Technology has come a long way since the tradition of sending canaries into coal mines to detect dangerous chemicals.
These days, companies such as Virginia Beach-based Morphix Technologies develop and make products that detect invisible dangers.
A report last month by Industry Research, a leading global research and advisory firm, identified Morphix as a key player in the growing explosives, weapons and contraband detection equipment market.
Kim Chapman, vice president of sales and marketing, said the company makes and sells four product lines: SafeAir chemical detection badges; TraceX explosives detection kits; Chameleon chemical detection armbands; and ChromAir chemical detection badges.
Founded in 1991 as Gilian Environmental, Morphix is known for its colorimetric detection sensors that have been sold in more than 40 countries to military, law enforcement, emergency responders, homeland security and industrial personnel. More than 20 million sensors have been sold to date.
“I was at a trade show in Pasadena, California, last month and 90% of the people said they never knew anything like this existed,” she said of the detection badges.
But it was when the business started to sell and advertise its products on Amazon two years ago that a whole new market opened up and sales steadily increased.
The decision came after Amazon notified Morphix it was trying to broaden its scope and include safety and industrial products, Chapman said. Selling through Amazon.com also enabled Morphix to broaden its small customer base.
Morphix employs 30 people, including positions in sales, customer service, chemists, engineers and assemblers.
“Surprisingly, to us, was that we started to see a significant increase in one product even more than the rest,” Chapman said of the SafeAir badge that detects a chemical widely used in spray foam applications.
After the Occupational Safety and Health Administration cracked down three years ago on small businesses that work with chemicals — such as those that spray bed liners in trucks or foam insulation in homes, Morphix became more aware of new markets in need of their products.
With so many companies ordering from Amazon, Chapman said they are seeing orders from customers they would have struggled to reach with their current industrial distributor network. Many spray foam companies are small businesses that don’t participate in trade shows, she said.
The SafeAir system uses a sensor to instantly confirm the presence of 15 toxic chemicals, including ammonia, formaldehyde, carbon monoxide, and mercury. And ChromAir badges detect exposure dose levels to specific toxic chemicals and monitor the amount to keep working conditions safe.
Typically, she said the user is concerned about their safety because they are in an environment with chemicals, and the badge simply changes color if the chemicals are in the air.
“Our products, at least for the user, are very, very simple,” Chapman said. “There is, of course, a lot of technical ingenuity inside them, but the idea being the use of them should be very simple.”
Since it was created in 2005, the military, law enforcement, first responders and emergency personnel have been using Morphix’s Chameleon armband to detect toxic airborne chemicals that are often unseen, but can be deadly. The TraceX kit helps the military and law enforcement identify bombers, bomb-makers and bomb-making facilities by detection of the most commonly used explosive materials and their precursors.
“It doesn’t matter where the employee is, we want them to be safe,” she said. “And we’re making a difference here.”
Sandra J. Pennecke, 757-222-5356, sandra.pennecke@insidebiz.com
