Western Montana InBusiness Monthly – Made in Montana graces products never dreamed of when program began

Thirty years ago, when I launched into my first flurry of made-in-Montana Christmas shopping, the choices came down to copper teapots and jars of Flathead cherry jam.

So I wasn’t sure what we’d find when the Missoulian’s reporters and photographers set out last month to meet today’s purveyors of Montana-made products.

Wow.

By SHERRY DEVLIN

We found tens of thousands of white-tipped pine cones on the shores of Flathead Lake. And Web pages in Whitefish. And recumbent bicycles shipped worldwide from Darby. And guns, wood pellets, teleconferencing systems, and wine, pasta, tea and spices.

We could’ve gone on and on.

Turns out, the state of Montana has been promoting its wares since 1916, when the Associated Made in Montana Advertisers was founded. Today, the Made in Montana program resides in the state Department of Commerce and is widely recognized by its little blue stickers: Made in Montana and Grown in Montana.

It’s big business – far bigger than those teapots and jars of jam I bought family and friends that first holiday season in Missoula. Montana businesses export $614 million worth of wheat each year, $264 million worth of inorganic chemicals and $170 of industrial machinery. For starters.

And the western Montana businesspeople our reporters and photographers visited with during the past month account for millions more in Made in Montana export dollars.

In Polson, reporter Vince Devlin found pine cone broker Monte Marengo rushing to fill an order for 100,000 white-tipped cones and another 20,000 "natural" cones. They’re all natural, of course – except for the part where he had to drill holes in the bottom of all 120,000 cones so sticks could be inserted.

Marengo’s been in the business of buying and selling pine cones for 20 years, and there’s no end in sight.

Newer to western Montana is Reed Gregerson, owner of The ZaneRay Group, which build’s Web sites for big-name businesses, including Billabong, Horny Toad, Patagonia and fly-fishing giant Sage.

Gregerson and company are located in Whitefish for one reason: "The skiing’s good, the fishing’s fantastic, and it’s just a groovy place," he told reporter Michael Jamison. Nothing quite like getting those creative juices flowing up on Big Mountain.

Other businesses cater more to the Montana mystique, including Dan Cooper’s firearms business (Cooper Arms) in Stevensville.

"Popularity comes from making a great product," Cooper told reporter Lori Grannis. "But we also get a pretty big boost from the ‘Made in Montana’ thing."

Others, including LaSalle Wood Products north of Kalispell, make use of Montana’s natural resources. What’s cool about Mike and Jeannie Alt’s business is the way they use every fiber of wood in a tree: for landscape timbers, fence posts, rough-sawn lumber and – finally, but most importantly – tiny wood heating pellets.

"It’s an efficient business," reporter Michael Jamison said, "one you might say uses the whole buffalo."

And while times are tough at pretty much every place of business, we found these stories heartening in a day when the words "recession" and "crisis" make their way into so many stories.

As InBusiness columnist Barbara Neilan pointed out, small businesses are the backbone of America’s economy and nowhere is that more evident than in western Montana. And our recovery, she wrote, "will be directly related to the strength and vitality of small business."

And the incredible, enduring strength, vitality, creativity and know-how of western Montana businesspeople.

Contact editor Sherry Devlin at (406) 523-5250 or by e-mail at [email protected].

SHERRY DEVLIN Is editor of the Missoulian and Western Montana InBusiness Monthly.

Full Edition: http://www.mtinbusiness.com/inbiz-0811/