Over the past few years, Delkin Devices has been climbing higher on the list of San Diego County's largest manufacturers. But it's not because the 70-employee firm is adding hordes of new workers.

It's because manufacturers are rapidly disappearing from high-priced San Diego, with more and more companies opting to build things in cheaper locales, often overseas.

Since 1986, Delkin has sidestepped the exodus of manufacturing from the region. Annual sales for the privately held company, which makes flash memory cards and a slew of other products for digital cameras, are estimated at $50 million.

Delkin has survived through an intricate tap dance that relies on speed and innovation. The company has made - and later abandoned when competitors drove down prices - dozens of products over the years. It relishes doing what others won't, such as taking last-minute orders.

For example, on Dec. 10, it agreed to make and deliver 5,000 flash memory cards for a customer before year's end - a time when most competitors were ramping down for the holidays.

Its latest hit is SensorScope, a system for cleaning digital single lens reflex, or SLR, sensors inside cameras. The system won an award from the Digital Imaging Marketing Association for its leading-edge design.

"They are a very innovative company," said David Rivera, general manager of George's Camera Shop in San Diego. "They have created new accessory technology for the photo industry. The SensorScope is an example. It gives the customer the ability to clean their digital camera sensors."

Delkin's product lineup ranges from eFilm brand of flash memory cards, LCD glare guards and camera batteries to gold-plated, Archival Gold CDs and DVDs for storing images. The CDs have a 300-year life.

"Sometimes they're ahead of the curve," Rivera said. "The (Archival) Gold CD they make, most people need to be educated to what they are. They don't realize that the over-the-counter CDs don't last. Two or three years later their data are gone."

Martin Wood, president and chief executive of Delkin, said Archival Gold CDs are now popular with museums, law enforcement and professional photographers who realize they must keep images for long periods.

Wood expects the market to improve as more amateur photographers realize they need to back up their digital photos on discs that last more than a few years.

Delkin started out small. Wood was working for an Asian electronics distributor and wanted to get into the flash memory business. The owner of the company thought flash memory was too volatile an industry. He allowed Wood, an avid photographer, to start up his flash production operation on the side.

Within a short time, Wood left the distribution company to concentrate on Delkin full time. Today, Delkin's eFilm flash memory cards are sold at 2,800 independent camera stores in the United States. It is the seventh-largest customer for Samsung flash chips domestically. The company also sells to independent camera stores in Europe.

The company also makes flash memory cards for industrial users. San Diego's DriveCam, which makes onboard cameras to monitor driver behavior in fleet vehicles, uses Delkin memory cards. They also are used in hand-held inventory control devices that read bar codes on products at distribution warehouses.

Some of these other products come from unusual places. The company sells Delkin-brand camera batteries. Ironically, it sells them for less than the brand-name manufacturers, which have chosen batteries as a product for large markups.

Delkin also sells glare guards for the liquid crystal display screens on digital cameras. While it doesn't make these products, it found a way to package and display them in camera stores that caught on with consumers. In the first 90 days after it had introduced the guards, it sold 40,000 units. The most the previous distributor of the product had ever sold in the same time frame was 6,000 units, Wood said.

Over the years, Wood has developed a system for innovation. He hires new product specialists, usually recent graduates from local universities, to research and develop a marketing program for products Delkin has in its pipeline.

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