BusinessTN

Diversified Power International president Jerry Fagan sees the market for good battery chargers as anything but dead.

From decades of experience with Exide Technologies in Chicago, and later in Bristol heading the company’s battery charger division, Fagan realized that manufacturers across the industry were not taking advantage of advanced technologies and methods that could vastly improve the product’s quality.

“It seems like their senior staff people have not progressed enough with the new technologies coming out. I think they’re just positioning themselves for retirement and possibly starting other companies in the future, so they’re really not aggressive on the development side,” he says.

Fagan could have headed for retirement himself, but instead decided to build better chargers along with his partner, Tony Trigiani, DPI’s vice president of engineering, and together they jump-started their own company in 1997.

A product that’s not typically noticed until it fails, battery chargers have climbed to a $2.5 billion industry and have simultaneously followed the same rapid pace of development as the technologies that use them, like mobile phones and laptop computers, as well as golf carts and forklifts.

Battery chargers are also rendered obsolete as quickly as the batteries they serve.

“The battery business is always changing just like in electronics today,” says Todd Williams, owner of three Batteries Plus franchise stores in Knoxville and Chattanooga, which sell a variety of batteries and chargers to commercial and retail customers. “It definitely keeps us on our feet.

Williams has worked with all the major battery charger manufacturers, although not with DPI, and says the industry is certainly large enough to accommodate many new players because of the opportunity to specialize in certain markets.

DPI made its commercial market debut manufacturing battery chargers for remote-controlled grocery cart tugs, such as Ameritek’s Golden Retriever that can pull up to 40 carts.

It didn’t take long for the young, 16-employee company with only 1,800 square-feet of work space located in Piney Flats near Bristol to land a lucrative deal with Ford Motor Co. to be the exclusive developer and producer of chargers for Ford’s new Th!nk car, a personal vehicle using a hybrid fuel system.

With its state-of-the-art production line and close-knit staff, DPI was able to produce a charger that measured up to Ford’s expectations, and then some.

“There were two other companies working on that program with Ford prior to contacting us. We were able to not only give them what they asked for as far as the technology, but also give them optional features, which they did not consider before,” Fagan says.

But, unfortunately for DPI, the three-year Th!nk car project ended after the first year of production in 2002, when Ford turned its focus from battery-powered vehicles to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

As a result, DPI’s revenue took a hit, pulling in only $1 million in 2003 compared to $2 million the year before.

After Ford’s about face, Fagan could have given up and waited for Social Security, but instead he recharged his company and started looking for new revenue streams. DPI rebounded in 2004, finishing the year with $2.5 million in sales.

Today, the company supplies chargers for a number of products in several markets from sophisticated units used in military bomb detection robots to portable medical supply stations to car battery chargers sold in retail stores.

In recent months, the company expanded its manufacturing space to 18,000 square-feet and added 17 new jobs to handle the 200,000 charger units DPI will roll out for its new customers throughout 2005.

Fagan projects $8 million in sales this year and may expand again and hire another 24 employees. Despite the company’s revenue upswing, he says they have no immediate plans for an initial public offering.