Enoch Small, biochemist, president, and founder of Quantum Northwest Inc., a small Liberty Lake company that makes biotech accessories used largely for medical research, turns one of his inventions in his hands and insists on a photograph. 

“It’s really beautiful,” he says, posing with a small, round black device.

“The beginnings of one of our turrets,” he explains as loose wires flop askew when he turns it over. He points out the small motors on it and expounds on its purpose: “magnetic stirring.” He then sets the component gently back on the shelf with the others and notes that they retail for $8,000 to $10,000. 

There’s a definite air of pride and satisfaction in Small, who founded Quantum Northwest in 1993.

 A successful scientific researcher who had managed federally funded projects at Oregon State University and Eastern Washington University, Small decided to trade the challenges of academic bureaucracy for the freedom of working for himself. An experienced grant writer, he fueled the company initially with two Small Business Innovation Research grants from the National Science Foundation and two from the National Institutes of Health. 

Small also had a patented invention already in the queue, a cuvette holder, which solved a problem for spectroscopic systems that use modular, flexible components. The device holds small vials, known as cuvettes, that are filled with liquid samples, enabling a researcher to maintain the sample at whatever temperature is specified by the needs of the experiment. A spectrometer works with cuvette holders by using ultraviolet and visible light to analyze the temperature-controlled liquid samples, which in turn gives the scientist more control over the experiment and thus more accurate results. 

Forty percent of the end users of Quantum Northwest’s products are pharmaceutical researchers. Applications can range from pioneering ways to detect biological toxins in the environment and developing effective methods of medication delivery to target locations, to understanding and controlling plant pathogens and studying methods to detecting colon cancer before it actually becomes cancer. 

The turret is just one of a hundred or so different cuvette holders Quantum Northwest manufactures at its 2,600-square-foot facility in Liberty Lake. Nestled in an industrial park off Interstate 90 since 2007, the site is deceivingly small considering the business has been grossing between $900,000 and $1 million since 2011, with projected revenues of $2 million by 2020. 

The modest operation employs nine people in all. The staff has three doctorate-level scientists, including Small and his wife of 30 years, Jeanne Rudzki Small, a chemist who serves as chief information officer and business partner.

The company also depends on about 10 Spokane-area vendors. These include several garage machinists who own their own shops. 

“We get excellent metal finishing services here and very best of everything is available (in Spokane) and people are willing to work with you ... quality work for a reasonable price,” Enoch Small says. 

As far as its market, more than half of Quantum Northwest’s sales come from outside of the U.S. 

Sixty-seven percent of sales come from companies that use Quantum Northwest’s selection of cuvette holders. The company typically produces five to seven units a week and 230-plus units a year, with a typical turnaround time of 24 hours for standard designs and about four weeks for custom instruments. 

Manufacturing cost ranges from $1,000 to $5,000 for each component depending on the specifications. The components sell for between $2,500 and $8,000, with specialty items going for up to $20,000. With a recent uptick in the company’s growth, Rudzki Small projects adding another 1,400 square feet of manufacturing space in the near future to house additional assemblers, a larger machine shop, and a sales engineer. 

The company’s recent boom makes Rudzki Small smile and sweep her arm towards the back of the facility. “It’s a storyline,” she says, referring to the operations and manufacturing flow, which begins with inquiries and orders at the front, continues with a design lab, a testing area, a small machine shop, and finally packing and shipping. 

“My favorite part,” she adds pointing to shelves near the door stacked with sealed and addressed packages, “seeing the boxes ready to be shipped, all around the world ... our sales are going up.” 

Rudzki Small gave up a career as a tenured EWU professor of chemistry and biochemistry and her work with the National Science Foundation managing multimillion-dollar grants to join Quantum Northwest as CIO in 2014. Her first order of business was to strive to take the company to the next level. She enrolled in and recently graduated from the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Emerging Leaders program and partially credits the recent 10 percent hike in sales to the “mini MBA” training it offered. The training was free, but the seats highly competitive. 

“It was a seven-month program to get us to work on our businesses in addition to working in our businesses,” she says.  

Rudzki Small says the curriculum made her see the company in terms of five stages: existence, survival, success, take-off, and resource maturity.  

To progress to the “success” stage, the business requires cash flow. Cash flow requires “sufficient size and product-market penetration. Quantum Northwest is not quite there yet,” she says, but she’s not worried. “Enoch and I are still very involved in the company and feel like we’re still entrepreneurial. We are expecting that to change over the next few years as our marketing plan matures.”

The marketing plan is another gem polished by her training with the SBA Emerging Leaders program and includes Google AdWords.

“My guess is that at any given time, only 1,000 people around the world are interested in our products. With Google, we can very specifically target those ... who are searching for our products, or who have visited our website and those of our company partners,” she says. 

Despite the developments, both Smalls agree it’s best to continue with a conservative growth strategy by not shopping for investors. They intend to stick with keeping the company moving forward by reinvesting the company’s profits back into the company. 

“We’re building the company up by itself. If we have some grand plan and do it all of a sudden, there would be a lot more uncertainty,” says Small. “Let the company pay for its own development, which also allows stability.” 

How do they see their roles in the company’s success over the next twenty years? Rudzki Small is excited to use her new skills to continue working to brand and position Quantum Northwest as the “thought leader” in their industry. 

Her husband is thinking more about the next invention to solve the next problem. 

“Scientists, by their very nature, have to do original work,” Small says. “There’s a constant need to expand and fine tune inventions to meet the needs of science. It (creates) a happiness factor that comes from taking on those challenges.”