Aviation firm lands among Boise’s top small businesses

Company sells night vision systems, trains pilots in their use

Aviation Specialties Unlimited President Mike Atwood sits in the company’s helicopter, which has a modified cockpit to support operation of night vision goggles. AVU uses the helicopter for testing, demonstration and charter services. They were recognized Thursday at the Boise Chamber of Commerce http://www.boisechamber.org Small Business of the Year Awards Luncheon.

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Small-business winners

Aviation Specialties Unlimited Inc.
President: Mike Atwood.
Sells night vision goggles.
Category: 1-10 employees.

Clima-Tech Corp.
Owners: Darwin Roy and Debra Johnson
Provides heating and air- conditioning equipment maintenance.
Category: 11-50 employees

inTouch Solutions
Owner: Paul R. Unger
Provides telephone systems and communications services.
Category: 51-100 employees

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Joe Jaszewski / The Idaho Statesman

http://www.idahostatesman.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040611/NEWS02/406110301/1029

Boise’s Aviation Specialties Unlimited sells the ANVIS-9 (aviator night vision imaging system) night vision goggles to emergency medical services, law enforcement and military clients worldwide.

Mike Atwood spent 13 years handling airborne security and surveillance for U.S. Department of Energy nuclear materials and sites.

Predictably, Atwood chose to stay in aviation when in 1995 he founded Aviation Specialties Unlimited Inc.

He ran the company out of one room in his home in Idaho Falls.

On Thursday, Aviation Specialties was honored at the annual Boise Chamber of Commerce Small Business Awards Luncheon when it was named the 2004 Small Business of the Year for a company with one to 10 employees.

The company, now based in Boise, sells night vision systems, or night goggles, to federal, state and local law enforcement agencies and emergency medical services in the U.S. and overseas.

It also trains pilots in the proper use of the equipment and handles cockpit modifications to ensure that the aircraft’s interior lighting system is compatible with the goggles.

Overseas, it sells and provides training in Mexico, Norway, Taiwan and Colombia, where its trainees handle 24-hour-a-day airborne security for the country’s largest oil pipeline.

"That’s what I’ve been doing most of my adult life, aviation and aviation security," Atwood says.

Aviation Specialties was one of hundreds of area small businesses that drew kudos from chamber chairman Dan Stevens. He praised the company for taking risks to "create the jobs and offer the services."

Small Business Administration district director Tom Bergdoll said small businesses create three out of four new jobs in the U.S. and employ half of all American workers.

The winner in the chamber’s small business category of companies with 11 to 50 employees was Clima-Tech Corp., a heating and air-conditioning equipment firm.

The company specializes in equipment maintenance services for commercial accounts in southern Idaho, Oregon, and southwestern Washington.

For companies with more than 51 employees, Small Business of the Year honors went to inTouch Solutions, a telecommunications outfit that has grown more than 100 percent in the past three years.

Today, 85 employees in 13 northwestern locations offer telephone, computer integration, call center management, wireless, multisite networking and desktop management services.