3/9/2009 2009 Dynamic Dozen, No. 9: Dynatek Laboratories Dynatek Laboratories beats on in small-town Galena
Dynatek Laboratories Inc. co-owners Elaine Strope and Jim Conti, who are married, moved the medical-device testing company to Galena from New Jersey in 1987. Dynatek posted record revenues of $4.2 million in 2008.
Dynatek Laboratories Inc. landed in the Ozarks as part of a climate compromise.
Founders Elaine R. Strope and James C. Conti, who are also married, were looking for a "climate band."
"Jim wanted it warmer than (his native) Boston, and I wanted four seasons," said Strope, who is from central Missouri.
And so the medical-device testing company settled in Galena in 1987, dealing with domestic and international clients from the small Stone County town.
"We sell all over the world, so we're sort of like this isolated little place (and) people don't really know about us," Strope said.
In 2008 - the company's biggest year to date - Dynatek had 2008 revenues of $4.2 million, up from $2 million in 2007.
"We're getting more to be the right size for what we're wanting to do," Strope said. "You have to be able to hire good people, educated people and pay them what they need to be paid."
The company designs medical-testing machines for implantable medical devices, such as heart valves and stents, serving clients primarily outside of Missouri, said Suzi Young, director of business operations. Some clients contract with Dynatek to do the testing, while others buy the machines to conduct their own tests.
Medical devices need testing to determine such things as structural integrity, durability and whether implantable device coatings will shed within the body, Strope explained. Companies may be in the process of research and development as they ready for submission to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, or they might be testing against a product already on the market.
During testing, Dynatek uses mock vessels that mimic human arteries. They're made of silicone - the closest material to a human vessel - into which a device like a stent can be deployed, Strope said. Testing can be as short as one week or as long as 18 months.
The goal is to mimic fatigue through the same physical and mechanical motions in the body. That process takes time in the human body - time that a device company doesn't have - so Dynatek employs "accelerated testing," Strope explained. High-speed photography is used to look through the mock walls of the silicone vessels to measure fatigue.
Mock vessels used to be made of latex, but it doesn't last long, turns brittle and isn't transparent, Strope said, leading to the creation of see-through silicone mock vessels that high-speed photography can penetrate.
Clients can either use Dynatek's mock vessels or send in their own, and some clients simply buy Dynatek's vessels for their own testing, Young said.
It's been a steady journey since 1984, when Strope and Conti, who both hold chemistry doctorates, purchased Dynatek from Milton Swanson, a mechanical engineer at Washington University in St. Louis who wanted to engineer new cardiovascular testing equipment.
Strope and Conti were living in New Jersey at the time and worked on Dynatek business in their basement while they both worked other jobs and Strope was pregnant with their first child.
When the couple arrived in Galena three years later, all they needed was a bank, an airport within an hour and FedEx delivery. The challenge: Their office didn't have an actual address. It was simply known as the northwest corner of Galena's square. So the post office came up with "Fourth and Main," and that was good enough for FedEx, Strope said.
"We had the first fax machine in Stone County ... and the bank came over to use (it)," she said.
