User:Tcarll/Astro-Med, Inc.

History
From its origin in 1969 as an inventor and manufacturer of paper-based data acquisition recorders for aerospace and medical testing, Astro-Med, Inc. grew by focusing its development of digital technology on innovative new products. Today, Astro-Med’s products and services serve markets in label printing and packaging, ruggedized airborne printing, data acquisition, sleep diagnostics, and neurological instrumentation.

Company Profile
All Astro-Med products are derived from one underlying technology and manufactured in one location, but are marketed via three seperate sales and marketing staffs. Astro-Med's three brands, Test & Measurement, Grass Technologies, and QuickLabel Systems serve the test and measurement, neurophysiological testing, and packaging identification industries, respectively. By sharing its engineering, manufacturing, and administrative workforce among its three brands, Astro-Med achieves great efficiencies while successfully addressing disparate customers.

Astro-Med is a US-based company with sales and service offices in Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Germay. Astro-Med's consolidated revenue for the fiscal year ending January 31, 2009 was $71.783 million. It is a publically-held company traded on the NASDAQ stock market (ticker symbol: ALOT) and is a member of the |Russell Microcap® Index. Investor information can be found at the company's Investor Relations Web site (http://www.astro-medinc.com).

Test & Measurment Product Group
Astro-Med, Inc., Test & Measurement Product Group is a world leader in the data acquisition and recording market and has been developing and manufacturing recording systems since 1969. Its Test & Measurement Product Group recorders are used throughout the world in the most demanding applications, including telemetry and aerospace, power generation, automotive, transportation, primary metal mills, pulp and paper mills, telecommunications and heavy industry.

Test & Measurement Product Group customers include leading aircraft manufacturers and aerospace suppliers such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Rockwell Collins, Airbus and Honeywell; automotive manufacturers and suppliers such as Chrysler, Ford, General Motors, Renault and Robert Bosch; electrical utility companies and UPS manufacturers including Hydro Quebec, Florida Power & Light, American Power Conversion and Liebert; steel companies including United States Steel, Posco and Thyssen Krupp Steel AG; aluminum manufacturers such as Aluminum Company of America and Wise Alloys; and paper manufacturers including International Paper, Kimberly-Clark and Mead.

Products sold under the Astro-Med T&M brand include ToughWriter printers, ToughSwitches Ethernet switches, Everest telemetry recorders and Dash series data recorders. ToughWriter ruggedized page printers are used on the flight deck and in the cabins of military and commercial aircraft to print hard copies of airport maps, flight itineraries, weather maps, gate information and ground communications. ToughSwitch Ethernet switches are used in commercial and military aircraft and military ground vehicles to connect multiple computers or Ethernet compatible devices together. These products are ruggedized to comply with rigorous military and commercial flightworthiness standards for operation under extreme environmental conditions. The Company is currently furnishing ToughWriters for the Airbus A380, the Airbus A400M, Bombardier Global Vision Flight Deck, the Boeing C-17, B-787, B-777, B-747, B-767, and Lockheed C-130.

Other products sold under the Astro-Med brand include the Everest,used widely in the aerospace industry to monitor and track space vehicles, aircraft, missiles and other systems in flight. The Company’s Dash Series product line consists of a family of portable data recorders used as maintenance and troubleshooting instruments in pulp and paper mills, metal mills, power plants, automotive R&D centers and manufacturing plants. Dash Series include the Dash 2EZ, Dash 8X, Dash 8HF, Dash 8XPM, Dash 18, Dash 20HF and the Dash 32HF. Everest recorders are used principally in the telementary sector of the aerospace industry where they are used to monitor the readiness for flight of an aircraft or space vehicle.

Grass Technologies Product Group
Grass Instruments was founded in 1935 by Albert Grass, who developed the first commercially successful electroencephalograph (EEG). He designed three devices to amplify human EEG potentials, defining the foundation of Grass Instrument Company, and of EEG technology.

Today, Grass Technologies designs and develops leading edge products in the field of Neurology and other Life Science markets. These products include clinical and research instruments, software, and supplies that fulfill applications in EEG, Long-term Epilepsy Monitoring, and Sleep Monitoring.

Grass Technologies maintains its commitment to pioneer and deliver highly advanced yet economical solutions to the on-going needs in the Life Sciences and every sale is concluded with a guarantee of technical support and assistance. These principles have driven the success of Grass Technologies Product Group for over 70 years, and will continue to direct its growth into the next millennium.

Products sold under the Grass Technologies brand include electronic equipment, software and consumable products. The electronic equipment is primarily sold into the diagnostic markets of Sleep Disorders, Epilepsy Monitoring and Long-Term Monitoring (LTM). These products are sold to hospitals, free standing clinics and private physicians’ offices. The equipment sold to these markets detects and amplifies physiological signals, for review and analysis via special Grass software programs. Customers for the secondary equipment line are typically researchers in university based research centers or companies engaged in drug research. This equipment consists of diagnostic recording systems, stimulation devices and accessories. The consumable line of products offered by Grass are typically utilized with the systems described above. These products are predominantly made up of sensing devices that are used for the purpose of collecting physiological data from patients.

QuickLabel Systems
In 1994, Astro-Med, Inc invented the first available short-run digital color label printer under the QuickLabel Systems brand name, pioneering a new market for in-house color label printers. At a time when no other company offered customers alternatives to purchasing large quantities of identical labels, QuickLabel led the way with research and development into short-run color label printing technology. Fifteen years later, QuickLabel Systems leads this market with a full line of short-run, in-house digital color label printers and label printing supplies.

Products sold under the QuickLabel System brand include digital color label printers developed for short-run, in-house label printing; label substrates and thermal transfer ribbon, toner, and inkjet printing inks developed for use in label printers, and a range of labeling software, accessory products, and printing services. QuickLabel Systems sales and support staff serves customers at virtually every level of their label printing needs. With its broad range of entry-level, mid-range, and high-performance digital label printers, QuickLabel Systems is able to provide its customers a continuous path to upgrade to new products.

QuickLabel products are primarily sold to end-user manufacturers, processors, and retailers who package products on a Just-in-Time basis, who private label products and who label products in foreign languages for export markets. Users benefit from the time savings and cost-savings of printing their own labels digitally on-demand. Industries that commonly benefit from short-run label printing include apparel, chemicals, cosmetics, electronics, foods and beverages, medical products, and pharmaceuticals, among many other manufactured goods.

Current QuickLabel models include the Vivo!, a patented electrophotographic label printer developed to print on continuous rollstock for in-house label printing; the Zeo!, a lower-duty inkjet printer developed in partnership with Hewlett-Packard; and the Xe Series of color thermal transfer label printers including the QLS-4100 Xe, QLS-8100 Xe, QLS-2000 Xe and QLS-3000 Xe. The Xe Series of digital color thermal transfer label printers are unique in the industry in that they can be directly integrated with production line equipment and represent a novel, patented application of multi-color thermal transfer technology, historically only commercialized in single-color|barcode label printers. QuickLabel also sells and supports the Pronto! family of monochrome/barcode printers which utilize thermal transfer label printing technology.