IQ Smart Interactive LLC, a Spokane-based company that designs and makes museum exhibits, says it is launching a new product line this month named Flexhibits, which are modular wall-structured systems to hold interactive, interchangeable science displays.

The company started testing prototypes of Flexhibits about a year ago. It recently sold five units to the Colorado-based Durango Discovery Museum, says owner and CEO Coleen Quisenberry. IQ planned to take another five Flexhibit wall units with displays to a New Mexico museum trade show last weekend, and three of those systems are sold, she adds.

"We hope to take a number of orders at the conference," Quisenberry says.

Mark O'Brien, IQ operations manager and head designer, says the Flexhibits are designed and constructed so that science centers can use the same basic display framework of walls and seating but alternate the learning activities at the station.

IQ says the line of exhibit furniture offers multiple configurations and accessories. The company also sells a set of interactive activities that IQ has developed so that they can be displayed within a wall system. Those exhibits currently include the options of air cars for testing motion, a jumbo jet demonstration, a power circuit bench, ring launcher, and air rockets.

The company is developing additional interactive activities that science centers can purchase later for the Flexhibits. Some prototypes of the exhibit system recently were at Mobius Science Center at 809 W. Main in downtown Spokane, O'Brien says.

"Flexhibits is based around a set of fixtures that are completely modular that allow different interactive exhibits to be set up on this modular system," O'Brien says.

He adds, "Typically, in science centers, exhibits are custom-fabricated specifically for a given purpose. IQ recognized there are a lot of science centers that might not be able to set up custom exhibits. One challenge science centers have today is remaining relevant and new. The system allows exhibits to change out in a fairly frequent format."

O'Brien adds that a Flexhibits wall panel is about 4 feet by 8 feet, but the dimension of each platform will vary, "because the platform can be set up with as few or as many wall panels as a science center needs."

He adds that the wall panels are designed to be added onto, "much like Lego pieces."

IQ also builds permanent custom-made exhibits for museums and science centers, such as educational displays it designed and built in 2012 for the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, in California, valued at $1.1 million to $1.5 million.

Quisenberry says IQ became a separate incorporated company in April after starting four years ago as a division of Spokane-based Quisenberry Marketing & Design Inc., which she also owns.

IQ occupies 5,000 square feet of space at 211 W. Second and employs 10 people, she says.

Quisenberry says that while IQ's revenue is flat this year, "we expect income to double in 2014," because of the Flexhibits launch and separate contracts to build custom exhibits starting next year.

The company is now in the production phase of developing Flexhibits platforms, after completing the earlier prototypes, and it plans to market them to science centers nationally, Quisenberry says. IQ manufactures the panels in-house.

IQ planned to show its wall units Oct. 19-20 at the Association of Science-Technology Centers conference in Albuquerque, N.M. The meeting was expected to draw nearly 2,000 people who work at science centers and museums, aquariums, children's museums, and other learning centers.

IQ is selling the Flexhibits framework and the interactive activities together, but the business also can sell just a singular Flexhibits unit that a museum can use for its own exhibits, Quisenberry says.

She declines to disclose the retail price for Flexhibits with a set of interactive displays.

McClung says that museums can spend from $10,000 to $2 million for a custom-built, stationary exhibit display. He contends that Flexhibits would cost a center significantly less.

"We feel confident we're at about half of what they would traditionally have to pay," McClung says. "That includes the interactives and the Flexhibits wall system."

Quisenberry says a science center could have multiple Flexhibits depending on space and its needs, and later purchase new interactive displays.

"This wall system can stay in place with exhibits funneling through, so they're always something new," she says.