A couple of years ago, Arden Hills–based IntriCon (AMEX: IIN), a maker of tiny electronic components for medical devices such as hearing aids and intravenous flow restrictors, was called Selas Corporation, and it was losing money. Since then, it has gotten a new name and is now running in the black. What turned things around? The short answer: sweating the small stuff.
IntriCon began in 1977 as Resistance Technology, Inc., a supplier of miniature components to the hearing-aid market. “We were lucky when the company started, because Minneapolis was a big player in that market,” says Mark Gorder, a Resistance Technology founder who is now IntriCon’s president and CEO. “Telex, Qualitone, Starkey—a lot of the major hearing-enhancement companies were here, and that created lots of great opportunities for us.”
In 1993, Resistance Technology was acquired by Selas Corporation of America, a Pennsylvania maker of commercial furnaces and related components, such as gas blender valves and combustion controllers. Needless to say, it was a different business from making “microminiature” high-tech parts. In March 2005, Selas decided to unload its heat technology operations to a private-equity company, which reformed it as Selas Heat Technology Company, based in Pennsylvania. The rest of the company, named IntriCon, returned to its small-components focus, while continuing to expand beyond the hearing-aid market.
“At one time, the hearing-aid business was electrical-mechanical,” Gorder says. “Now, it’s digital amplifiers and assemblies. What we want to do is adapt the principles behind those technologies to other markets.”
IntriCon and its subsidiaries now operate in four main markets: medical, hearing health, professional audio, and electronics. Its top products, Gorder says, are its InTune and Digital-One miniature digital hearing-aid amplifiers. “The basic idea behind what we make is low-power wireless technology that enhances performance of devices and allows them to work with other devices,” Gorder says. “What all our markets have in common is that they all use small, body-worn devices, and those devices are getting smaller all the time.”
Those devices are selling. In July, the company reported that its net sales rose to $13.2 million in its second quarter, up 14 percent from the same period last year. Net income was also up, to $422,491.
“The products we sell to the hearing-aid market are all internal designs,” Gorder says. “But we’re willing to co-design products with other companies’ R&D groups. We only do the development if we can also do the manufacturing.”
