Finalists were announced last week in the 6th annual Colorado Manufacturing Awards. It’s our own March Madness, and the brackets are incredible.

More than 100 companies submitted nominations to the 2021 program, roughly 90 percent of all submissions. Nearly twice as many women were nominated for Colorado Manufacturing Woman of the Year than last year. Finalists earned their way here.

I participate in a selection committee that picks finalists, but I don’t judge or select CMA winners. I do have a front row seat to the proceedings. Here’s my “inside look” at the brackets.

Industrial Group

Industrial/Equipment Manufacturer of the Year

Twin Monkeys Beverage Systems | Aurora

StoneAge | Durango

Sundyne | Arvada

Aerospace Manufacturer of the Year

Redwire Space | Longmont/Littleton

MBK Machine | Longmont

Special Aerospace Services | Boulder/Arvada

Building/Construction Manufacturer of the Year

ROXBOX Containers | Denver

Colorado Timberframe | Lafayette

Encore Electric | Littleton

Bioscience Manufacturer of the Year

Birko Corporation | Henderson

Leiters | Englewood

Hirsh Precision | Boulder

Energy/Transportation Manufacturer of the Year

Keystone Tower Systems | Denver

Rubadue Wire Company | Loveland

Oribi Manufacturing | Commerce City

Industrial/Equipment Manufacturer of the Year may be the CMA’s toughest bracket. Twin Monkeys has fueled Colorado’s nationally renowned beer and beverage industries. StoneAge, in Durango, may be less known to Front Rangers, but read our profile and you’ll understand why they’re a powerhouse. Sundyne? Only one of the country’s top industrial pump and compressor manufacturers, from the maker mecca of Arvada. No joke. Your guess is as good as mine.

Bioscience Manufacturer of the Year presents an intriguing showdown between two stalwart OEMs and one of Colorado’s brilliant contract manufacturers. A celebration of a powerful Colorado industry supply chain.

Building/Construction and Energy/Transportation Manufacturers of the Year are fascinating brackets, a mix of successful companies, up-and-comers vs. established brands. Oribi is a rising player in composites. Watch out.

Aerospace Manufacturer of the Year is predictably strong. Redwire Space, newly formed this year to acquire space-related companies in an innovative new cluster model, including several established companies in Colorado, flashes serious bona fides with components recently landing on Mars. But Special Aerospace Services, including SAS Flight Factory, is a special company and CMA Alumni. Contract ace MBK Machine rounds out a great bracket

Consumer Group

Consumer Brand of the Year

Phunkshun Wear | Denver

FlyLow Gear | Denver

Moots | Steamboat Springs

Food Brand/Co-packer of the Year

Motherlode Co-Packing | Hudson

Root Shoot Malting/Olander Farms | Loveland

Keen One Foods | Boulder

Colorado Winery of the Year

Sauvage Spectrum | Palisade

Carlson Vineyards | Palisade

The Storm Cellar | Hotchkiss

Outstanding Craft Distiller

Storm King Distilling Co. | Montrose

Black Bear Distillery | Green Mountain Falls

Mystic Mountain Distillery | Castle Rock

Outstanding Craft Brewer

City Star Brewing | Berthoud

Denver Beer Co. | Denver

Holidaily Brewing Company | Golden

Cannabis Manufacturer of the Year

NuVue Pharma | Pueblo

Stratos | Pueblo

Medically Correct | Denver

Outdoor industry OEMs and brands have dominated the Consumer Brand of the Year category and this year is no different. Dan Abrams’ high-flying apparel brand, FlyLow Gear, squares off against two OEMs that manufacture in-state. Cycle manufacturer Moots is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year in Steamboat Springs. Substance and sizzle. Moots would be a #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament this year. FlyLow and Phunkshun Wear, a CMA winner in 2018 and three-time finalist, may need a buzzer beater.

