The tale of the Colorado River has become tangled in part because of its evolution into two distinct water realities, that of the Upper and Lower River Basins. One operates in a deficit relative to its annual water allocation, the other a surplus. Arizona, Nevada and California are managing the river in reverse, backtracking to limits long since exceeded. Some of the water belongs to the Upper Basin, its origin. Indifferent before, these headwater states now cast a wary eye not only toward the Lower Basin but to each other’s plans to develop more from the river. Self-interest is replacing the collegial attitudes of the past.
To further complicate matters, water interests within the Upper Basin states have yet to fully reconcile their differences. This is certainly the case here, in Colorado, but it is played out similarly in states like California.
I described the rising tensions in the headwater states to Rita Sudman, Executive Director of the California Water Education Foundation, who calmly replied via email, “I think most people involved in the Western water debate will agree that flexibility is the key, that the ability to trade, transfer and make new types of arrangements including different types of storage, more conservation and deals, is all part of the mix to get more water to certain users.”
In other words, welcome to the party.
California is steeled not only to rough and tumble inter-basin river tussles with states like Arizona but to the type of in-state competition simmering in Colorado. Sudman’s most recent Colorado River Project River Report outlines the embattled state of the Quantification Settlement Agreement (QSA), written to “settle California’s chronic overuse of the Colorado River” as it winds its way through a predictable litany of court challenges.
A divisive component of the QSA, one that may ring familiar to Colorado planners, involves a “water conservation/transfer agreement between Imperial Irrigation District (IID) and the San Diego County Water Authority.” IID manages water for California’s verdant Imperial Valley, which comes entirely from the Colorado River. It’s a California ag gem that shines to the tune of more than $1 billion a year in crop production.
But as with Western Slope interests here who chafe at water transfers east, there’s push-back. QSA “is not popular in the Imperial Valley, where proprietary feelings about water have always run strong and there is a belief that the QSA was foisted upon the Valley with less than favorable results.”
Michael Cohen, senior research associate with the Pacific Institute, adds, “Some people don’t want to see any water leave the valley.”
Familiar indeed. Move the conversation a thousand or so miles east, into the Rocky Mountains along the same river, change the valley reference from Imperial to Grand, and the sentiment is nearly identical.
Colorado is also hard at work to establish more modern water-sharing mechanisms. Denver Water and 40 Western Slope water suppliers recently hammered out the Colorado River Cooperative Agreement, signed in May. Among the provisions of the so-called “global” agreement is a commitment that “any new water project by Denver Water in the Colorado River Basin will be developed only in cooperation with those entities impacted by the development.” In others words, we’ll stop taking Western Slope water without asking.
What’s changed is that for the first time, Colorado faces a water supply gap: There won’t be enough to meet the needs of users, at current levels, in the near future. Collaboration is in everyone’s best interest.
But the agreement may quickly be tested.
As mentioned, Colorado and the other headwater states are entitled to more water. Colorado’s share may be as much as a million acre-feet, almost a third as much as it is using now – lots or water by any estimate.
Yet there’s a lack of consensus among officials here whether the state should aggressively pursue this water. There’s fear of a Compact “call,” where future data indicates we miscalculated, are using water earmarked for the Lower Basin and are asked to curtail use. There’s deeply rooted opposition to the prospect of more growth along the Front Range. Certainly any new supply will find its way to urban users and developers.
And there’s a fear that further west-to-east diversions of any kind will diminish business and lifestyle prospects in Colorado’s Western Slope communities. Without certainty as to how the state would move to develop more water out of the river, and despite the “global” agreement, opposition to developing the state’s remaining Compact allocation may well materialize – from within Colorado.
In California or Colorado, in the tale of the Upper and Lower Basins, the search for common ground – among basins, states, friends and neighbors – continues to be elusive.
https://mfginsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/MFG-INSIDER-word-logo2.png00Bart Taylorhttps://mfginsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/MFG-INSIDER-word-logo2.pngBart Taylor2020-05-21 22:56:552023-08-10 09:22:30Search for consensus elusive in Colorado River Basin
Brad Gebhard, president of Los Angeles-based American Apparel, will keynote the 3rd annual Apparel + Lifestyle Manufacturing Summit next Wednesday, September 28 in Denver, Colorado at the newly remodeled McNichols Building in Civic Center park.
Gebhard appears at an interesting time not only for the American Apparel, North America’s largest apparel company, but also for the industry, said Bart Taylor, publisher of CompanyWeek, host of the event.
“The 3rd annual Summit occurs at a pivotal time for apparel and consumer product manufacturing and for local brands and communities,” Taylor said. “So many entrepreneurs want to launch lifestyle and fashion brands here, in the West. And established companies are evaluating whether domestic production is now viable. The question is, have we reached a point where today it’s possible to go ‘back to the future’ and support American industry in a meaningful way?”
American Apparel is today evaluating this question on a larger scale. The company has implemented a major reorganization after ousting it’s controversial founder, Dov Charney, and Gebhard, alongside new CEO Paula Schneider, have set the company on a new path as questions persist about AA’s ability to continue manufacturing in Los Angeles. California’s new labor laws have made that prospect increasingly challenging.
It all happens as industry players in Colorado are working hard to reconstitute supply-chain resources that would make apparel and consumer product manufacturing competitive on an international stage. Gebhard will join other company founders to discuss a blueprint for growth in Colorado and the West, and the future of American apparel manufacturing.
Apparel and consumer product designers, brands, production firms, business advocates and other community representatives are invited to attend the Summit. Industry professionals attending the Outdoor Industry Association Rendevous conference, or COILS, hosted by the Colorado Office of Outdoor Recreation, are also invited to attend. Registration fees for either event also included attendance to the Summit.
For more information or to register, click here, or contact Leslie Pera, CompanyWeek media, at lpera@companyweek.com, or 303-522-3906.
https://mfginsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/MFG-INSIDER-word-logo2.png00Bart Taylorhttps://mfginsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/MFG-INSIDER-word-logo2.pngBart Taylor2020-05-21 22:40:002020-05-21 22:40:00American Apparel president Brad Gebhard to keynote Colorado Apparel + Lifestyle Manufacturing Summit
SALT LAKE CITY, September 30, 2015 — CompanyWeek Media announced this week that Alicia Cunningham has joined the content development team as business writer and market ambassador.
Bart Taylor, founder and publisher of CompanyWeek, said Knight will lead local content development efforts with the aim of highlighting Utah’s growing manufacturing sector, in keeping with the editorial mission of the two-year old media franchise.
“We’re excited that Alicia will be our editorial point person in Utah, something we’ve really needed to more effectively chronicle the contributions Utah manufacturers to the regional and national economy,” Taylor said. “To have found someone with her background is of course a huge bonus.”
Cunningham graduated from Brigham Young University with a B.A. in Public Relations and a B.A. in Political Science. She also graduated from George Mason School of Law with a specialty in International Trade and is an Associate Member of the Virginia Bar. Cunningham spent many years in politics and has worked for a state party, two senators and a congressman as well as the Legislative Counsel for a major trade association. She now divides her time raising four (gorgeous!) children and working as a business and legal writer.
Taylor said Cunningham will develop editorial profiles of growing Utah manufacturers, coordinate photo shoots with the publication’s network of local photographers, and act as liaison for communications between industry and market stakeholders and relevant contacts at CompanyWeek.
Cunningham’s work debuts this week with a profile of Salem, Utah’s Bear Country Bees.
CompanyWeek is the “voice of the Rocky Mountain manufacturing economy,” focusing on companies and business leaders in Colorado and Utah shaping the modern manufacturing economy. A Utah-specific email newsletter, linked to a content hub featuring Utah businesses, is the core, digital media product. Plans are to host market-specific events in 2016.
CompanyWeek Utah was launched in cooperation with the Utah Manufacturing Association, the longstanding resource and advocate for regional manufacturers.
In early April,CompanyWeek checked in with several manufacturers about pandemic-related impacts.
A little more than a month later, here’s part two of the series. We asked manufacturers for a quick read on how COVID-19 is impacting manufacturing.
Highlights:
PPE has provided a bridge for some manufacturers, though suppliers project hospital providers will return to buying from China.
Interest in on-demand manufacturing in consumer-related manufacturing is again heightened. Can suppliers deliver?
The crisis will only increase interest in 3D printing and other technology.
Consumer product manufacturers in sporting goods have taken a significant hit.
Natural and organic food brands stand to gain — at least those with momentum before the crisis.
Distillers and brewers face an existential threat after embracing taproom-centric strategies.
Here’s a sampling, in their own words:
Contract Manufacturing
Connie Huffa, co-founder, Fabdesigns, Agoura Hills, California
Products: Knitted fabrics
We work with many brands, individuals, and companies that want to make 3D textile products because they save almost all of the production waste that goes into landfills during the production process. What we’ve been seeing is a movement away from seasonal merchandise development and a flock toward seasonless products.
We’ve also experienced companies interested in on-demand manufacturing, which is making things when they’re ordered and not warehousing literally tons of perishable fabrics.
