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Bloom brothers' 2009 dream evolving into a 2011 'Sputnik' moment

In the summer of 2009, the consensus of the Bloom brothers, John and Walter, was that by now their two-person Bucks County company would have at least 14 employees and a manufacturing plant up and running in Pennsylvania.

In the summer of 2009, the consensus of the Bloom brothers, John and Walter, was that by now their two-person Bucks County company would have at least 14 employees and a manufacturing plant up and running in Pennsylvania.

Neither has been achieved. And yet the bloom isn't off the Blooms' entrepreneurial ambitions.

Though elements of the business game plan have changed since their JKB Services of Warminster, a sales company for light-emitting diode systems, was profiled in an Inquirer special report on Pennsylvania's green economy 18 months ago, the Blooms insist they are even better positioned now to achieve their original goal - setting a new LED standard.

Their strategy has included establishing a second Warminster company, Keystone LED L.L.C.; partnering with an engineering firm there, OTW Technology Inc., to help them develop a more perfect LED system for commercial use, and scrapping plans for the manufacturing plant.

All of which is to say that the Blooms have taken advantage of an oft-cited asset of small businesses: the ability to be flexible.

And in the rapidly evolving world of LEDs - most commonly associated with control panels, colored Christmas lights and, most recently, Philadelphia's traffic lights - there has been great need for that.

In just the last six or seven years, LEDs have emerged from relative obscurity in the United States to become serious contenders in the commercial-lighting market, as more environmentally friendly (no mercury), energy-efficient (less heat-producing) alternatives to fluorescents. Along the way, however, criticisms have mounted about their comparative performance and cost.

Rather than scare off the Blooms, those criticisms inspired them to do better.

In what John Bloom called the "happy accident" of venturing into the business during a rough economic climate and a time of serious industry introspection and standards development, Keystone LED is positioned to "quickly produce a product that will answer the major issues and challenges in the marketplace," he said in an interview last week from his home in Seattle. (His brother lives in Warminster.)

Both Blooms spoke without qualifiers in promising a huge impact from their LED system.

"Our design will be the first product that will absolutely solve the problems that hold back the technology," John Bloom said.

"We're responding to the new Sputnik moment," said Walter Bloom, alluding to President Obama's use of the term as a rallying cry for innovation in his State of the Union address.

Sputnik was, of course, the Soviet Union satellite that beat the United States into space, serving as a wake-up call for this country's exploration program.

Coincidentally, OTW Technology's office is on the grounds of the former Naval Air Development Center, in the centrifuge building where astronauts once trained.

For competitive reasons, many details of the Keystone LED work now going on there remain secret, said the Blooms, who have filed several patents.

What they would say is that their product will address common concerns associated with the type of LED systems used in such commercial settings as offices, prisons, schools, and hospitals: inadequate light output; insufficient beam spread; and hazardous voltage within the lighting tube.

The power supply for the Keystone LED system will be outside the tube, and energy efficiency will be greatly improved, with as much as 90 percent of the wattage converted to light rather than heat, said Richard Frantz, president of OTW.

The work is generating excitement in property-management circles.

Unico Properties L.L.C., a manager of 16 million square feet of office, multifamily residential, and mixed-use space throughout the West Coast, has agreed to use its corporate headquarters as a test site for the Keystone system, likely starting this summer.

"We feel in commercial real estate that energy efficiency is the next big thing," said Brett Phillips, Unico's director of sustainability. "LEDs . . . pose huge opportunities for us."

Of all the LED systems Unico researched, Keystone was "the first one . . . that has the potential to overcome . . . interior-design barriers," such as lighting that is not aesthetically pleasing, is not easy on the eyes, and does not distribute light broadly, Phillips said.

Said Lou Steacker, principal sales engineer for the Mid-Atlantic region for National Semiconductor Corp., of Santa Clara, Calif., power-management technology specialists: Amid a field of "many companies . . . jumping on the bandwagon, [Keystone's approach] is novel, and I expect them to be very successful."

Steacker's company stands to gain from that success as the intended supplier of the electric drivers in the Keystone LED systems. Drivers push current through a diode, in essence lighting it up.

Keystone has completed the first round of financing, securing "five figures" from a private investor, Walter Bloom said. An additional $75,000 is needed to finish prototypes.

The company expects to be in small-batch production by the end of this year, using a variety of local companies to make most of the parts, such as circuit boards, lenses, and end caps.

At least initially, the LEDs themselves will be made in China, where 90 percent of such manufacturing is now done.

The decision not to build a manufacturing plant here will help keep overhead low and "keeps us more nimble" to respond to market demand, Walter Bloom said.

In the meantime, he will continue what he started at JKB Services about four years ago: selling LED systems to towns and businesses - with the caveat that something even better is on the way.