Stealing a line from Victor Kiam, David Cohen liked SOMS Technologies L.L.C. so much he bought the company ”“ at least a piece of it.
SOMS appears to have sold Cohen”™s employer Standard Oil of Connecticut on the merits of its newfangled oil filters, which promise to extend by eight times the miles vehicles can travel between oil changes.
Now SOMS co-founders Miles Flamenbaum and Norbert Assion are working to break into the larger market for the filters they tested on the highways and byways of Fairfield County.
The Valhalla, N.Y.-based SOMS is not the only local company developing newfangled engine oils and systems. Stamford-based Green Earth Technologies Inc. last month inked an agreement for Home Depot to stock its G-Oil product for small, two-cycle engines like lawnmowers, which it touts as environmentally benign relative to standard oils.
Flamenbaum and Assion greased the wheels for SOMS while working for Medical Instill Technologies Inc., a New Milford-based seller of systems to fill vials of medicine and other products while keeping out contaminants.
Assion was fiddling with his own plan for a similar application in the vehicular market. The pair worked on the business plan for a few months and formerly founded the company in November 2006.
“Even at that time, you just saw the writing on the wall in terms of the increasing cost of oil and fuel, and the increasing interest in environment,” said Flamenbaum, who is CEO of SOMS. “It just screamed at me that it was just something that had to come to market.”
After booking “angel” funding in June 2007, SOMS entered a shared research arrangement with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), which freed up cash for on-road vehicle tests.
The company conducted its first local-area tests with Standard Oil of Connecticut. With a fleet of more than 120 trucks and vans, the company vies with the Petro subsidiary of Star Gas Partners L.P. of Stamford as the largest supplier of home heating oil in Connecticut.
“We have gotten great results with it and are going to expand our use of it,” said David Cohen, executive vice president of Standard Oil of Connecticut.
While the system costs more money to install, Cohen estimates Standard Oil could cut its oil change costs to a third of their current level, due to savings in filters, labor and oil disposal charges.
Stealing a line from former Remington Products CEO Victor Kiam, Cohen said he liked SOMS so much he invested in it. The partnership created the ironic circumstance of an oil company ”“ if only a heating oil vendor ”“ road testing oil-filter technology.
SOMS hired Westport-based NorthStar Partners Inc. to develop and execute a market strategy, working with Steven Kirchner, a former marketing executive with Valvoline Oil Co. Like Cohen, Kirchner liked what he saw enough to become chief operating officer.
In time, Flamenbaum sees SOMS moving beyond commercial vehicle fleets into the mainstream consumer market. In one sense, he is already there ”“ the company”™s filters are bolted into his own Audi.
“There are a lot of products in the sector that are in essence snake oil,” Flamenbaum said. “We set out to show people that we not only had a novel technology, but that it was credible and had a lot of research behind it.”