We’ve also been hearing rumblings of made-to-measure for years. The issues challenging the marketplace are that of fit, since fit is subjective and each individual is finicky. There are companies trying to make products to measure in virtual reality, but the challenges are vast in making sure that what the customer sees on the screen matches not only their virtual expectations, but their fit expectations. If returns are a problem now, they will likely increase with made-to-measure. Made on-demand is different and that seems more viable.
The entire manufacturing industry, including fashion, is indeed headed to a new world of buying, making, and selling. It’s about time; there’s so much waste in fashion and manufacturing industries, generally.
We see the continued buildup of medical device and PPE safety stocks driving production demands for a long time. A potential silver lining to the COVID crisis will be the improved speed with which medical device OEMs and tier one suppliers are working to approve and validate IQ, OQ, and PQ. Historically, this has been a slow, arduous process, but the current situation has opened people’s eyes to the inefficiencies inherent in “the way we have always done it.”
We don’t see massive changes from how we operate today, just an imperative to execute on strategies like cross-training employees, implementing flexible machine automation, and upholding quality systems that can be applied across industry sectors. Everyone’s favorite buzzword is “pivot.” Now is our opportunity to see if we can pivot quickly enough to onboard new work and position ourselves for the 2021-22 resurgence.
I definitely think we’re going to see increased demand for domestic manufacturing. In fact, we’re already seeing it from brands that have finally had enough of the heartache of producing overseas. It’s really been one problem after another for companies that rely on a Chinese supply chain.
The brands that we’ve seen perform the best during this time are the ones that have loyal direct-to-consumer businesses. These brands are not relying on brick-and-mortar stores. Brands like these need to be extremely responsive to their customers and they need to order in manageable quantities. Being in Los Angeles, we’re able to offer that to them.
And of course, a huge change in fashion is face masks everywhere. The innovation and creativity around face masks, which have suddenly become a necessary accessory, have really just begun.
Industrial & Equipment
Trent Brown, president, Masterbrands, Salt Lake City
Products: Industrial uniforms
We were able to pivot our business very quickly to medical PPE early on in this pandemic. Because we have had manufacturing here in Salt Lake for over 28 years, Masterbrands was uniquely positioned to help fill some of the shortages left by the Chinese manufacturers.
I’m a bit cynical about whether or not the medical industry will actually reshore medical PPE as I’ve been in business through several of these events and every time it’s pretty short-lived. We seem to have very short memories here in the U.S. and I expect everyone will go back to buying their PPE from China.
The hospitals turned their buying decisions over to buying groups many years ago and the buying groups have a lot at stake because buying from China allows them to mark up the goods so they can make a profit when they sell to the hospitals. Truth is that the hospitals could buy direct from U.S. manufacturers and probably pay the same without the buying groups markup.
In the last year, we opened a new 93,000-square-foot facility in Fort Collins to answer the call to reshore manufacturing of medical devices. What’s been difficult is changing the mindset of hospitals. They are very happy to buy from China if that means the lowest price for the hospital.
The challenge is we cannot manufacture in the U.S. and offer hospitals the same prices they are receiving from China. We would like to think we can automate to become more efficient, but not if we can’t get the sales volume to justify the automation.
I fear that hospitals will continue to buy from China because they are under pressure to buy the least expensive product. We need help from the government to level the playing field. Tariffs for medical devices, drugs, and bioscience products must be put into place to make Chinese products the same price as what we can manufacture in the U.S. This will prevent hospitals from falling back into buying the cheapest medical device and drug for their hospitals.
We are prepared at Eldon James and at WilMarc to scale our manufacturing to meet the demand of reshoring. We hope this is the wakeup call needed to source critical products from U.S. manufacturers.
We are very hopeful that we have felt enough pain and uncertainty caused by having our drugs, medical devices, and bioscience products manufactured in China to effect change.
The pandemic has created incredible opportunities for natural and organic food brands as the demand for healthy nutritional products has skyrocketed. Most food manufacturers that sell at retail have seen demand for their products double or triple and their online sales have soared from 200 percent to 800 percent over plan.
The biggest challenge facing these brands today now seems to be in the supply chain and distribution network keeping up with demand. Any food brand that is shelf-stable and easily shipped is probably going to see continued sales growth online. Consumers seem to be exploring alternative products as well, including the plant-based meat options already available.
The biggest issue we have is that our path to market has shifted significantly. In Colorado, we’re in need of regulatory reform to enable direct-to-consumer shipping. Other states have dropped barriers to shipping direct. (Editor’s note: Five states — Arizona, Florida, Hawaii, Nebraska, and New Hampshire — currently authorize the direct shipping of spirits.)
Like craft brewers, our industry also embraced taproom strategies. As a result, with such a young industry — the majority of companies are under five years — I suspect there will be casualties. To weather weeks and weeks without that high-margin business is a challenge.
We have been able to sell bottles the whole time, much like a liquor store. Delivery and to-go cocktails are new and we are allowed to sell out of the tasting room or deliver or both as long as it is an employee of the distillery.
Consumer & Lifestyle
Brian Fruit, president, Lizard Skins, American Fork, Utah
Products: Sporting tape and accessories
Lizard Skins has not been immune to the impact of the coronavirus. We had to furlough a large percentage of our team, but were able to bring a huge part of them back with the help of the PPP.
Our cycling division is doing pretty well. We are manufacturing and packaging product for immediate sale as well as gearing up for future business. Our sports divisions are quiet. Our sales team is checking in with all our customers to see how they are doing. Most are closed but they appreciate us making the effort to check on them.
We are hopeful we will start to see some sports start up again soon.
During this time when sales have been so negatively impacted, we have worked really hard on designing and creating new products. Our pipeline of products to sell will be incredible for the second half of 2020 hopefully leading into an amazing 2021.
Lizard Skins is a financially conservative company at its core. We hate watching sales plummet, but we are still in a solid financial situation, paying our vendors and employees on time and preparing for the future.
https://mfginsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/MFG-INSIDER-word-logo2.png00Bart Taylorhttps://mfginsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/MFG-INSIDER-word-logo2.pngBart Taylor2020-05-21 22:33:162020-05-21 22:33:16How COVID-19 is Impacting Manufacturers, Part II
Alchemy changed the game by manufacturing composite bike frames in the U.S. Growth is now driving a global supply chain.
Owner Ryan Cannizzaro founded Alchemy Bicycles in Austin, Texas, in 2008 and moved the company to Denver in 2012 to be at the epicenter of the outdoor industry boom.
The decision to move was easier than Cannizzaro’s choice to manufacture composite bike frames in U.S. At that time, it simply wasn’t done, and even today, most bike frames, composite or otherwise, are manufactured in Taiwan for the brands that control the U.S. consumer cycling spend.
That didn’t stop Cannizzaro from embarking on a journey to make composite frames in Denver. As noteworthy the production and process innovations have been, Alchemy’s commitment to local manufacturing and a Denver-based workforce have also distinguished the company.
Where Alchemy manufactures
“Denver manufacturing has stayed pretty consistent,” says Cannizaro. “The same group of guys manufacture all the road and gravel bikes and one mountain bike [out of here]. We made the first full-suspension carbon-fiber mountain bike frame in the U.S., and we still make that model here — a 27.5-inch bike that people can custom paint.”
But growth in the mountain bike category has compelled Alchemy to expand manufacturing operations outside of Denver to keep pace. “We started manufacturing mountain bikes in Asia — three of our four models are manufactured there — a complete assembly plant also managing all our inventory,” Cannizzaro explains.
“For the most part we’re building to order here,” he says. “We’re set up as a shop that manufactures to order. But we’ve been able to team up with a manufacturer in Asia that’s capable of building the exact same bike were building here.”
The factors that pushed Alchemy offshore likely resonate with other outdoor industry brands. “There were several reasons,” Cannizzaro says. “It’s more cost-effective to use a manufacturer that’s set up to build higher quantities. We would have to scale up here with tooling, equipment, and people. With carbon fiber we can compete on the tools and equipment, but it’s more difficult to compete on the labor side. To be able to produce a bicycle at the cost of somebody that’s set up in Asia to mass produce is very difficult.”
Outsourcing production, he says, hasn’t compromised quality. “On the mountain bike side, we feel very comfortable that the frame we’re getting manufactured in Asia was up to our standards — the exact frame we would make here. If doesn’t make sense for us to tool up and make the frame here for more money.”
The R&D process remains closely integrated with manufacturing in both Colorado and Asia. “You want [the frame] as light and durable as possible so the suspension platform can do all the work. We still prototype and test and ride any model that we’re not going to manufacture here, and then we go to the manufacturer in Asia and tell them how we want it built, and that’s done based on us building a prototype here, giving it to our sponsored riders, our employees — anyone that can give us feedback. Once we know exactly how we want the frame made, we have it manufactured.”
What’s next?
Alchemy’s long-term plans involve manufacturing in both Denver and Asia. “On the road and gravel side — the carbon and titanium side — the way we manufacture those bikes and the processes we use, outsourcing isn’t an option,” Cannizzaro says. “We wouldn’t build a bike that way. We put in too many man-hours, too much attention to detail, and the build process we like to use, they won’t do in Asia because it’s not cost-effective.”
