Photo: Chroma plant expansion. Courtesy photo.
by C.B. Hall, Vermont Business Magazine Established in 1991, Bellows Falls-based Chroma Technology Corp is an employee-owned C-corporation that designs and manufactures precision optical filters, optical coatings, light sources, and imaging systems.
With its 126 employees, the Bellows Falls plant serves as the hub for a business with global reach. Chroma employs three representatives elsewhere in the country and maintains sales offices with a total of ten employees in China, Japan and Germany.
Revenues for the fiscal year ending last April 30 totaled $35.5 million, an increase of about 11% over the prior FY. Chroma also boasts the second fastest growth over 25 years in VBM's ranking of the Vermont 100+ (January 2020 issue).
Photo: Paul Millman, CEO Chroma Technology. Courtesy photo.
A glance at the company's website - which includes Japanese- and Chinese- as well as English-language versions - makes it obvious that we're not talking about everyday merchandise here. The site advertises such things as sputtered thin-film coatings, total internal reflection microscopy, and FRET – which, CEO Paul Millman says, stands for fluorescent resonance energy transfer.
Putting things in more comprehensible terms, he explains what Chroma's primary product is all about: "An optical filter takes a broad spectrum of light and breaks it into components - mostly in the visible spectrum... Based on the customer's needs, we break that broad segment of light into shorter segments of light."
The coating on the glass produces an optical filter. "The coating interferes with the light; the glass holds the coating in place," he says.
He compares the coatings to the coating of oil one might see on a puddle in the street.
"The petroleum film on the surface interferes with the light hitting the puddle. It reflects the light spectrally. That’s why one sees the 'rainbow.' We do that [interference] in a controlled fashion."
The main destinations for Chroma's products include the medical, scientific and imaging industries.
Millman reports that 62% of Chroma's revenue comes from overseas, Europe being the largest foreign market. Asia – China in particular – is the fastest growth area, but cool relations between the Asian giant and the United States aren't helping the trade relationship.
"The problem is the Chinese think that the US sees them as the enemy, and they don't feel comfortable doing business with countries that see them as enemies. That's not individual companies, that comes from the top. Some Chinese companies are reluctant to do business with us now."
"We have reason to believe that the Chinese government is discouraging some Chinese companies from working with US companies."
Photo: Chroma Technology laboratory. Courtesy photo.
Be that as it may, Chroma's growth has been fairly steady since the company's founding:
The $35.5 million revenue figure represents a 41% increase over the last five years. Millman tells VBM that year-over-year growth in the fiscal year currently in progress stands at 9.5%, continuing the upward trend line.
In 2018 that trend line translated into a 37,000-square-foot expansion of the company's plant - roughly a doubling of the former square-footage.
So what's the secret?
"Customer service," Millman responds immediately. "We actually really care about our customers and we really try hard to give them what they need, when they need it, how they need it."
As for the employee-ownership model, which takes the form of a stock bonus plan, he says, "I believe that the people who produce the wealth should share the wealth."
It's a model that has kept this company thriving.
C.B. Hall is a freelance writer from Southern Vermont.