Notable very small loudspeaker companies (other than Tekton!)

+2 for Tyler Acoustics
@twoleftears 
It’s been too long since I’ve listened to Dunlavys to compare, but the Tyler D2’s I owned were very open and clear sounding. Maybe not the deepest bass but top to bottom a great coherent speaker. I thought the price to performance ratio was off the charts. Only sold them to try something different and a little smaller but I just might go to Ty’s Highland line.

Let me add Fern & Roby and Deja Vu Audio.

“So the questions remains, how do many of these tiny companies rival and sometimes surpass the likes Revel, B&W and others? Is it the genius of the individual designer? A speaker "auteur", rather than a gaggle of cooks.”

I will answer this question,after many yrs in this hobby and seeing many small companies come and go.It’s almost always the “genius”
and extreme passion that drive these individuals to design and build something different but also something very good as well.

The ones that truly make a name for themselves and sustain for the long haul make the difference with solid engineering and go to extreme’s in customer service to make sure every customer is a happy camper.

Most that sustain don’t overwhelm their customers with multiple designs that look basically the same and are based on so-called hype and over the top statements and marketing.
They only concentrate their efforts on a couple of designs at a time and they nail their design in overall Implementation before they start selling them,meaning that every customer that buys a pair gets the same as the next guy and they aren’t producing just some kind of work in progress speaker that the buying public foots the bill for.

Then as they build a solid customer base they may come out with new and different models that exceed their previous efforts and they do this while being truthful to their customers and not over promising a delivery timeframe that will never be achieved.

You can generally tell when a company isn’t going to make it in their own country,especially the USA,is when they concentrate their marketing strategies in other countries such as Europe and Asia and their sales drop tremendously in the USA.

Enjoy,
Kenny.

+2 Joseph Audio. The genius is in the implementation. 

Meaning no disrespect for Joseph Audio, but I don't think of them as a "very small speaker company."

I thought they were reasonably successful, like Vandersteen, etc. Am I mistaken?