Balcaen said that she was happy her business outlived the buildings that housed it, joking that it was often the other way around in Switzerland.
The company moved to a Wilshire Boulevard office in Santa Monica before settling at its current space in the same city – with an ocean view – on 15th Street and Arizona Avenue. Moser was planning to start remodeling before he died.
The company grew as the demand for its services increased with an aging population.
Swiss Balance is not the only company in Santa Monica that offers customized prosthetics and orthotics. OrthoPros Inc. and Performance Prosthetics and Orthotics have similar services.
“Our market is not going away,” Balcaen said.
Since the company’s founding, it grew from just three – Moser, Balcaen and a technician – to eight, including six full-time employees and two technicians. Swiss Balance is looking for more employees.
Balcaen would not disclose the company’s revenue but said sales have doubled over the past five years.
Patients are referred to Swiss Balance mostly from local doctors, but sometimes they have traveled to the United States for care.
“It really serves the local community, even though we have an international clientele,” Balcaen said. “The level of service and research is not always available in other countries.”
In addition to the aging population, the increase in diabetes and heart disease also has led to more amputations and a greater need for prosthetics. There are now 26 million people in the United States with diabetes, up from 23.6 million five years ago.
According to the American Amputee Coalition, an amputee support and advocacy group in Manassas, Va., there are about 185,000 amputations a year in the United States, or more than 500 a day.
Balcaen said half of Swiss Balance’s patients are retirees, but they span all age groups.
“We have clients from newborns up to 100-plus,” Balcaen said.
How they work
If a patient needs a prosthetic leg suitable for a certain lifestyle, from the rarely active to the Olympian, Swiss Balance can assemble it onsite at its workshop tucked in the far corner of the office. There are prosthetics and orthotics molds on work benches waiting to cool off and to be fitted.
To start the process, a technician makes a mold of a client’s remaining limb, where a prosthetic will be attached. This is done with a traditional plaster mold or the area is digitally scanned.
Swiss Balance then orders parts, usually from German prosthetics manufacturer Otto Bock or Icelandic company Ossur to assemble the limb. Once the limb is fitted, technicians make adjustments until it feels natural. Patients often return to get prosthetics tweaked.
The cost of a prosthetic leg can run anywhere from $8,000 to $100,000 depending on if the prosthetic is for below or above the knee, the latter of which requiring more expensive products. A picture of Moser proudly posing in a dark heavy jacket with his white BMW bike in the desert hangs in the office.
That April weekend, Moser decided to ride a more challenging trail, an old wagon road, in desert conditions with his friends. At the end of the road, he was disoriented and fatigued. His friends tried to give him water, but his condition worsened and he died. Though the cause of death is not yet known, his sister said it was most likely dehydration.
