Innovation Continuation

Innovation Continuation

Technology Innovation Awards - Where they Are now by Mark Gordon | Managing Editor

Past winners of the Reviews' annual Technology Award continue to innovate and, in many cases, that has led to more employees and higher revenues.

2005 Winner: MadahCom

The experience of the 2005 winner of the Review's Technology Innovation Award, Sarasota-based MadahCom Inc., has mirrored the progress of other winners: An increase in revenue and awards followed for the company, which makes and supplies mass emergency notification systems for the military and businesses.

On the revenue side, it rose about 50% from last year, from $15 million to about $22 million. The company was also awarded a business diversification award from Gov. Jeb Bush in 2006; the award was for entrepreneurship in the major market category. "The bottom line is that 2006 has been very good to us," says Reuben Ben-Arie, MadahCom's president and CEO.

The company is also growing in terms of space and employees. It has hired about 15 new people over the last year, bringing the total to about 80 employees working in a range of departments, from sales to marketing to research. That growth has caused the company to outgrow its office, in a business park near the Sarasota Bradenton International Airport. Ben-Arie says he's already begun looking for new space, either nearby or in a new location.

MadahCom was given the Review's Technology Innovation Award for creating its proprietary notification system called WAVES, which stands for Wireless Audio Visual Emergency System. The system is used in war zones, where it can give off local, specific warnings to troops in danger.

While the military continues to be MadahCom's biggest client - it signed a new licensing agreeement with the U.S. Army last month - Ben-Arie and his sales staff have begun selling the product in other markets, including colleges and business with large campuses, such as insurance companies.

While MadahCom has become bigger, its core challenge has remained the same: Convincing potential customers, both military and civilian, that they need the product to solve a problem they can't see right in front of them. Ben-Arie has said it's sometimes like a solution searching for a problem.

2004 Winner: Florikan E.S.A. Corp.

The floodgates swung open and the awards poured in after Sarasota-based fertilizer company Florikan E.S.A Corp. was named the Review's 2004 winner of the Technology Innovation Awards.

Since then, the company, which manufactures and sells a controlled release fertilizer system, has been recognized statewide by Gov. Jeb Bush and nationwide by high-ranking EPA officials. Both entities recognized the company for its innovative approach and environmentally sound practices in its horticultural products and how it educates the gardening community about top "green" growing practices. Hence the E.S.A., which stands for Environmentally Sustainable Agriculture.

Company founder Ed Rosenthal says the company's core fertilizer distribution product remains the same. It still utilizes a controlled technology that makes it "idiot-proof" for all its customers.

But Rosenthal says he has long recognized that for financial sustainability, his company needs to be selling the product, too, not just getting trophies for it.

That front also has been successful: The company's core fertilizer recently debuted on the shelves of Home Depot and revenues reached $62 million in 2006, up 77% from the $35 million in annual sales when it won the Review's award. What's more, the company plans to double its staff of about 50 people over the next year to keep up with the growth.

"We are environmentalists," says Rosenthal, "that also happen to be successful in business."

2003 Winner: BioLife LLC

When BioLife LLC was recognized for its technology three years ago, it was about to embark on an ambitious plan to sell its product - a powder method to control bleeding - to the masses. Called QR, for Quick Relief, it works by using a combination of potassium salt and resins to instantly stop the bleeding of a wound on any part of the human body.

The company founders and other top executives saw the product as a replacement for the Band-Aid.

That focus was short-lived. First, as well received and cool as the product was, the firm quickly realized that getting people to regularly buy into it beyond being a fad was a colossal challenge. Second, according to president and CEO Doug Goodman, the company found two niche markets to approach: Workplaces and the medical community. On the latter, if 1% of U.S. patients use QR, says Goodman, that would be $40 million in annual revenues, a number that trumps the company's current $2 million in annual sales.

"We found that this was not a product for the masses, but it's in fact a very targeted product," Goodman says. "It's much bigger than what we had been [doing]. The potential there is simply enormous."

The workplace market is broad, Goodman says, from small labs and plants with just a few employees to mammoth assembly lines and factories that have nurses on full-time staff. No matter the size, nearly all of those operations have a First-Aid kit and, hence, is a potential customer.

The health care market also has broad opportunities. BioLife heard accounts of the products being used by medical professionals in ways it had not originally anticipated, such as dermatologists using it for biopsies and skin graft procedures. Nursing homes can use it too, as can hospices; Goodman says Tidewell Hospice, one of the biggest hospices on the Gulf Coast, is a major client. "This product," says Goodman, "does more, way more, than we anticipated."

The new strategy has resulted in some internal changes since 2003. The company has the same number of employees at about 40, says Goodman, but about a third of those are recent hires that have greater sales expertise. For example, its new vice president of marketing previously worked in similar positions with Tropicana and Proctor & Gamble.