He continues, “As we continue to grow with new models, we’ll also continue to look at ways to do it cost-effectively here.”
Also on Alchemy’s innovation agenda is a change in the way the company sells its bikes. “One thing we did at the beginning of the summer, that’s working out in our favor, we went to a direct-to-consumer sales channel. We thought we could control our messaging a little bit better,” says Cannizzaro. “And we feel that the bicycle industry is making that shift where consumers are more comfortable buying from a website, whether you ship it to a bike shop where it’s assembled or we just assemble it here and ship out a complete bike.”
Plus, he notes, “It was hard to fund the [account] receivables going through the channels. The retail shops expect to be financed with inventory for quite some time. We were funding it as we were growing, but our receivables were going through the roof. We just didn’t feel that for the size of the company we are, we could fund the receivables as we grow.”
Another benefit of going direct: “It also allows us to offer a better specification for the bike.”
And for Cannizzaro and Alchemy, it always comes back to the bike.
New owners Ricky and Bernhard Opitz eye expansion for a Colorado furniture brand built on beetle-kill pine.
Corbin Clay founded Azure in 2009 on the idea of transforming beetle-kill pine into handcrafted, heirloom-quality furniture. In early, Clay sold the business to the couple in 2019. Bernhard brings a deep manufacturing resume and big plans for growth to the respected brand, plans that include investments in Denver-based manufacturing operations and new products for commercial markets.
“It was great to find Corbin, because this company was founded on some great ideas, which also provide many options to grow from this point forward,” he says. “The brand is strong, and from the view of beetle-kill pine furniture, you can expand into other unmet needs in the industry, where wood is not used to the best of its capabilities.”
Beetle-kill furniture will continue to be a core product, primarily for the residential market, but he points to diversification as a key to continued growth for Azure. “When you talk about the other channels in the commercial worlds — offices, hotels, and restaurants — soft wood tabletops are often not the right solution. So hardwood is another direction we’re going — we call it ‘inspired’ hardwood — lumberyards would say ‘rustic’ hardwood.”
Where Azure manufactures
Azure currently manufactures in a shop in northeast Denver, but Opitz’ ambitious plans may involve expanding to a larger facility at some point. “We have this given space of 7,000 square feet, enough space to support two teams of people, four craftsman, who can drive only so much volume and not more. That’s a limit we have to start thinking about.”
Opitz says he plans to continue manufacturing in Denver, but the push into new markets will also expand the company’s material needs and supply chain. “When it comes to materials, the wood we work with, beetle-kill pine, is from a radius of maybe 150 miles round,” he says. “The other hardwoods are still U.S., but a bit farther away.”
Looking beyond wood, Opitz cites a need for Azure to source globally for the first time. “Steel will be a bigger portion of our products; more commercial furniture typically have steel bases. The steel for those products today does not come from the U.S.,” he says. “When you talk about U.S. manufacturing, there’s always a global component somewhere, but in our core [business], we want to work here, in the U.S., and we have great local partners here with whom we can really cover all the needs that we have.”
What’s next?
It seems an ideal challenge for the German-born Opitz and his wife Ricky, an artist already contemplating new furniture designs: a promising young company poised to benefit from an infusion of management experience and acumen.
Bernhard has worked for such companies as Bayer and Blue Bunny Ice Cream over the course of his diverse career. Building furniture wasn’t necessarily his preferred path, but the fit was too good to pass up.
“Manufacturing was the primary idea,” he says. “This company just appeared in the right place to build from.”
https://mfginsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/MFG-INSIDER-word-logo2.png00Bart Taylorhttps://mfginsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/MFG-INSIDER-word-logo2.pngBart Taylor2020-05-21 22:31:562020-05-21 22:31:56Where Azure Furniture Company Manufactures
On the evening of April 4, CompanyWeek and Manufacturer’s Edge presented the fourth annual Colorado Manufacturing Awards (CMAs) at the University of Denver’s Cable Center.
The event has grown every year since inception, with 2019 marking the first to venture beyond Colorado state lines with awards for standout manufacturers in New Mexico and Wyoming.
As CompanyWeek founder Bart Taylor put it during his remarks, “We’ve come from so many places. We’ve come from Albuquerque tonight, Laramie, Grand Junction, Colorado Springs, Greeley. One person has come further than any other: We’re very happy to have Caroll Thomas [director of the NIST Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) program] from Washington, D.C.”
An early video interview with Left Hand Brewing President Eric Wallace by Hoptocopter Films might have captured the reason people traveled to Denver for the event. Noted Wallace: “Manufacturing is how you build wealth in your community. You have good jobs, you’re bringing in raw materials, and you’re selling the products outside your community.”
That’s really the crux of the importance of manufacturing to Colorado, and any other state. Same goes for cities and regions.
For that precise reason, the CMAs strive to elevate the companies doing the most moving and shaking across a dozen different manufacturing sectors, and there are plans to get bigger and better for the event’s fifth year in 2020. Said Taylor: “We’re just getting started.”
Quote of note: “I started in my garage with my co-founder, Colin Jones. Now we’re 30 people. I agree with what Eric [Wallace] said: People are the heart of manufacturing.” — Neil Fisher, co-founder and head brewer, WeldWerks Brewing
Quote of note: “This is really an asset for the state of Colorado, but also nationally and internationally.” — Ray Goodrich, executive director, Infectious Disease Research Center at CSU
Quote of note: “Food is one of our fastest growing manufacturing sectors in Colorado . . . an industry model that actually shines brighter on the national stage than in its own state.” — Rob MaCoy, partner, BKD
Quote of note: “Without great people, none of it is possible. We’ve got a great team. I’ll put them against anybody in the industry.” — Taylor Merritt, chairman and CEO, Merritt Aluminum Products
Quote of note: “We’ve been around for 53 years. We’ve built so many different antennas for so many different applications. I’m really proud to be part of this company.” — Clency Lee-Yow, president, Custom Microwave
Quote of note: “It’s really nice to know small business still means a lot. At the Lockheed Martins and the Boeings, we’re still moving forward.” — Mike Sneddon, president, Wren Industries
Quote of note: “It starts with personal stories. Manufacturing put food on my table, put a roof over my head, and put health insurance in my life.” — Robin Kniech, at-large council member, Denver City Council
New Mexico Manufacturer of the Year
After remarks from Manufacturer’s Edge CEO Tom Bugnitz and MEP Director Caroll Thomas, Mezel Mods, a manufacturer of aftermarket pinball parts, won the Land of Enchantment’s top honors for its innovative use of 3D printing.
Quote of note: “I’m really honored to be representing the small manufacturers of New Mexico. We might be small, but we are mighty and powerful.” Kristin Browning-Mezel, head honcho, Mezel Mods
Quote of note: “Look at this state we live in. 6,500 feet is our average elevation. We’re at the top. That’s why we’re crazy.” — Tony Lugard, COO, Ross Reels
Quote of note: “We started in a 300-square-foot production facility, we moved to a 7,000-square foot production facility, and this year we’re moving to a 25,000-square-foot production space.” — Philip Rawleigh, brand ambassador, Distillery 291
Quote of note: “I want to thank everybody at the company who works at the company every day. We are at 50 employees now and were 14 a year ago.” — Tony Wibbeler, CEO, Bolder Industries
On the night of April 4, 2019, CompanyWeek is presenting the fourth annual Colorado Manufacturing Awards at the Cable Center at the University of Denver.
Every week leading up to the big event, we are publishing short profiles detailing the finalists in 12 different categories. This edition covers: Industrial Manufacturer of the Year, Contract Manufacturer of the Year, Bioscience/Medical Manufacturer of the Year, Manufacturing Advocate of the Year, and Outstanding Food Brand/Co-Packer.
StickerGiant assists its clients with their labeling and promotional needs, providing products and service that’s affixed a positive reputation to the company.
“More than half our work is product labels,” says founder and CEO John Fischer. “A smaller segment of our business is promotional stickers.”
Overall, business has nearly tripled since 2015, when StickerGiant brought in $8 million. “We’ll do $22 million in sales this year,” says Fischer. “We’re the largest label converter in Colorado.”
Fischer cites “great customer service” for the company’s continued growth. “People are delighted with their experience in working with StickerGiant,” says Fischer. “We have really good customer ratings, customer reviews.”
Adding over 400 new customers per week, the company has provided labels or stickers for over 30,000 customers during its 19-year history. While some of its more noted customers include Netflix and Patagonia, Fischer says “our primary meat-and-potatoes [clients] are small to medium businesses — from a yoga studio to a mom [making] salsa in her basement to a small brewery down the street.”
StickerGiant utilizes open-book management, so all employees can see the company’s bottom line. “The number-one [reason] why StickerGiant has been successful is it’s always been about creating a good company to work for,” says Fischer, who avoids a top-down approach within the company. “We’re a highly-functioning, well-managed machine.”
StickerGiant’s employees will sometimes conduct site visits to local customers to get to know the business better — and, likewise, it invites its customers to visit its Longmont facility. The company even produces a podcast that spotlights customers.
