Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 26, 1994 TAG: 9407220003
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KATHLEEN WILSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Blum is the founding partner of Blum Newman Blackstock & Associates of Roanoke, one of Virginia's largest optical retail practices.
Four years ago, he began experimenting with inventions outside his area of expertise.
``I never realized back then that THIS was going to happen,'' he said, waving a hand at the eight U.S. patent plaques that adorn the walls of his board room at Innotech Inc., the company that grew out of his tinkering.
In another two weeks, his efforts will take a big leap. The company's marketing and sales force will aim at international markets, chiefly the cash-rich Middle East. And as one product takes off, Blum has eight more patents pending on a second project.
While the operations of Innotech are in the laboratory, the real symbol is in its board room. The room is dominated by a 10-foot round table. From the center of the table rises a huge burnished silver and gold sword imbedded in stone.
Blum tells a photographer that he's concerned about having his picture taken next to the table. He fears it might appear ostentatious. But ``The Man Who Would Be King'' decor is quite appropriate, considering the company's chief product is named Excalibur, after King Arthur's legendary sword.
Innotech markets and services the technology that Blum invented, called SurfaceCasting. It is a process that involves the curing of a polymer resin to the front surface of a single-vision lens that converts it into a no-line multifocal lens. His next eight patents involve creating a system intended to produce the first multifocal contact lenses.
From start to finish, the process takes about 30 minutes.
The technology was created for the more than 40,000 independent U.S. optical shops trying to compete with giant optical chains, such as LensCrafters and Pearle Vision, in offering quality and fast service on bifocals and other multifocal products.
Blum named and trademarked the machine that produces SurfaceCast lenses Excalibur. ``That's because `He who has the sword shall be king,''' he explained, quoting the legend of King Arthur.
Smaller operators in the optical industry are trying to compete without having to invest in expensive equipment that not only requires extensive space and highly skilled technicians to operate, but also is messy, dusty and noisy. The equipment also requires a large and expensive inventory and has generated some OSHA-regulated waste disposal problems.
Lens-making involves use of lead-based and other potentially hazardous materials, so agents used in polishing and cooling must be disposed of safely. The industry is aware of the need to develop environmentally safe products, Innotech officials said.
``It's not about one-hour service,'' stresses Blum.
``Most people really don't want their lenses in an hour, but they do want their optician to deliver lenses when promised. Excalibur is about quality, control and service.''
Demographic changes in America also are right for Blum's invention. As baby boomers age, the market for multifocal lenses increases. Estimates are that 60 percent of those purchasing glasses today are buying bifocals or multifocals, making that the fastest growing segment of the vision-care industry.
Multifocal lenses also represent the largest dollar amounts of all lenses sold, because they're more expensive. While single-vision prescription lenses can range from $41 to $95, flat-top or progressive multifocal lenses can range from $67 to $180. Prices vary according to prescription.
Blum's interest in developing a feasible system for optometrists to dispense multifocal lenses in their own offices was motivated by a frustration shared by many solo or group optometrists.
SurfaceCasting and Excalibur are the results of years of what Amitava Gupta, Innotech's executive vice president of engineering, research and development, calls ``grunge technology.''
Blum's earliest versions of the machine that eventually would become Excaliber ranged from wooden boxes with light bulbs that looked like something right out of a junior high shop class to a huge chamber that looked somewhat like the transport room that beamed the crew of the starship Enterprise around.
``I came into the project very skeptical,'' Gupta said. ``Making lenses in the office is a goal, a dream of many optometrists, but when I first looked at this grunge technology, I thought, `No way. It just won't work.'''
It was, he admits, extremely unprepossessing. ``In my mind, I had very specific reasons why this process just couldn't work,'' Gupta said. ``Then I was startled - stunned, in fact - when I looked at it with a totally different approach.
``Instead of trying to figure out what was wrong with it, I tried to figure out what was right with it and turned from 100 percent skeptic to 100 percent believer.''
Blum began in June 1988 monkeying around with curing polymer resin on lenses with ultraviolet rays from sunlight by placing lenses on a mirror right out in the parking lot of his Hershberger Road office at Blum Newman Blackstock & Associates.
But on rainy days, the lenses would cloud up.
