By RON BARTIZEK (rbartizek@leader.net)

AVOCA – Tom Craig built his business by showing – every chance he got – the capability of the water filters he sells.

“I did a lot of demonstrations in a lot of houses,” he said Tuesday at his office on Main Street. A few minutes later the chief executive officer of ODAK Corp. conducted one more for a visiting reporter and photographer.

After second in command Mike Hapersberger filled an empty fish tank with tap water, Craig added a can of non-alcoholic beer, a generous helping of garlic powder and two packets of Kool-Aid for color. Then he switched on a pump that drew the stinky red mixture through the company’s K-500 Drinking Water System.

Remarkably, the filtered liquid that immediately began flowing into another container was clear, odorless and tasteless. Even chlorine that had been added to the municipal water was removed. Or, as Craig corrected, “There’s no taking it out, it’s converted” into harmless chloride ions.

That’s the small end of Craig’s business, but it’s impressive enough to have helped launch a new venture that landed a customer on the other side of the United States. In late June ODAK delivered a water filtration trailer to the University of Southern California, where it will be used to produce safe drinking water during emergencies such as the aftermath of an earthquake.

The enthusiastic 67-year-old gets almost giddy when describing the California demonstration that clinched the deal. “That was a knee-knocking experience,” he said. After performing his H2O alchemy before more than 20 observers, one asked to have a closer look.

“He actually thought it was a gimmick,” Craig said, and the skeptic proceeded to check under the table for a hidden source of the clean water. Then he asked to taste it.

“We kind of took a leap of faith,” said William Regensburger, the university’s director of fire safety and emergency planning. After a staff member found ODAK online, Regensburger spoke with Craig and some of the company’s other customers before ordering the trailer.

“This thing is really a godsend for disaster preparation,” he said. Students were provided with bottled water for three days after the last earthquake that affected the campus, but storing enough water on campus would be difficult. “Now I guess we can just run a line into the swimming pool.”

Craig sees a bright future for the mobile filter trailers, which he thinks could fill a need for drinkable water after chemical spills, bacteria contamination, other natural or manmade disasters, “even anthrax,” he said. “I believe every town should have one standing by. Every fire department should have one.”

Depending on the size and filtering capacity, a trailer that includes an onboard laboratory can sell for more than $300,000. The USC model is more modest, costing $28,000; it can provide 15 gallons per minute from nearly any source.

Other companies produce mobile water filtering systems, Craig said. “We’re bucking heads with some big people.” But he says none use the type of filter ODAK does.

Craig’s ace in the hole is the compressed activated carbon-block element that can filter out contaminants as small as 0.10 micron. To understand how small that is, a human hair is about 80 microns across. He buys the elements from a company that sells under-sink filter units, just as ODAK does.

“They manufacture for our company under our label. What I’ve done is take that and expand it into a different area,” by interconnecting units in multiples of up to 100, with a corresponding increase in output.

In the beginning, Craig was drawn to the business by a combination of opportunity and fascination with drinking water. In addition to home demonstrations, he provided free water analysis to anyone who would accept it. “I’ve tested most of the schools around here,” he said, often finding traces of lead that leached in from old pipes and soldered fittings. Some of those schools did not buy filters, but still purchase water filtered and bottled by ODAK.

While not having a formal education in science or chemistry, Craig effortlessly describes a wide range of possible contaminants, their sources and how to get them out of water, knowledge gained by experience and in training sessions sponsored by the maker of his lab instruments.

Regensburger didn’t care about academic credentials. “All I know is when he showed up it worked great.”

The business has not always gone smoothly. “It’s not a cheap unit,” Craig says of the bread-and-butter home filter. He was charging $289 in the 1970s and that made it a tough sell. “That’s why we do so many demonstrations.”

Today the $339 price tag seems more reasonable and demand has grown as more people become aware of the dangers that might lurk in their drinking water.

While still active in the home market, ODAK’s business has shifted. “We do a lot of residential, but the commercial end is taking off,” Craig said. Customers include Sallie Mae, local state police barracks and even the Kirby Health Center.

Craig sees the trailers as another market niche that he can fill to expand the size of ODAK from its present 20 employees. We’re not that large a company yet, but we intend to be,” he said with characteristic confidence.

And about the name. “It’s special but it’s not water-related,” Craig said. As he was trying to come up with a company name the family’s dog died. Its name was Kado, which spelled backwards makes Odak.

Company: ODAK Corp.

What: “We’re in the filtration business,” says CEO Tom Craig

Where: 1014 Main St., Avoca

Contact: (888) 901-6325 (www.odak.com)

Ron Bartizek, Times Leader business editor, may be reached at 970-7157.

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