In 2011, the Lafayette City Council and Lafayette Chamber of Commerce will be honoring 12 of the country’s best innovators, businesses that create and distribute products from right here in Lafayette. The business recognition program is designed to highlight the important contributions these companies are making to innovation and to the city of Lafayette as employers.

The first nine recipients of the Innovators in Lafayette recognition are:

BOULDER NONLINEAR SYSTEMS - www.bnonlinear.com
Boulder Nonlinear Systems, Inc. designs, manufactures and sells liquid-crystal-based photonics devices and systems. The company, which was started in 1988 by Steve Serati and today has 19 employees, specializes in opto-electronic devices based upon advanced liquid crystal technology. Boulder Nonlinear Systems builds analog liquid crystal on silicon modulators used in applications ranging from holographic storage to microscopic cell manipulation. The company's advanced liquid crystal technology is used in telecommunications, medical instruments, defense, and manufacturing.

DOOR TO DOOR ORGANICS - www.DoortoDoorOrganics.com
Door to Door Organics is a home, school and office delivery service of organic produce and grocery. The company delivers year-round, bringing customers the freshest organic produce directly to their doors at competitive prices. Door to Door Organics, which employs more than 55 employees, has close relationships with farmer partners. Those relationships mean the company can deliver locally grown produce when available, including an all local farm box available from June through October, made up of the best of Colorado grown produce. Chad Arnold, president of the company, joined Door to Door Organics as the COO in March 2009 and was promoted to president and CEO in 2010, to lead the company’s burgeoning growth. Since then, Door to Door Organics has expanded its base in Colorado and launched Door To Door Organics operations in Kansas City, MO, Detroit, MI, and Chicago, IL, and owns Suburban Organics, based out of Pennsylvania.

COMPOSITE TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT
www.ctd-materials.com/
Composite Technology Development is a diversified technology company. For more than 20 years, CTD has provided solutions to the aerospace, energy (conventional and renewable), defense and other markets that improve their customer’s business and provide new capability to the market. Key materials include TEMBO® shape memory composites for deployable structures; NANUQ® insulation materials for cryogenic, high temperature, and high radiation environments; and KIBOKO® strain tolerant and erosion resistant materials for efficient composite pressure vessels and marine structures. CTD has called Lafayette home for nearly 15 years.

THERMO FISHER SCIENTIFIC
www.thermofisher.com
Thermo Fisher Scientific serves customers within pharmaceutical and biotech companies, hospitals and clinical diagnostic labs, universities, research institutions and government agencies. Worldwide, the company has revenues of nearly $11 billion and approximately 37,000 employees.

In 2004, Dharmacon Research, Inc., which was founded in Lafayette in 1995 to develop and commercialize a new technology for RNA oligonucleotide synthesis, became a wholly owned subsidiary of Fisher Scientific International, Inc.  In November 2006, Fisher Scientific International, Inc. merged with Thermo Electron Corporation to become Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc. Today, there are more than 140 employees based in the company’s Lafayette office dedicated to advancing research through its range of molecular biology products. The Dharmacon product line remains the global market leader for synthetic RNA.

EPSILON - http://www.epsilon.com/
Epsilon is the industry’s leading marketing services firm. Its services include strategic consulting, acquisition and customer database technologies, loyalty management, proprietary data, predictive modeling, email deployment, search engine optimization and direct mail production. Epsilon, a division of Alliance Data Systems in Dallas, has 25  offices and nearly 2,700 associates globally. The Lafayette location, which employs more than 400 people, is headquarters of Epsilon Targeting, which helps customers market more intelligently by defining not only who they should market to, but also how to market to them.

TEXTILE NETWORK - http://www.texnetinc.com/
Textile Network, established in 1990, is a manufacturers’ representative for textile mills and supplies the sewing industry with raw materials for the military, Homeland Security, and other industries. Since the mid-1990s, Textile Network has been located in a restored historic building in Old Town Lafayette. Roxann Weidemaier and Pam Resendez are co-owners of the business, which has six employees.

NUTRACEUTIX - http://www.nutraceutix.com/
Nutraceutix is a private contract manufacturer of dietary supplements, vitamins and probiotic cultures for retailers such as Rite Aid and GNC. The company has developed a method to keep probiotic cultures live and also a time-release technology that allows probiotics to pass through the stomach and into the intestine. Headquartered in Redmond, Wash., Nutraceutix employs 32 people in Lafayette at two local locations. Steve Kazemi is the Lafayette plant manager.

UNIVERSAL FOREST PRODUCTS - http://www.ufpi.com/
Universal Forest Products, a $1.9 billion publicly traded company, has had a manufacturing plant in Lafayette since 1998. Today, its Lafayette location, which manufactures roof and floor trusses for area homebuilders and also builds concrete forms for bridges and highways, has 75 employees. Universal’s Lafayette plant is overseen by General Manager of Operations Brian Niess.

BOULDER BLIMP - http://www.boulderblimp.com/
Boulder Blimp Company, founded in 1980 by Frank Rider, is the nation’s top manufacturer of giant cold air inflatables. The company has been located in Lafayette since 1997, has 15 employees and specializes in custom inflatables. Loni Gilfedder is Boulder Blimp Company’s CEO.

 

Pictured below:
Innovators in Lafayette - Textile Network and Nutraceutix:  Pictured left to right, Textile Network co-owner Pam Resendez, Nutraceutix Lafayette plant manager Steven Kazemi, Textile Network co-owner Roxann Weidemaier and Lafayette Mayor Frank Phillips.

Innovators in Lafayette - Boulder Blimp and Universal Forest Products:  Pictured left to right, Boulder Blimp Company CEO Loni Gilfedder, Lafayette Mayor Frank Phillips and Universal Forest Products General Manager of Operations Brian Niess.

Innovators in Lafayette - Composite Technology Development:  Pictured left to right, Michael Tupper and Lafayette Mayor Frank Phillips.

Textile Network Nutraceutix	Boulder Blimp Universal Forest	Epsilon Targeting
Thermo Scientific Genomics Div	Composite Technology Development