As an undergraduate at Cornell University, Lyle Small annoyed his housemates by spending days on end painting their Ping-Pong table in rainbow shades of ink.
He brewed chemicals to create inks that changed hue when exposed to light and heat.
“I got obsessed,” says Small, now 41. “I thought all printing inks should change color.”
Two decades later his passion is paying dividends. Small’s Colorado Springs company, Chromatic Technologies Inc. (CTI), is booming while rivals in the ink industry are cutting back.
Music distributors, foodmakers and the beer giant MillerCoors are using Small’s color-changing ink to make their packaging stand out. CTI landed 120 new customers in 2008. Small expects sales to double this year, to $10 million.
CTI also produces inks that glow in the dark, change color in the sun or transform when tilted in the light. For a recent sweepstakes, Dairy Queen used CTI’s ink on its Blizzard cups; when placed in sunlight the cups revealed whether they were winners.
Photo by CTI.