Emerging entrepreneur: Sue and Anthony Moravec.

• Author: Johnson, J. Douglas
• Position: Indiana's Entrepreneurs of the Year

EMERGING ENTREPRENEUR

Sue and Anthony Moravec

Applied Laboratories, Inc.

Columbus

If you are reading this through contact lenses, the Moravecs, Anthony and Sue, may be helping you to see better.

Applied Laboratories, inc., the Moravecs' 5-year-old Columbus company, does $5.5 million in sales a year by daily packing and distributing 60,000 cans of saline solution contact lens disinfectant. The contract manufacturer and packager expects to reach $50 million in sales over the next five years by expanding past traditional contact-lens care products into metered dose-delivery systems that have other pharmaceutical applications.

Applied has 30 employees and has recently expanded its laboratory to 40,000 square feet. To keep its products from damaging Earth's ozone layer, it uses environmentally friendly nitrogen as a propellent instead of fluorocarbons and hydrocarbons. Says Anthony Moravec, Applied's president: "The production of environmentally safe container systems for dispensing products under pressure is an industry with unlimited growth potential."

In the boardroom, the Moravecs' responsibilities are fairly well-defined. Creative Anthony is the idea man and reasonable Sue makes the schemes work out. Both owners answer customer service calls every day in order to...