SUGAR CITY, Idaho’s Caisson Laboratories building big rep

Some things you expect in a town of just 1,245. The hardware store. The water tower. The absence of traffic.

Travel Sugar City’s Center Street on your minute-long journey from city limit to city limit, and you’ll see just that.

But at the heart of town in a former convenience store across the street from the gas station you’ll find something unexpected — Caisson Laboratories. http://www.caissonlabs.com/

It’s hardly a household name even in its own neighborhood. But if Gordon Reese has his way, this 3-year-old manufacturer of cell tissue culture media will be the brand of choice for university and commercial laboratories.

Reese hopes during the next several years it will outgrow its current building, build again and add employees, including biochemists, to develop more products.

With the amiability of the high school science teacher you liked, Reese, 33, the company’s chief operations officer explains the terms and concepts he and six co-workers take for granted.

Cell tissue culture media are nutrients — sugars, vitamins and minerals — used to grow animal and plant cells for research or production purposes, Reese said.

The potato industry, for example, uses cell tissue cultures to develop virus-resistant potatoes, and the forest industry uses them to produce ‘‘elite” lines of trees, he said.

Caisson Laboratories’ role in that process is to provide the needed materials for researchers to work their magic. It is a hardware store for plant and animal scientists and researchers.

‘‘A lot of the big manufacturers don’t get into the smaller markets,” said John Carman, professor in the plant science department at Utah State University in Logan. ‘‘Caisson Laboratories is making good inroads.”

Carman developed the media used by the company, which also is developing its own media specifically formulated for cotton and orchids.

Jorge Maldonado, one of the company’s customers and owner of Biodonado, which experiments with ornamental shrubs and native trees, found Caisson Laboratories at a trade show. He said he’s been happy with his dealings with the Sugar City company.

‘‘These guys offer good stuff at a great price,” he said.

Reese said the company does most of its marketing at trade shows and, in the past two years, has brought in more than 300 university and commercial clients.

‘‘That’s 500 percent growth a year, but any start-up could do that,” Reese said. He’s more proud of another accomplishment: ‘‘This year, we’ll see our first positive cash flow.”

Reese got his start as an undergraduate in a lab run by Carman at Utah State, where Reese earned a bachelor’s degree in plant biotechnology.

‘‘Working in his lab helped me decide my major,” Reese said. ‘‘He is a real mentor to me. He showed me the possibilities.”

Caisson Laboratories is a newcomer to a relatively new industry. ‘‘Historically, those who do this kind of work made their own media,” Carman said. ‘‘It’s only been in the last 15 years that companies started mass-producing this stuff.”

His company is also among the first to join the fledgling Idaho Life Sciences Corridor, an initiative with the aim of bringing more biotechnology and life sciences companies to the state.

It begs the question: Why Idaho?

He could locate, say, to San Diego, ‘‘and that would put me close to about a dozen customers,” he said. ‘‘I’d still have to ship to the rest.”

On the Net:

Caisson Laboratories: http://www.caissonlabs.com/

http://www.helenair.com/articles/2003/08/17/business/e03081703_01.txt