That's when a friend, Roanoke contractor Jack Loeb, somewhat jokingly suggested renting space at a tanning salon. For three months in the summer of 1988, Blum and his technicians rented part of the Tropical Tanning II Salon on Williamson Road and made research lenses.
From there, the wooden boxes with exotic light bulbs were built.
When Blum sought out funding to get Innotech and Excaliber off the ground, Merrill Lynch & Co., the Wall Street investment firm, was interested. Merrill Lynch owns Texas State Optical based in Beaumont, Texas, the fifth-largest optical franchise in America, with more than 200 locations in Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Mississippi. But the investor was interested only if Blum brought a top polymer chemist on board.
That's when he found Gupta, a professor and researcher at the California Institute of Technology, who was then working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a free-standing research facility that made its name in space research.
Gupta and Blum admit that they learned more from what didn't work than from what did. Their Alpha Chamber - the Star Trek-like contraption - could make a maximum of 10 lenses, but at a cost of $40,000.
With the help of Gupta, Blum learned just how small he could make his machine.
Excaliber today is about the size of a microwave oven.
Once the size of the machine became more feasible, Innotech took off. In one year, the firm grew from 10 employees to 89. They work in a plain industrial building, a 29,000-square-foot facility on Airport Road, said Steve Bennington, Innotech's chief operating officer.
|n n| Bennington is just one of many top optical industry executives who pulled up roots to move to Roanoke. Bennington came from San Diego.
When optical industry executives were recruited and hired by Innotech, it was front-page news in industry publications.
James Barney, vice president of marketing, describes Innotech's work as the ``first time anything significant has happened to increase patient services.''
He picked up and moved to Roanoke from Los Angeles.
Why?
``There are just very few times in a career that an opportunity like this is placed in your lap,'' he said. ``We have a chance to provide impact and change an entire industry.''
Richard Block, president and chief executive officer of Texas State Optical, said executives who left visible and powerful positions in larger cities to move to Roanoke didn't come here for the money.
``The optical industry as a whole is not an exciting business. But this was,'' he said of Innotech and its potential.
There are more than 40,000 independent optical sites in the United States, and Innotech has placed 250 Excalibur units since last June.
Before Innotech's invention, these independent opticians were forced to send out their multifocal lenses to wholesale laboratories, making the average wait for the consumer somewhere between two and four days before they could have their glasses in hand.
With Excalibur, their multifocal glasses are ready in about 45 minutes, and there are no lab or postal fees. ``You are in control,'' Blum said. ``There's a strong economic benefit to doctors who decide to invest in the equipment.''
``As an independent solo practitioner, I've got tremendous competition from the chains,'' said Dr. Phil Buscemi of the Battleground Vision Center in Greensboro, N.C. ``My practice has always been based on quality.''
But, he said, if a patient can get a less expensive lens elsewhere, he wants his practice to be able to compete.
Blum supplied Buscemi's name when asked to identify Innotech customers.
``With Innotech's technology, I can manufacture lenses in one hour, with no line, using a system that a relatively untrained technician can operate." His 13-year-old son will spend his summer making lenses with the practice's Excalibur machine
``Not only that, but the quality of the lens is actually better than those that are ground in the more traditional manner.''
From a little guy's viewpoint, it levels the playing field, Buscemi said.
For a small practice, grinding equipment is expensive, and the personnel involved must be more skilled and therefore better paid.
Battleground Vision Center has been using the Excalibur technology since August, and in almost a year, only one patient has needed lenses remade with older technology.
``From a profitability standpoint, it's been great.''
``With the help of Innotech, we've been able to revitalize our company,'' said Block of Texas State Optical.
Block compares Texas State Optical to Sears, Roebuck and Co., an ``old-line company.''
``When I heard what Blum was up to, I thought, `Boy, if someone could really invent that, it'd be great.'''
In the first quarter, sales in Texas State Optical stores using Excalibur machines rose 11 percent, he said. In contrast, sales declined by 7 percent in the company's outlets that did not use the system.
``I've honestly never seen anything like it,'' Block said.
``The industry has been littered with companies trying to achieve what we have in a very short time,'' Blum said.
Blum credits Innotech's success to its management team. While other companies have questioned whether the Roanoke Valley is a feasible location to base and operate high-tech companies, Blum said he has found no problem.
Rather, Blum said, he attracted his team because he offered the right price and the right product. Getting the right people isn't even an issue.
by CNB