Whether it’s internally within the company or with its customers, Fischer says, “StickerGiant knows how to stick together.”
CEO Taylor Merritt says his company makes what truckers sometimes call “truck jewelry.” In other words, any product that “looks great on their truck,” but also has a functional aspect that “helps them do their job.” They sometimes call it “truck bling” within Merritt’s company, too.
Products include cab racks, which sit behind the truck cab and in which truckers can store their valuable tools and personal items. Saddle boxes provide storage, as well, and truckers can use the built-in steps to access, for instance, the top of the truck. There are rugged, mountable toolboxes. Tire chain carriers are “big in winter time,” says Merritt, since “the DOT mandates truck drivers carry chains when going up and over I-70” in the event of snowy and icy conditions. And there’s a hose rack that’s especially popular within the Texas oil and gas market.
“As a provider of aftermarket aluminum accessories for semi-trucks, Merritt is definitely the market leader in North America,” says Merritt. “We’re utilizing higher-grade aluminum and other component parts in our process for fabricating and welding the products together. We feel [our products are] superior to our competition.”
The company’s customers range from individual truck operators to “large fleets that will have thousands of trucks that they run all over the country.” Merritt says, “We do sell in all 50 states, as well as Canada and Mexico.”
Due to a currently robust truck market, Merritt points out that, “For 2018, we increased our top-line revenue by over 26 percent. And, here in early ’19 — comparing January-February [2019] to January-February [2018] — we’ve increased revenue to the tune of 43 percent in those months.”
With close to 100 team members, Merritt says that laying out a set of core values has informed its hiring choices and has helped to guide the company. At the top of that list is integrity — an important quality in both a product and a person. And recruiting possible future hires? The company has partnered with Morgan Community College on a welding program, and it offers internships to high school students at Fort Morgan High School.
Titan Robotics custom builds 3D printers for a variety of customers — which, increasingly, include Fortune 500 companies. Titan CEO and founder Clay Guillory says those companies “are printing end-use parts, things that save them hundreds of thousands of dollars by using 3D printing versus traditional manufacturing.” Guillory calls Titan’s medium-format printers his customers’ “secret weapon for saving a ton of money, and [it’s] changing the way they make things.”
Through the development of both its own pellet extrusion technology and motion control systems, Titan has reduced the cost of 3D printing “by a factor of 10, and we’re increasing the throughput — or speed — by at least a factor of 10,” says Guillory. He adds that those changes now make production manufacturing a “reality” using 3D printing.
“We have over 40 machines in operation globally,” adds Guillory via email. “In the last two years we have grown by 300 percent. The number of employees has doubled in the past year alone to over 20 individuals.”
Guillory calls his employees a “true testament to what the company is, and how we’ve gotten here — it’s not just the technology.” Titan workers execute the “[steel-frame] welding, wiring, programming, and calibration” at its Colorado Springs facility.
And what kind of objects has Titan’s 3D printers been responsible for fabricating?
“From rocket parts, to production parts, patterns and molds for metal casting, [to] full-sized 3D-printed dinosaurs and mannequins, our machines are in use in many industries around the world,” notes Guillory.
Launched in 2004, Cogitic continues to make high-value, low-volume critical components for applications in submarines and reactors, among other burly machines.
“Unless somebody has a critical application, we’re not the right supplier for them. If they can buy it from 10 other companies and quality is not the absolute highest requirement than likely we won’t be competitive,” says Jared Veteto, who co-owns the growing company with his brother, Jonathan. “It’s a very difficult sector to work in. We have extraordinarily demanding customers, with extreme requirements, but certainly for contractors that demonstrate through performance, there’s a lot of opportunity for growth.”
Since late 2016, Cogitic has moved to a 25,000-square-foot space, hired five employees and purchased a high-pressure piping system product line. It also is looking into purchasing another product line and expanding further to meet customer demands for larger pieces. “Customers are encouraging us to move into work pieces on the order of 100 inches in diameter, which will necessitate new machinery and new inspection equipment,” Veteto explains.
While Cogitic contracts with the Navy servicing submarines, Veteto notes that it also works with commercial shipyards and is expanding into other fields. “Our greatest growth potential lies probably outside of defense,” he adds. “Some of the newest customers we’re taking in are in astronautics research and development, as well as advanced oil and gas exploration.”
To help make that happen, the focus is squarely on business development. “We’re to a size now where we have to diversify,” says Veteto.
It’s hard to find another company whose equipment has traveled as far as Custom Microwave — its antennas are on NASA’s New Horizons satellite, which recently sent back images of Ultima Thule on New Year’s Day. At 4 billion miles from Earth, it’s the most distant object that’s been explored by a satellite.
Founded in 1965, the 60-employee company initially developed scientific instrumentation but its focus continues to change, explains Clency Lee-Yow, president of Custom Microwave. “For the last 18 to 20 years or so, the focus has shifted to supplying communication equipment for the antennas onboard communication satellites,” he says. “Fortunately for us, every satellite that goes up there is usually a new antenna that is typically needed.”
“We supply things directly to JPL, NASA,” Lee-Yow explains. “So whether you’re talking about probes that go to Jupiter, Mars, or just orbiting close to the sun, they have to send signals back and they’re received through equipment that we build for NASA.”
Lee-Yow estimates that 75 percent of the company’s work is commercial, with some of that being developed through government contractors. He says the company has some catalog items, which make about 5 percent of the company’s business, and about 20 percent is supplied to the government directly.
Custom Microwave also continues to evolve, while it saw a lot of growth in commercial satellites between 2008 and 2015, that growth has subsided. “We had to reinvent ourselves a little bit to address the changes, which are fairly drastic,” says Lee-Yow. “But the changes are also opening up a lot of opportunities.”
The new satellites are about a 10th of the size of older satellites, and notably less expensive. “Now you’re looking at a lot lower cost per capability,” Lee-Yow says. “It’s creating more opportunity. Where we used to only supply a part of the system, now we can supply a much more significant part of the system.”
High Precision Devices’ products are in everything from quantum computers to MRI machines and NASA research planes. The 50-employee company’s catalog includes cryostats and detectors used in aerial spectrography and scientific instrumentation.
The manufacturer’s cryostats and cryogenic capabilities, which can cool things to temperatures 2 orders of magnitude below deep space, have a broad array of applications, explains High Precision Devices (HPD) Director of Business Development Kevin Miller. “Currently, some of the bigger users are doing advanced detector systems that need very very low noise,” he says.
Other applications include superconducting supercomputers, quantum information systems — “a big, growing new field of endeavor,” Miller says — and a “new instrument suite provides holographic imagery of cloud particles and how cloud formation forms” for NASA.
Launched in 1993, HPD has grown about 20 percent year-over-year, according to Miller, and the staff has doubled since 2016, when it had 25 employees.
More recently, one of the company’s MRI technologies was rolled into a spin-off, QalibreMD, that makes a quantitative MRI hardware and software platform that Miller calls “a real game-changer in the medical industry.”
The system can clarify MRI imaging to allow clinicians to differentiate between healthy and unhealthy tissues — and even identify cancerous tissue. “This technology allows a medical clinic to be able to definitively evaluate human tissue response in an MRI and unambiguously and specifically evaluate it,” Miller says. “It has a lot of benefits in a lot of different ways.”
While HPD’s contract work is custom, QalibreMD requires a more standardized approach. “When you look at the fact that there are 30,000-plus MRI machines worldwide, providing traceable products to supply all of those is a different kind of business than atmospheric research or cryogenic fields,” Miller says.
From precision medical equipment to aerospace fabrication the company makes highly specialized pieces for multiple industries. “A lot of our stuff is one-off, a typical lot size is between one and 20,” says owner Mark Ingram. The company works with materials including titanium, nitronic stainless steel, and other types of stainless steel like 17-4 and 15-5.
To meet demand and accommodate new equipment, the company moved from an 8,000-square-foot facility to a 19,000-square-foot facility in January 2018. The additional space has allowed for the installation of a 5-axis CNC machine.
“We’re AS9100 and we’re also ISO 13485, which is the medical ISO, and we’re FDA-registered because we make instruments that actually go in the body,” Ingram explains. “We make the tools that they use to install implants.”
Founded in 2002, the 16-employee company doesn’t design products, but does work with engineers, Ingram says. “We deliver what they want and we ask a lot of questions if something’s not clear in the print. We do some help with design even though we don’t design here.”
While the machining work and finishing is difficult, exacting work, Ingram says the company has a very low scrap rate. “We make mistakes, but we’re careful not to ship them,” he notes.
Ingram Machining is staying plenty busy. “We’re pretty fully booked by our existing customers,” Ingram says. “I wouldn’t mind getting some production work, but we’ve never been known as a production shop.”
The Infectious Disease Research Center (IDRC) at Colorado State University provides a high-quality research environment for developing new scientific discoveries, vaccines, methods of diagnosis, and therapeutic agents for infectious agents.
“This is really a resource not only for the university, the state of Colorado, or the United States,” says IDRC Director Ray Goodrich. “It’s a resource that has a global impact.”