Brands and co-packers don’t always meet in the finals in Food Brand/Co-Packer of the Year. In some years, finalists are one or the other. But it’s great when they do. At the epicenter of America’s natural and organic food ecosystem, each shapes the sector in profound ways. Motherlode and Keen One Foods are worthy representatives. Throw in malt maven Root Shoot Malting, and this bracket is tough to call.

Outstanding Craft Distiller finalists are on their way up. No surprise — the story of this young industry, with young players, is about the future, along with the whiskey aging in its barrels. Montrose’s Storm King Distilling Co. was a finalist last year. It may be enough to call them a favorite.

An annual CMA highlight is Outstanding Craft Brewer. The winners list is a who’s who roster, and the group competition has settled into an industry-defining exercise: Finalists are often a mix of established early-mover, middle-market success story, and industry innovator. No different this year. Three great companies, as much as brands. Berthoud’s City Star flat-out makes good beer. Denver Beer is an institution. Holidaily, an incredible innovator. Buckle up.

If the western slope means wine, then Pueblo increasingly means cannabis, and its Cannabis Manufacturer of the Year finalists may be starting a trend in the CMAs. But if Medically Correct is the geo outlier of cannabis finalists, from Denver, it’s also the gorilla of this group. Win or not, NuVue Pharma may well lead cannabis into a new science-based paradigm, while city-mate Stratos continues to impress. You can trust Colorado brands.

The Storm Cellar barely missed out on the finals in the inaugural Colorado Winery of the Year award last year, then went on to win gold at the 2020 American Fine Wine Competition and numerous other medals and accolades. (Take that, CMAs.) Innovation is now a calling card of Colorado wine, coursing through established wineries like Carlson Vineyards and Palisade neighbor Sauvage Spectrum. Stubbornly slow to change, the Colorado wine ecosystem is suddenly awake — and on fire. Will a CMA shift the balance of power to Hotchkiss?

Achievement

Colorado Manufacturing Woman of the Year

Amy Olson | Ready Foods | Denver

Alexandra Gold | Solid Power | Louisville

Heidi Hostetter | H2 Manufacturing Solutions | Longmont

Business Innovation | COVID-19 Response

OraLabs | Parker

LightDeck Diagnostics | Boulder

Titan Robotics | Colorado Springs

Advanced Manufacturing & Machining Award

Titan Robotics | Colorado Springs

Focused On Machining | Sedalia

Linear Manufacturing | Colorado Springs

Judging by the number of nominations, the Women in Manufacturing (WiM) Colorado Chapter is building a high-power following. The women who emerged from WiM board deliberations are leading in different industries — and different ways. Heidi Hostetter has been a finalist all three years of the award and works to advance manufacturing through a variety of initiatives. Alexandra Gold and Amy Olson lead in successful, innovative organizations. I don’t envy WiM’s choice after an impossible decision to narrow the category down to three finalists, but the celebration is off-the-charts worth it.

The Advanced Manufacturing & Machining award — CAMA AMMA as we call it, given the trade group‘s proctoring of nominations — measures continuous improvement through organizational investments. The selection committee was so impressed with the quality of nominees that it considered several of the companies for separate industry awards. A win-win. We’re anxious to report on the outcome.

Manufacturing’s stature has risen through the pandemic and for good reason: companies pivoted to provide key materials lacking in the U.S. supply chain. (Have we heard that before?) OraLabs and Titan Robotics contributed PPE and other material help. LightDeck Diagnostics (formerly MBio) crashed the national scene with a COVID-19 Total Antibody Test that detects antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 virus to determine prior infection. Crazy innovative things are happening in Boulder County in manufacturing. See above.

Can anyone say bracket challenge?

We’ll be featuring all the finalists the next six weeks in the run-up to the 2021 CMA Winners Reveal and Finale, April 29. REGISTER HERE.

Bart Taylor is publisher of CompanyWeek. Reach him at btaylor@companyweek.com.

Any discussion of reshoring manufacturing jobs from China to the U.S. runs headlong into two realities.

