Roanoke Times
April 17, 2004
SEN. WARNER SEES SUNNY SIDE OF EGG FACTORY'S TECHNOLOGY
Author: Duncan Adams duncan.adams@roanoke.com 981-3324
The chairman of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee
spoke and Roanoke innovator Ron Blum beamed.
On Friday afternoon, U.S. Sen. John Warner, R-Va.,
visited Blum's company, the Egg Factory. Warner said
he decided to visit the company, as well as the nearby
headquarters of Johnson & Johnson's the Spectacle
Lens Group, after being impressed by a prototype of
the Egg Factory's eVision electroactive lens technology.
"I see tremendous military applications," Warner
said.
In late 2002, Blum acknowledged his company had negotiated
a licensing agreement with Johnson & Johnson Vision
Care that granted Johnson & Johnson exclusive worldwide
rights for the use of eVision technology. The eVision
technology would feature a microprocessor-driven "intelligent" eyeglass
lens that can focus wherever its wearer looks.
Warner first received a demonstration
of the technology when Blum visited the senator's office
in Washington, D.C.
During Warner's brief stop Friday at the Egg Factory
office on Hershberger Road, Blum, president and chief
executive officer; Brad Blum, vice president of new
business development; and Jim Barney, vice president
of asset sales, introduced the senator to two other
innovations under development.
Barney talked about the company's IntelliMat, a computer-controlled
and wireless-equipped floor mat designed to offer "dynamic" and
interactive advertising to shoppers. The Egg Factory
said field tests at two local Kroger grocery stores
yielded positive reactions from shoppers and storekeepers
alike.
Brad Blum, the son of Ron Blum, introduced Warner
to a "hearing enhancement" device that would
allow listeners to adjust digital audio channels. Warner
said he liked the song Blum played, "Wind Beneath
My Wings," and the prototype device itself.
He asked then the million-dollar question.
"I think you got something going here," Warner
said. "Where ! can I buy one?"
To date, none of the Egg Factory's ideas for in novative
products has reached the marketplace. For more than
a year, Ron Blum and others with the company have said
the company was on the edge of a big score that could
yield revenues for the company.
Aside from licensing the eVision technology, one whose
full financial yield will not occur until its technology
becomes a proven commercial success, the Egg Factory
has been scoreless.
For the Egg Factory, a score occurs when a Fortune
500 company buys or licenses one of its innovations.
Ron Blum has said, however, that when necessary or
prudent the company will take a product to market itself.
On Friday, he again suggested to reporters that a
score is nigh.
"You're going to be getting a series of announcements
that will probably be coming across your desks in the
near future," he said.
Meanwhile, he said, Egg Factory investors remain patient.
And about 60 percent have reinvested in the company,
Blum said.
"I'm sure we have people who
are getting antsy. But there are very few of them."
The Roanoke-based company has a unique business model.
Its focus is creating and developing technologies with
the potential to shake up markets and boost earnings
for whichever company takes the technology to market
as a product. Many of the Egg Factory's ideas - referred
to as "eggs" - emerge internally, but some
are offered to the company for development.
Blum said the Egg Factory has filed more than 250
patent applications and has about 25 patents.
The Egg Factory was founded in April 1999, about two
years after Ron Blum sold his company, Innotech, to
Johnson & Johnson. As a division of Johnson & Johnson
Vision Care, Innotech has become the Spectacle Lens
Group. Its Roanoke facility produces the Definity eyeglass
lens, described by Johnson & Johnson as a breakthrough
progressive lens.