The center’s Bio-pharmaceutical Manufacturing & Academic Resource Center (BioMARC) provides services from process and method development and cell, bacteria and virus storage to bulk drug substance manufacturing and and finished drug project. Its goal is to defeat global health threats.
“We do development work that’s required to move ideas from early phases of discovery to later phases that’s required to put products into commercial use,” Goodrich says. “We don’t put a BioMARC label or CSU label on products.”
Currently, the center is working with a vaccine for E. coli and encephalitis viruses for the U.S. Department of Defense. It’s collaborating with Boston Children’s Hospital on a vaccine against a bacteria that causes diarrhea, work that is being sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It’s also working on an HIV vaccine for Sumagen, a South Korean investor group,
“We do a lot of work with small, private biotech firms that are trying to get their products launched,” says BioMARC Director John Wyckoff III. “We help them make material they can test in preclinical studies and in clinical studies.”
Cambrex offers custom pharmaceutical manufacturing across its global network. The company provides products, services and technologies to accelerate the development and commercialization of small-molecule therapeutics.
The company’s acquisitions of Halo Pharma in September and Longmont-based Avista Pharma Solutions in January have created the opportunity to broaden its service offerings. The acquisitions added more than 800 employees and six new facilities to Cambrex’s business, bringing its workforce to more than 2,000 people in 13 locations across North America and Europe.
The integration of the companies into the Cambrex network has allowed customers new and easy access to a wider variety of services. Halo Pharma added drug development and drug product manufacturing capabilities, and Avista Pharma Solutions brought early-stage development and discovery, standalone analytical services, solid state sciences, and microbiology to Cambrex’s portfolio.
“Acquiring Avista adds a full complement of early stage development capabilities to Cambrex’s larger-scale capabilities for both APIs (Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients) and finished dosage forms,” Cambrex President and CEO Steve Klosk said in a news release at the time of the acquisition. “Adding Avista today and Halo Pharma in September significantly increases our customer base and funnel of projects, provides significant cross-selling opportunities and allows us to offer an integrated service offering for most small molecules from the preclinical stage through the commercial stage.”
Cambrex is now organized into three main business units: drug substance, drug product and early stage development and testing. The company continues to invest in its manufacturing sites to ensure it meets the ever-evolving demands of the industry.
Osypka Medtec works with medical device manufacturers and suppliers who are pioneering technologies such as helping paralyzed people walk and deaf people hear.
The Longmont company is an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) that provides technology and products to companies around the United States that are involved in the healthcare field.
Osypka Medtec is working with a consortium of companies and Harvard University on an implant that has a high data-transfer rate that reads electrical signals on the brain and can determine a paralyzed person’s thoughts to they can make movements, says COO Dana Tompkins.
“They’ve figured out that even though your body is shutting down, all that muscle memory is still there,” adds Osypka Medtec Director Jennifer Tompkins. “When you see that someone can go from not being able to move to picking up a glass, it’s just incredible.”
The company also working on a magnetic hearing implant developed and manufactured by Boulder-based Sophono, which Medtronic acquired in 2015. The Sophono bone conduction hearing implant has resulted in significant hearing and speech recognition improvement with conductive, mixed hearing loss. “It’s for people who have middle ear bones that don’t work properly,” says Dana Tompkins. “It’s not a cochlear implant, but it looks similar.”
Osypka Medtec is part of OSYPKA AG, a German company founded in 1977 by Peter Osypka, who has more than 47 years of experience in the fields of medical technology and electrophysiology.
Manufacturing Advocate of the Year
Comments and bios from the finalists
Robin Kniech, Denver City Council
First elected to Denver City Council in 2011, and re-elected in 2015, Robin Kniech is one of two at-large councilmembers. Manufacturing is part of Robin’s family history, as both her mother and step-father made their living at Master Lock in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Robin has dedicated her life to making Denver a better place for middle class families and those struggling to make ends meet, championing policies that support access to and funding for affordable housing, good-paying jobs, and sustainability.
With a law degree and more than fifteen years of policy experience prior to being elected, Councilwoman Kniech has a record of bold policy accomplishments including promotion of apprenticeship training and Denver’s first affordable housing fund. She is the first out member of the LGBT community to serve on the Denver City Council, and she is the mom of a young son.
“My focus on manufacturing isn’t simply based on family nostalgia, but rather on the economic importance of middle-income production jobs to Denver’s economy and the workers doing the jobs. While our manufacturing sector is made-up of smaller firms and more diverse products than some regions, that diversity is part of our strength, supporting our resilience during ups and downs in markets. In the past, I helped shape Denver’s business personal property exemption program to help support equipment investments and served as a frequent matchmaker between manufacturers and the technical assistance or government program administrators they needed. My current priority is maintaining the land use needed to support manufacturing. This means balancing the preservation of key industrial areas in the face of pressures to meet Denver’s housing needs. And it also means creating more flexibility for uses in mixed-use areas for a new generation of production that is more modern, cleaner, and therefore more compatible with denser, mixed-use development and doesn’t need to be separated from residential to ensure healthy communities. Alongside this priority is a focus on workforce development, to ensure we have the systems in place to recruit and train a next generation of mid-skill employees to help our maker industry thrive.” — Robin Kniech
Tom Neppl, Springs Fabrication
Tom Neppl is the founder and President of Springs Fabrication, a diversified manufacturing company located in Colorado Springs and Westminster. Since founding the company in 1986, Tom has managed the growth from a two man operation to one of the largest primary employers in the area.
Tom has played an active role in promoting and growing the manufacturing industry in Colorado, helping to launch the Southern Colorado chapter of CAMA, serving as its chair for several years as well as numerous community boards. In 2015, Tom was named Business Citizen of the Year in Colorado Springs for his work on promoting manufacturing in the region.
“Manufacturing is the lifeblood of a strong economy and has played a key role in building our great nation. As it provides economic stability and is an integral part of every industry sector, manufacturing provides the tools for everything else to function. Through innovation and technology, manufacturing will continue to provide opportunity and stability to families and communities. Our job is to continue challenging the next generation, reinventing and retooling our industry.” — Tom Neppl
George Newman, Front Range Community College
George Newman is director of the advanced manufacturing program at Front Range Community College (FRCC), and director of the Center for Integrated Manufacturing that will open in fall 2019 at FRCC’s Boulder County Campus. He has spent over 30 years in various manufacturing industries including paper, plastics, automation and industrial equipment.
Newman gained invaluable experience in the mid-1990s running a sheet metal business in Massachusetts. He was unable to attract skilled sheet metal workers at any wage rate and in response began a training program with a local vocational-technical high school. This understanding of the manufacturing skills gap has enabled him to provide leadership in creating and expanding advanced manufacturing programs in northern Colorado. George is on the Board of the Northern Colorado Manufacturing Partnership. He is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University and Harvard Business School.
“According to the Manufacturing Institute, manufacturing has the greatest regional economic impact of any sector, returning $1.33 for every dollar of GDP. It follows that the health of an economy is partially driven by the robustness of its manufacturing sector. With its successful research universities, its concentration of federal research agencies and its diversified manufacturing sector, Colorado is poised for continued economic growth. The challenge is that many companies are today unable to fulfill orders due to a shortage of skilled employees. This skills gap is costing the economy billions of dollars. Front Range Community College is working to close that gap through its investment in the Center for Integrated Manufacturing which, when up and running, will graduate over 100 advanced manufacturing students each year.” — George Newman
Married co-founders Josh and Zora Tabin criss-crossed the U.S. by car in the late 2000s to find the best place to raise a family and chose Fort Collins. What followed is one of Colorado’s great food stories. Today Wild Zora products, including the flagship Paleo-inspired, gluten-free meat and veggie bar, are sold in over 1,000 Walmart stores and online at Amazon and WildZora.com.
The happy ending almost never happened. “We started up in Farmer’s Markets in Boulder and Ft. Collins and by the end of 2015 were in 80 retail stores,” says Josh Tabin, now CEO of Wild Zora. “By the end of 2016 we were in 800 stores, including local Safeway and King Soopers — but burning through cash, so that by the end of 2016, going into 2017, we were running on fumes,” Tabin chuckles.
“So we pivoted the business. We put the retail effort on autopilot, focused on our online business, and by the end of 2017 had saved the company,” Tabin says, adding, “in early 2017, 80 percent of our business was retail, 20 percent was online. By the end of 2017, it was the opposite.”
The big assist came from Amazon. “Initially, our focus had been on our website, but we found that a large number of visitors would come back and purchase on Amazon,” says Tabin. “We didn’t start out to have an Amazon-centric online plan but it turned out that way. Eventually we hooked up with an Amazon consultant who really helped us refine our plan. They grew it from $300 month in online sales to $3,000 month. We took it inhouse and grew it from $3,000 per month to $3,000 per day.”
But there’s more. “Going into 2018, we met a Walmart buyer – even though we didn’t have a retail strategy after focusing online through ’17,” Tabin explains. “Turns out Walmart is very committed to working with health-focused, organic, small brands. They wanted us, and they proved it.”