First, American OEMs and brands outsource manufacturing for a reason: the combination of skilled labor, infrastructure, and materials in China is often unavailable onshore. As good as it sounds to reshore production — and the benefits of domestic manufacturing are compounding — companies must first ask the question, “Exactly what am I reshoring to?”

An inadequate supply chain in the U.S. provides an easy answer for many companies. Or, as Phunkshun Wear president Jay Badgley told me, “Reshoring was a term I heard frequently when the tariffs were announced, but I haven’t heard any manufacturer use it in months. I don’t know of any apparel brand that’s reshoring.”

Badgley’s outdoor industry apparel brand manufactures in Denver. He’s an outlier in an industry that found qualified, cheap labor in Asia decades ago, and that hasn’t looked back. Today the factories in China — and Vietnam and Bangladesh and other Asian outposts — that make shoes, apparel, accessories, and components used in the assembly of any of a thousand products, are world-class, funded by brands in America and around the world.

This, then, is the other barrier: As much as they’re demonized here, China’s a rational actor — and a manufacturing superpower. Meaning, they won’t give up manufacturing jobs easily. The Chinese have used U.S. investments in people and factories to build a highly advanced manufacturing ecosystem. As Badgley says, “Look at a jacket from The North Face. It’s a thing of beauty. The stitching, the technology, the quality. That coat couldn’t be made here, for a reasonable price.”

China is also incentivized to maintain superpower status by its staggering demographic conundrum. Sarah Rathke, a partner at Squire Patton Boggs and speaker last week at CompanyWeek’s Supply Chain Reality Check webcast, turned me on to James Kynge’s China Shakes The World.

Kynge says this about what he calls China’s “population paradox”: “Even when the economy grows at 9 or 10 percent, it fails by a margin of several million to create the 24 million new jobs required each year. So while China appears to the rest of the world to be enjoying an amazing growth bonanza, the officials working behind the high walls of their leadership compound in Beijing feel trapped in an endless employment crisis.”

Rathke says these are primarily manufacturing jobs, noting, “The 24 million annual figure covers both new entrants into the job market, and a certain amount of transition by rural citizens, each year, to urban manufacturing work.”

Facing the daunting prospect of creating 20+ million jobs every year, it’s a certainty China will redouble efforts to keep every single American brand happy, and every job in China.

What, then, can we do to reshore a mere 5 million manufacturing jobs, a number that according to the Reshoring Initiative‘s Harry Moser, would balance American trade deficit and set the U.S. back on a path to providing companies here more domestic options.

Reduce costs, for one. Moser estimates that through a combination of workforce training, more deliberate management of the value of the dollar, and a cohesive pro-manufacturing industrial policy, the U.S. must lower its across-the-board manufacturing costs by 20 percent to be competitive with China. (Hear Moser outline the numbers in the CompanyWeek webcast.)

Moreover, it’s clear we can’t displace China as the global manufacturing leader. We can’t make everything. China moves millions of citizens into manufacturing work every year. Manufacturing, and manufacturing alone, is the engine that moves millions of Chinese into the middle class.

If we can’t make everything, what should we make?

It’s here that a new U.S. industrial policy must be more nuanced than the current dialogue. We know products and components purchased with federal dollars will be a priority, especially in biotechnology, defense, and other national security-related industries. We know a new generation of consumer-led manufacturing in consumer categories — like food and beverage, as well as transportation — is already powering a U.S. manufacturing comeback.

What then, of other industries manufacturing offshore and dependent today on outsourced labor and infrastructure? The current thinking is that some just aren’t “strategic,” or that barriers are too great to justify investing in more U.S. production.

It’s the wrong approach. Public and private actors should collaborate to find ways to encourage more domestic production in even the toughest industries — like apparel. Moser’s cost formula is a foundation.

And who would argue that the outdoor industry, for example, isn’t a “strategic” economic sector? Very few in America’s West. But if we can’t cut and sew, what should we do here to help companies bring production home, even incrementally? What can be accomplished here, with American assets, ingenuity, and inspiration?

