Cages Capture Market

Siloam plant has

alternative solution

It may not be a better mousetrap, but Alternative Design Inc. of Siloam Springs has built a better cage for the rodent.

The 13-year-old business, located eight miles east of Siloam Springs, has far exceeded president Eddie Loyd’s expectations from its birth as an idea between he and his brother.

Later this summer, Alternative Design hopes to relocate to a new, 55,000-SF plant north of Siloam Springs on Arkansas Highway 204.

Alternative Design has two product lines: poultry cages made of a wire mess — PVC coated and stainless steel; and mouse cages that are molded with a high-tech plastic and steam sterilized.

The company actually manufactures eight animal cages in all — rodent, poultry, canine, feline, ferret, guinea, rabbit and primate.

The Loyd brothers’ original idea was born out of frustration.

“I was in the agriculture business raising pullets and commercial laying hens in cages,” Loyd said. “Those cages would eventually begin to rust out. And when I went to look to replace them, there just wasn’t any equipment like I wanted. So, I decided to build my own. And once I looked at mine, I realized it was the best stuff around.”

So Eddie and Bob, who left Alternative Design in 1994, set out to market their new product with a booth at the annual International Poultry Trade Show in Atlanta (in 1987).

Was it well received? Hardly.

“No,” Eddie Loyd said. “We were trying to sell to commercial people and our product was about 20 percent more expensive than what they were using. They were just not interested in spending more money.”

But the break came when a representative of the North Carolina State University poultry science department asked the Loyds if they would build a similar cage, only make it a holding cage on wheels for research purposes. Though not as intriguing to them as their original plan, the Loyds “begrudgingly” agreed.

As word of mouth spread, so did the demand for the Loyds’ product.

“That led us to the veterinary schools and that led to medical research,” Eddie Loyd said of the project for North Carolina State. “We continue to work in the commercial area building parts (for the cages), but on the research side we build for their specific needs.”

Alternative design is one of only eight companies in the world that builds transgenic mice cages. Transgenic means carrying genes transferred from another species or breed.

“One of our customers is the Children’s Hospital in Cincinnati,” Loyd said. “The mouse is genetically engineered as a model for cystic fibrosis. We sell [the cages] all over the U.S. and Canada, to pharmaceuticals companies like Upjohn, medical schools, Hubbard Farms in New Hampshire, etc. The University of Arkansas is a very good customer. Others are the University of Georgia, North Carolina State, Penn State, Texas A&M, Nebraska, Tennessee and many more.

“The biggest thing going for us are the rodent cages. We look to diversify into other product lines and manufacturing techniques. But we will probably expand our production deal with the rodent cages.”

Some of the poultry breeders are currently using the Alternative Design cages for exploring genetic development with artificial insemination and feed conversion.”

Loyd was born and raised in Springdale, where his father, Robert James “Jack” Loyd had one of the first poultry processing plants in the state in the 1950’s. And he has kept Alternative Design as a “family project,” with his wife, Georga, the company’s corporate secretary and marketing manager. His son, Grant, and sister-in-law, Euna Loyd, are also employed there.

The new plant will be about five times larger than the current location. Currently, Alternative Design employees 42 people, but Loyd expects that figure to reach around 75 in the “next two or three years.”

Loyd said Alternative Design has really “taken off” since 1994, adding, “since then the business has grown one thousand percent.”

And while Loyd would not disclose his company’s annual sales figures, he did say it will gross “in the multi-millions.”

“I remember my dreams starting out,” he said. “The first one was to make [the business] worth $500,000. The second was to make it worth $1 million. I’ll just say that we have exceeded all of our expectations. But I’ll also say that we are far from satisfied.”