Today Wild Zora products are in 1,000 Walmart stores — eight percent of their total. It transformed Wild Zora. “Today half our business today is Walmart, and it’s now the fastest growing part of the company,” Tabin says.
It also pushed the company into an entirely different stratosphere from a manufacturing standpoint. “It took us months to create the product, and two 48-foot trucks to fill the orders for the initial 1,000 stores — one box per store!” Tabin laughs. “We doubled the staff, having to be ready for big increase and improve in speed of production.”
The Tabins found a willing public-sector partner to accommodate growth. “We moved into a new facility in Loveland — the City of Loveland really came through for us. They got us permitted and ready to go, and with their help, we’ve increased production capacity by 600 percent,” Tabin says.
Teton Waters Ranch manages a supply chain stretching from here to Australia, but the company’s themes resonate for anyone familiar with other fast-growth Colorado food brands.
“We were founded as a company with a passion for regenerative agriculture, to sustain damaged pastures, increase biodiversity, and enhance ag ecosyst
https://mfginsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/MFG-INSIDER-word-logo2.png00Bart Taylorhttps://mfginsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/MFG-INSIDER-word-logo2.pngBart Taylor2020-05-21 22:31:112020-05-21 22:31:112019 Colorado Manufacturing Award Finalists Spotlight, Part III
On the night of April 4, 2019, CompanyWeek is presenting the fourth annual Colorado Manufacturing Awards at the Cable Center at the University of Denver.
Every week leading up to the big event, we are publishing short profiles detailing the finalists in 12 different categories. This edition covers: Outstanding Craft Brewer, Builder/Construction Co. of the Year, Outstanding Cannabis Manufacturer, Outstanding Consumer/Lifestyle Brand.
Last year was a big one for the team at WeldWerks Brewing — in more ways than one. Not only did they increase total production by nearly 84 percent (to 5,700 barrels), but they also exceeded an ambitious goal for new beer development.
“For our new beers campaign, we wanted to produce 100 brand new beers that we had never brewed before in addition to our year-rounds and rotators,” says co-founder Neil Fisher. “We ended up exceeding that goal by brewing 137 new beers in 2018. Of those, 125 were packaged and 100 were distributed along our footprint.”
Fisher says that WeldWerks’ employees took up the challenge to push themselves into greater creativity and innovation. And they did it without sacrificing their stellar reputation.
“We’ve built our brand on innovation and quality,” he explains. “This idea that no matter what you buy from WeldWerks, you’re going to get the highest level of quality. If it’s a WeldWerks beer, you know it’s well made.”
The purchase of nearly an entire Greeley city block in November guarantees that 2019 is going to be equally eventful for the growing brewery with renovations, expansions, and production increases ahead.
“It’s three buildings on about three acres,” Fisher says. “We took over the rest of the building that we currently occupy, which is close to another 4,000 square feet. We’re in the midst of construction there with new floors, drains, concrete, a new canning line, and larger 90-barrel fermenters on the way. That will increase our capacity and help us get to 8,500 barrels this year.”
Since opening in 1989, Odell Brewing Company’s founders have nurtured a long-term view of the future — a philosophy that co-founder Wynne Odell believes differentiates the brewery from other companies and has contributed to its success.
“We’re committed to the long term,” Odell explains. “It’s a concept called an evergreen company, and there are principles we subscribe to. It has enabled us to grow steadily and healthily. When we look at our history over 30 years, we’ve never been down more than 0.01 percent.”
Last May, the brewery opened a second location in Denver’s RiNo Art District. “It’s an entire second brewery and it gives us access to our Denver market, which we really appreciate,” Odell says. The company also expanded their packaged beer distribution to 19 states with the addition of Nevada and Wisconsin.
The Odell team continued to innovate in 2018 as well. “We came out with Rupture last year,” Odell says. “It’s a fresh grind ale, which is a new category. We take fresh hops and break open the oil sacs right before we throw them into the beer. This gives a totally different hop characteristic and intensity to the beer and was technologically a really exciting achievement for us.”
While Odell says that she can’t speak specifically about plans for 2019, the brewery is considering opportunities in three different areas. “We’re looking at all sorts of beverage production that may or may not be related to beer,” she adds. “We’re looking at more retail sites like our RiNo taproom. And we’re looking at leveraging our existing assets with focus on our wholesale delivery teams.”
Nick Nunns, founder of TRVE Brewing (pronounced “true”), isn’t in the business of playing it safe. From 2016 to 2018, he increased his brewery’s production by 40 percent and his taproom staff by 75 percent. For 2019, his sights are set on even more ambitious growth: 2,800 barrels, or double last year’s output.
“We added Illinois and Tennessee last year and are licensed to sell beer in about 14 states right now,” Nunns says. “But we’re actually trying to focus more on digging deep here at home.” To that end, Nunns says that TRVE will be increasing the density of its distribution along the front range. “We want our beer to be more prevalent here in Colorado,” he adds.
But TRVE doesn’t just distribute its own brews. The company acted as distributor for 25 other breweries in 2018. “We really broadened our import and wholesale model quite a bit last year,” Nunns explains. “We brought in small amounts of beer and distributed it around the state for various events, most specifically around the Great American Beer Festival. Being able to actually manage that was a daunting task.”
Nonetheless, Nunns does not see the import/wholesale side of TRVE growing any further. “We’re a manufacturing business and that’s where our heart is,” he adds. “We aren’t in the business of logistics, so we’ll probably just maintain the licensing we need for small events and shift our focus back to the taproom. We feel that our efforts are best suited to focusing on producing beer, taking care of the people making the beer, and ensuring that we’re making some of the best beer here in Colorado.”
Founder Bob Eschino oversees a popular brand of cannabis edibles, concentrates, and wellness products.
His company manufactures the top-selling line of cannabis chocolate bars in Colorado, according to the market tracking company BDS Analytics. And the brand can also be found in Oregon, Nevada, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Puerto Rico. In 2015, GQ deemed its Affogato bar one of the “50 Best Things” to eat in the nation. (It helps that prior to starting incredibles, co-founder Rick Scarpello came from a food production background with Udi’s and Il Fornaio bakeries.)
The company also makes gummies, mints, and tinctures. Even suppositories — which provide medical patients with high-levels of cannabis but with relatively low psychoactive effects. “It’s a very important product for the patients that need it,” says Eschino.
But Eschino’s company doesn’t just manufacture products found in dispensaries. It also manufactures the very machines which turn its raw cannabis into potent hydrocarbon extracts. That venture began after regulations changed, and the manufacturers of the company’s existing machines either wouldn’t retrofit them or couldn’t retrofit them in a reasonable time. “We realized that if we wanted to do hydrocarbon extractions in the state of Colorado then we were kind of on our own,” says Eschino. “We manufactured our first piece of equipment, just so we could stay in business.” The company has now sold over 130 of its incredibles Extractor to its licensees and other businesses.
“It’s nice to be recognized,” says Eschino, about being nominated within the first ever “Cannabis” category at the Colorado Manufacturing Awards. “It’s definitely a shot in the arm, not just for us as a company, but for the whole industry. Having organizations outside of the cannabis industry starting to notice us — and the impact we’re having on the state, and the good that we’re doing — just adds some legitimacy to the industry as a whole.”
As the co-founders of Green Dot Labs, the husband-and-wife team of Dave and Alana Malone are pioneers in the field of hydrocarbon extraction. On the company’s website, they call the concentrates which result from hydrocarbon extraction “the purest expression of cannabis, a true reflection of the plant’s vivid flavor profiles and incredible wellness benefits.”
“We really pushed the envelope from the very beginning,” says Alana, the company’s CEO. “Back in 2012, there wasn’t any framework on how to design a facility to basically use hydrocarbons to extract cannabis. So we had to work with engineers, industrial hygienists, the Planning and Development [Services] department of the City of Boulder, and the State of Colorado to basically figure out how to safely extract cannabis using hydrocarbon gases, and in compliance with International Fire Code. And that just hadn’t been done before.”Alana says the state was “so pleased” with the engineering and planning work that it “adopted that standard as the framework for current legislation and regulation.”
After those safety parameters were codified, Green Dot Labs began commercially making extracts in 2014. At their Boulder facility, they take THC-laden cannabis plants that they’ve grown, flash freeze them, and then create their “Full Spectrum Extract” from the plants using hydrocarbon extraction. (For those who prefer them, they also make solventless extracts.)
In addition to the concentrates themselves, the company’s vape cartridges, filled with Green Dot Labs extracts, can be found at dispensaries throughout the state. The cartridges don’t contain additives like other some brands on the market do. Alana says, “We waited a long time before we were able to perfect the technique, and find the right hardware that would allow us to put our raw, essential oil in a cartridge.”
The Malones are also pioneers in terms of cannabis breeding. Alana says Green Dot Labs has bred “hundreds” of “unique proprietary strains” throughout the years, and the company’s website currently showcases over 130 within its “Exclusive Genetic Library.” “We have more variety available from our own in-house gardens than you would find from any brand, anywhere,” says Alana.
“We had a crazy-busy [2018], and this year is shaping up to be even busier,” says Wana Brands founder and CEO Nancy Whiteman.
