There’s a high-tech company building old-school display boards

By year’s end, engineering design company Oat Foundry will leave its Bensalem hub and settle into a new 5,100-square-feet hub in Bridesburg.

The new River Wards space, located inside the Frankford Arsenal redevelopment is about four times the size of the company’s current location. Why the growth spurt? Oat Foundry’s flashy split-flap signs are in hot demand, CEO Mark Kuhn said, and they’re in need of more space to deliver on international orders.

“We’re so excited,” said Kuhn, a Drexel University grad, who projects the company’s headcount will grow from its current standing of 20 (in a mix of full-timers, part-timers and Drexel co-ops) to about 25 throughout 2019.

The company hasn’t taken on any venture capital to date, but has relied on revenue from its app-controlled split flap signs — at use inside Honeygrow, Starbucks and Chicago’s Wrigley Field — to fuel the expansion.

“That, and the projects we’re producing on the engineering side led us to run out of space in Bensalem,” Kuhn told Technical.ly.

A visual look at the conceptualizing, creation, and installation of a Split Flap in Wrigley Park’s Lucky Dorr. Visit our website if you would like to learn more about our commercial #Splitflap.#buildcoolstuff pic.twitter.com/osXdkNBCl4

— Oat Foundry™ (@OatFoundry) January 19, 2018

Oat Foundry, founded in 2013 by Kuhn alongside five other Drexel grads, is also developing an industrial cold brew coffee brewing system and a packaging automation equipment for La Colombe Coffee.

(Here’s Mayor Jim Kenney posing with one of the company’s signs at last year’s South by Southwest conference.)

The company will be the first official tenant in the 210,000-square-foot Frankford Arsenal complex, where six of the buildings are getting a makeover from real estate company Alliance HSP.

“Oat Foundry’s new space, with a mix of high-end office, engineering design studio space and light manufacturing, takes full advantage of the unique Frankford Arsenal offering,” Matt Handel, Director of Leasings & Acquisitions at the real estate company, said in an emailed statement.

Have a look inside the upcoming Oat Foundry space:

Come December, the company’s 20 staffers will be based out of this space. (Courtesy photo)

Inside the Frankfort Arsenal. (Courtesy photo)