ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Tuesday, April 16, 1996                TAG: 9604160059
SECTION: BUSINESS                 PAGE: B-6  EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON STAFF WRITER

INNOTECH SEES JOBS IN ITS FUTURE WORK FORCE OF 1,300 IN 5 YEARS FORECAST

Eyewear industry upstart Innotech Inc. of Roanoke issued an eye-opening forecast Monday - that its work force of nearly 170 people will grow to 1,300 within five years.

The company rented a lecture hall at Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center and invited employees, dignitaries and reporters to hear executives and others talk optimistically about the future. Speakers stirred the crowd to cheers again and again, all in the name of a patented prescription eyewear lens-making machine which Innotech makes and sells worldwide.

In 1993, the company began selling its system, which research executive Amitava Gupta said represents the first significant improvement in lens-making since Benjamin Franklin invented bifocals.

The company sold $6.4 million worth of the machines and the supplies to run them in 1995, but still finished the year with $28.4 million accumulated debt. Chief Operating Officer Steve Bennington said new companies often have significant debt. Last month, the company raised $30 million through a first public stock offering.

Founder Ronald Blum said the potential for massive new hiring "looks promising" if the company performs to expectations. Its device, whose list price is $19,500, beats traditional lens-making machines on cost and performance and is being marketed to a growing industry, executives said.

Vision Express, a large eyewear retailer in the United Kingdom, recently ordered 95 systems, putting Innotech nearly 30 percent of the way toward this year's sales goal, Bennington said. Sales of systems trigger sales of supplies, since Innotech is the only vendor of the materials the machine needs, he said.

Having outgrown its Roanoke facility, Blum said the company is looking to rent more space. "We definitely are going to stay in the Roanoke Valley. We'd like to stay in the city," Blum said.

Under the hiring forecast, the Roanoke operation will grow from 83 to 550, the Petersburg operation will grow from 41 to 450, and out-of-state employment will grow from 43 to more than 300.

Innotech "will become one of the largest five private-sector employers in this valley," Mayor David Bowers said.

The new jobs would be in sales, engineering and production. The company pays its manufacturing workers and supervisors in Roanoke an average hourly wage of $13.50, Bennington said. That is 80 cents higher than the Roanoke Valley's average manufacturing wage for February, the most recent available.

LENGTH: Medium:   55 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  ROGER HART/Staff. Steve Kesler, field service supervisor
          for Innotech, gives a demonstration of the Excalibur, a lens-casting
          machine. color.
KEYWORDS: JOBCHEK