Last year, Wana Brands made Inc. magazine’s “Inc. 5000,” which cited Wana’s three-year-growth of 455 percent. In its fourth quarter last year, Wana introduced a line of disposable vaporizer pens – which joins, in Colorado, its drop candies, extended-release capsules (a technology licensed from an Israeli company), and top-selling gummies. Whiteman calls gummies “the perfect delivery system for cannabis.” She notes that gummies are already a popular platform for vitamins and supplements, in addition to sweets.
Outside of Colorado, the brand’s gummies can be found in Nevada, Oregon, Arizona, Michigan, and Illinois, with several other states and Canada on the horizon. To assist with its expansion, Wana Brands hired Dan O’Connor in 2018 as its COO. According to Whiteman, O’Connor comes to Wana due to his previous work helping Oskar Blues Brewery to expand its craft beer operations outside of Colorado. “He’s been through an industry that had a similar trajectory in some ways to cannabis,” says Whiteman.
According to BDS Analytics, Whiteman’s company is the leading cannabis brand in Colorado in terms of overall sales, and Whiteman says, “We are actually the number-one edibles brand in the country — which also probably means the world, since the United States is the only country I know that has a legal edibles industry.”
In the months ahead, Wana will open its CBD-only, THC-free production facility, where it will manufacture a line of CBD-only products for the wellness market.
Whiteman says she’s “thrilled” that Wana Brands has been nominated for a Colorado Manufacturing Award. Whiteman, a former insurance industry marketing executive, adds, “It’s just a further proof of the mainstreaming of cannabis.”
“Our vision is about all things power, technology, and energy,” Encore President Willis Wiedel says. “In the old days of electrical construction, everything was about power and lights. Today, it’s power and lights, but it’s also technology. And of course energy.”
The company was founded by a group of people who were part of a private company that went public. The group made an unsuccessful attempt to take it over after that company filed for bankruptcy, so instead, they started their own company.
“We started from scratch with nothing, including money,” Wiedel says. “Everybody did second mortgages and took half salaries. We just knew we had something special.”
That was in 2003. Today, the company has grown into the largest merit-shop electrical contractor in Colorado with 841 employees who are rewarded based on their performance.
“We are a customer-driven company,” Wiedel says. “Most companies promote growth in revenue and profitability, but we ask our people to wake up every day to take care of our customers.”
RK, the region’s largest mechanical contractor with 2017 revenue of $297 million, works on some of the most complex projects in the West.
Current projects include the first phase of the expansion of the Salt Lake City International Airport, which serves more than 25 million passengers a year from facilities that were designed 50 years ago to serve half as many travelers; several health-care project, including a hospital in Highlands Ranch for UC Health; and Colorado State University’s Wayne McIlwraith Translational Medicine Institute, a 48,550-square-foot facility dedicated to animal care.
RK, which has about 1,650 employees, also worked on the Gaylord Rockies Resort and Conference Center and is working on a 140,000-square-foot data center at Majestic Commercenter in Aurora for an undisclosed company. On the Majestic project, RK is able to leverage several of its seven different business units, says Jon Kinning, the company’s chief operating officer.
“We can take advantage of our electrical group and the RK Steel group that’s building the steel bases for it,” Kinning says. “We can leverage multiple trades to manufacture data centers.”
RK’s business units include RK Mechanical, which designs and installs mechanical and plumbing systems; RK Service, which helps property managers and owners optimize the performance of their facilities; RK Steel, which fabricates and installs structural steel and metal products; RK Energy, which engineers and manufactures modular and prefabricated skidded equipment for oil and gas well sites; RK Water, a water treatment provider and specialty contractor for sites that need dewatering or groundwater remediation; RK Electrical, which engineers custom electrical solutions; and RK Mission Critical, which provides custom-engineered modular solutions for the data, telecom and power industries.
For the last 45 years, Tharp Cabinet Co. has manufactured high-quality custom cabinets for residential projects throughout the United States from seven different buildings on Denver Avenue in Loveland.
But that’s changing. This month, the company is moving its operations under one roof at 380 W. 37th St., where it will occupy about 100,000 square feet of the 170,000-square-foot building, which gives it plenty of room to grow. The new location will enable Tharp to expand its product line and market reach. It also will allow it to add more people to its workforce of 135 full-time employees.
Tharp owner and President Garth Rummery says that in addition to allowing for growth, the new space is more conducive to ensuring the quality of the company’s products. “Wood does not like changes in humidity,” Rummery says. “It grows and shrinks with humidity. We’ve been moving materials between buildings, and now it will be one giant, open manufacturing space.”
Tharp designs, manufactures, delivers and installs cabinetry throughout Colorado and Wyoming. It uses cutting-edge technology and skilled craftsmen to produce made-to-fit solutions.
“Everything we do is custom — nothing is off the shelf,” Rummery says. “We have a wide selection of materials and we’ve grown to have a scale that gives us some pretty good advantages in the marketplace.”
Bill Boyer launched Denver’s iconic coffee company in 1965, and today owners Jason and Doug Barrow are keeping the brand as relevant as ever. It starts with maintaining a deep respect for the company’s longtime connection to the community. “We’re the home team,” says Jason Barrow. “Boyer’s has been around for over 50 years, which means that everything we do oozes Colorado. We’re the official brand of the Colorado Rockies, we love the mountains, and more. Boyer’s products are high-altitude roasted. Recognition in the Colorado Manufacturing Awards further reflects this unique position.”
As compelling the Boyer’s legacy, the Barrow brothers are even more focused on the present — and the trajectory not only of the brand but the industry. “From an industry perspective, we’re right on the middle of a transformation, a movement,” says Doug Barrow, “where the coffee experience is moving out of the cafe into the home. In this way we’re paralleling the craft beer market. Our customers care that we’re a handcrafted coffee company. They’re looking for memorable experiences in the products they buy.”
The craft coffee movement, or as Doug says, the “renaissance of coffee, busting out of coffee shops and into the mainstream,” isn’t lost on America’s retail bellwethers. “The largest retailer in the U.S., Walmart, reached out to us, looking to be part of this movement, this ‘third wave of coffee’ that reflects the artisanal value of what we do and not just ‘coffee as a commodity.’ As a result, the Boyer’s brand is now in 48 states.”
Yet in many ways the Boyer’s story always returns to Colorado, to products like the popular Denver Blend. Boyer’s remains bedrock to the Barrow brother’s uber-connected corporate umbrella of coffee brands, including Luna Coffee and Boulder Organic Coffee. Each have a unique connection to common social themes that inform the entire organization — what Jason refers to as the “flywheel effect of our brand strategy” — like organic products, fair-trade practices, and sustainable underpinnings.
At Boyer’s, it all adds up to a modern coffee brand with deep roots and new growth shaping a transformative industry. What’s not to like?
VOORMI made a splash on the national outdoor apparel scene soon after it introduced its first product in 2013, a technical hoodie that became an immediate bestseller and still is today. Yet even as the company’s catalog and customer base have grown — VOORMI sells in 60 countries around the world — founder Dan English emphasizes process more than products in describing the company’s unique approach to developing leading-edge technical wear and brand awareness.
“We’re in a constant state of innovation,” English says. “We think more like a Silicon Valley company than an apparel brand.” It’s obviously a comfortable place for English, who spent years at Microsoft before retooling his technology background into a successful stint at hook-and-bullet brand Mossy Oak.
“VOORMI is built on the notion that everything we do, we do with purpose,” English explains, “and for us that means focusing on great products, domestic manufacturing where possible, local sourcing [VOORMI sources wool from high elevations in the Rocky Mountains], and innovating at a rapid pace.”
It doesn’t hurt that VOORMI is ensconced in Pagosa Springs, a stone’s throw away from Wolf Creek Ski Area and the Weminuche Wilderness in the formidable San Juan Mountains. It’s a perfect testing ground for any company endeavoring to make the world’s best outdoor apparel and gear.
But for English and his young team that includes son Dustin, a co-founder, and Timm Smith, director of brand marketing, the conversation inevitably comes back to engineered fabrics, to precision blending, to rate of change, and other terms that leave the impression that Voormi is equal parts technology company and apparel manufacturer, a brand position that suits English just fine.
What’s up this spring with watches and awards? Oscar-winning director Peter Farrelly’s shout-out to Detroit watchmaker Shinola earlier this month was only a precursor to Fort Collins’ own Vortic Watch Co. landing on this year’s CMA finalist list for Outstanding Consumer/Lifestyle brand.
Vortic transforms classic pocket watches into compelling new wristwatches, fashioned with new movements and machined parts, some made with metal 3D printing. The company’s timepieces were an immediate hit.
“We’ve doubled the business every year,” says R.T. Custer, who along with Tyler Wolfe co-founded the company in 2013. Luminaries such as Jackson Browne and Jimmy Buffett now sport Vortic wrist watches, and the timepieces have also grabbed the attention of museums that value the the company’s mission of preserving and reimagining historic relics.
Vortic’s success may be a double-edged sword. The company’s rise has also piqued the interest of global powerhouse Hamilton International — parent company of the ubiquitous Swatch brand — who today is suing Vortic for trade infringement in, of all places, the Southern District of New York. Custer certainly wants his brand in the news, if not in this way.
Yet as Shinola deserves credit for its bold statement about U.S. manufacturing by locating in Detroit, Vortic’s own homage to American craftsmanship is equally profound — if even more ingenious.
“Building a manufacturing company is difficult, but with the continuous support of the Colorado entrepreneurial community, our mostly Colorado-based supplier network, and the financial backing of Colorado Lending Source, we’re not building it alone,” says Custer. “We are proud to make the only truly American made watch entirely in beautiful Colorado.”
A who’s who of Colorado’s clothing and gear makers converged in Denver to talk cut-and-sew hubs of the future.
CompanyWeek‘s fifth annual Apparel & Outdoor Industry (AOI) Manufacturing Summit took place on October 18, 2018, at Cultivated Synergy, a coworking space in the RiNo Art District in Denver.
Two themes were front and center: places and people. The places are the apparel and outdoor industry manufacturing hubs of the future, and the people are the skilled cut-and-sew workers who will drive growth in Colorado’s manufacturing sector.
Since 2014, the summit has been in the middle of the conversation. “It has been an amazing journey, and we’re going to talk a lot about that journey tonight,” said Bart Taylor, CompanyWeek‘s founder and publisher.
Carol Engel-Enright of Colorado State University’s Design and Merchandising program spoke of the event’s beginnings in 2014. She said AOI launched with a simple question for local brands: “What would it take to reshore manufacturing?” The answer revolved around “high quality and high standards of sewn goods in the needle trades.”
The hypotheticals have since jumped off the drawing board, as new models start to take shape in the state. Taylor gave kudos to Engel-Enright for her work with Rural Colorado Apparel Manufacturing, or RCAM. “You’re rediscovering the institutional memory this country has lost in terms of apparel manufacturing,” he said.
“For the first time, we’re not talking about it, we’re doing it,” noted Engel-Enright. “One lesson learned: We can’t compete. We have to collaborate. We have to be invested in each other’s success.”
She added, “Now it’s about possibilities. It’s possible.”
Connecting the dots
The first AOI panel covered cross-pollination between manufacturing sectors. Jeff Vierling of Durango-based Tailwind Nutrition said he learned a lot about scaling manufacturing from Ska Fabricating. “They helped us a ton,” he said. “We still work with them on a monthly basis. We also got great advice from Zuke’s, which is a dog treat company.”
Zuke’s helped prepare Tailwind to export pallets and containers of products. “It sounds silly, but these are the things we’re going to have to learn if you’re going to go overseas,” said Vierling.
He’s not alone. “Partnership and collaboration is what we’re all about,” noted panelist April Archer of SaraBella Fishing in Erie.
SaraBella works with a variety of businesses and nonprofits. It turned to a local nonprofit contract shop to make sleeves. “We teamed up with Mile High WorkShop,” said Archer. “It’s a beautiful partnership.”
David Dragoo of Mayfly Outdoors in Montrose, manufacturer of Ross Reels and Abel Reels, said the company’s catalog was 60 percent imports in 2012, but it now makes 100 percent of its products in Colorado. “Everything we make is now made in our state,” he noted. A big part of that shift was tied to leveraging contract manufacturers in Colorado.
New hubs of apparel manufacturing
Next up, Deborah Vandermar, the Seattle-based executive director of The Makers Coalition, discussed new apparel manufacturing initiatives around the country. She said it’s all about building a foundation of apprenticeship programs that will allow for the industry’s success. “How do you build it? How do you expand it? How do you build infrastructure?” And it goes nowhere without private businesses. “There had to be a job at the end of the training.”
Reshoring isn’t simply challenged by labor availability. “We all think labor lext our country because of cost,” said Vandermar, “but in my opinion, labor did not leave our market because of cost.”
It was about innovation: In the 1970s and ’80s, Brittania and Liz Claiborne realized that the cut-and-sew operations in Hong Kong could make apparel domestic manufacturers could not. “Brittania revolutionized jeans,” said Vandermar. “What was the trigger? It was not cost. “It was innovation.”
The big lesson? It takes an industry cluster to establish standards, said Vandermar. And innovation, she added, starts with standards.
Mike Miller, CEO of The Airtex Group in Minneapolis, discussed the mission of The Makers Coalition: to revive industrial sewing in the U.S. It’s something he’s worked on for the better part of the past decade at Airtex and as a boardmember of the nonprofit coalition.
“We feel it’s essential to have education, workforce development, and industry,” said Miller. “You have to have all three of these to make something work. You can’t train people if you don’t have any place to put them to work.”
But there’s another critical ingredient, he added. “We needed those pillars, but we also needed government support.” The big picture also encompasses affordable housing, banking, grocery stores, transit, as well as jobs and educational opportunities. “It’s an ecosystem,” said Miller.
After the idea took shape in 2010, Miller said the first goal was to build it in the Twin Cities. “We thought we could make it happen in Minnesota,” he explained.
The effort didn’t succeed on the first approach. But when Jennifer Guarino, his colleague on the board of The Makers Coalition, went to work as VP of manufacturing for Shinola in Detroit, he saw a very similar vision coalescing in the Motor City: ISAIC.
Short for Industrial Sewing and Innovation Center, ISAIC aims to integrate education and industry at a one-of-a-kind manufacturing hub in a worker-owned factory. The first iteration of ISAIC could launch as soon as early 2018 above the Carhartt flagship store in Detroit, but the bigger picture is revitalizing a shuttered pickle factory on about eight acres that could include all of the elements of the ecosystem at one place.
An anchor brand like Carhartt is a key piece of the puzzle, added Miller. “[Clients] need to know there’s going to be a business there in the future,” he said. “There’s a known quantity, there’s a known quality, and a level of service no one has today. That’s really the goal. It starts with us in Detroit, but our hope is it comes to Brooklyn, it comes to Denver, and it comes to communities that are interested in us.”
Engel-Enright said ISAIC provides a model for a similar operation in Colorado. “We are going to do this, and it’s going to change us moving forward,” she said. “Because everybody has the same problems: ‘I can’t find the right sewers. I can’t find the right skills.’ . . . You can do anything if you have the right skills.”
A new paradigm in the Rockies
The evening’s final panel looked at outdoor-oriented manufacturing places coming soon to Colorado.
“Historically, Mesa County has been reliant on one industry, and that’s the energy industry,” said Brown. After decades of booms and busts, “2008 was particularly bad,” she added.
So the communities of Grand Junction, Fruita, and Palisade took a good hard look at their economic assets. “The leadership of all three communities got together and discusses how to diversify the economy,” said Brown. “The most obvious industry was outdoor recreation.”
With manufacturers like Bonsai Design, Leitner-Poma, and Loki calling the area home, local leaders decided to emphasize the outdoor industry as an economic pillar. It’s already paying big dividends.
But the Las Colonias development could take it to the next level. The project pairs a 140-acre park and a 15-acre business hub. The concept has already lured RockyMounts from Boulder, and Brown said that she expects the trend to continue. “We’ve created this talent pipeline in hard goods,” she explained. “I don’t think that’s very hard to take that to soft goods.”
To the south in Montrose, Mayfly Outdoors is building Colorado Outdoors to house its manufacturing on 1.5 miles of the Uncompahgre River. “We couldn’t find any space that worked for us,” said Dragoo of the project’s impetus. Mayfly’s facility on the 164-acre site is slated to open in January 2019, and will ultimately include other businesses and housing. The city and Great Outdoors Colorado are funding trails and river restoration projects.
Dragoo again hit on cross-pollination in manufacturing through proximity. “It really brings the synergies of being together,” he said. “They support each other. I think it’s potent.”
In Golden, Yeti Cycles is in the pre-construction phase of a 26,000-square-foot facility it’s developing with Neenan Archistruction on a site that will ultimately include a brewery and other manufacturers if a re-zoning effort bears fruit. Dubbed Mountain Lab, the 40-acre parcel is adjacent to the mountain bike trails at White Ranch Park.
Yeti Director of Operations Bill Mueller said the goal is to spur efficiency and growth as well as “offer something that’s truly unique to workers. It’s not always monetary for them.”
Neenan’s Shawn Sullivan said the project stands out in his 22 years in real estate. “In that time, this is the coolest project I’ve worked on,” he said. “There’s been an amazing amount of interest. It’s going to be what I hope is a national draw.”
Jeff McCubbin, dean of CSU’s College of Health and Human Services, showcased the 45,000-square-foot Richardson Design Center, slated to open on campus in January 2019. It will include an 8,000-square-foot makerspace and facilities for students and faculty from several different departments. “We’re very excited about this,” said McCubbin. “It’s all about multidisciplinary collaboration and and facilitating opportunities for our students.”
These places are ultimately about people. CompanyWeek‘s Taylor called the projects “talent magnets” for their communities and Colorado as a whole. “This is what we have to do to sell the next generation on manufacturing,” he added. “I believe your projects will be absolute catalysts.”
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