With the idea that no job that can be done here should be left offshore, this is the question that should occupy manufacturing advocates across a dozen industries.

No soldier left behind. Booyah.

Bart Taylor is publisher of CompanyWeek. Email him at btaylor@companyweek.com.

The business leaders who navigate America’s diminished supply chain to successfully manufacture in the U.S. also carry with them a hard-edged realism about domestic production.

The facts on the ground are these: It’s damn hard in many cases to travel the last mile, to see it through with U.S. fabricators and suppliers when so many core manufacturing capabilities, materials, and expertise are elusive. Or offshore.

Pete Wagner makes award-winning skis from an idyllic perch in Telluride, Colorado. His innovation is changing the sport: Skiers provide a full range of biometrics to optimize the performance “fit” of a ski, information that’s processed by Wagner’s technology suite to fully customize the product for a buyer. It’s every bit the digitization of American manufacturing we read about weekly.

Yet to the extent manufacturing’s digital evolution is key to its future, it’s not the primary barrier for Wagner to make skis in the U.S.

“Our company, our brand, is all about American-made and sourcing everything we possibly can in the U.S.,” Wagner says. “But occasionally we run into an issue that speaks to what U.S. manufacturing has lost.”

Wagner offered the example of his national search for a key component. “We buy an anodized aluminum alloy from a company in Austria that’s used in our skis. I wanted to source the material from a U.S. company,” he explains. “I figured it must be available for aerospace or other applications. I talked with some great people in the U.S. aluminum industry. After getting material analysis done, I was told that we can’t get a similar type of high performance alloy material in that configuration from a U.S supplier.

“It makes you question how much we value manufacturing in the U.S.,” he adds. “Or, it’s just a smart business decision, given the global market. Either way, it makes it tough.”

Wagner’s frustration plays out by orders of magnitude for other companies, and for entire industries, including his own. Wagner Custom Skis is an anomaly in America’s burgeoning outdoor industry; few of its leading companies are committed to U.S. production. Some can’t. Some don’t try. So the topic is largely avoided, or relegated to the back burner by other more positive story lines.

Others are less sanguine about America’s industrial state, including the Pentagon. Metalcraft Industries CEO Larry Caschette pointed me to a U.S. Department of Defense Industrial Capabilities Report to Congress with this rather grim assessment:

“[The] Department of Defense is still the colossus of the federal system, i.e., the single biggest buyer of goods in the U.S. government. But unless the industrial and manufacturing base that develops and builds those goods modernizes and adjusts to the world’s new geopolitical and economic realities, America will face a growing and likely permanent national security deficit.”

Caschette is encouraging manufacturing enthusiasts to tag the report in messages to elected officials to reinforce the findings. Framing U.S. manufacturing as a “national security” issue certainly gets the attention of elected types.

It’s also hard to imagine how the DoD’s prescription comes to fruition without more vigorous public sector support. Per the report, a “national defense industrial strategy” is needed, a four-part program to:

1. Reshore our defense industrial base and supply chains to the United States and to allies, starting with microelectronics, and restore our shipbuilding base.
2. Build a modern manufacturing and engineering workforce and research and development (R&D) base.
3. Continue to modernize the defense acquisition process to fit 21st century realities.
4. Find new ways to partner private sector innovation with public sector resources and demand. All these steps will be necessary to create a robust, resilient, secure, and innovative industrial base.

It’s stuff we write about every week.

But how much will government intervention truly help, even with a new and exciting “industrial strategy,” to reshore our industrial base? Can the U.S. government also build a modern R&D ecosystem?

American companies in part funded China’s world-class supply chain. Cheap labor and short-term profits were too hard to pass up. Now it’s up to us to bring it home. Let’s earmark substantial public sector support to hasten its reshoring as we take matters into our hands.

One good outcome would be locating anodized aluminum alloy for an intrepid American manufacturer. Let’s work on a thousand more. One company at a time.

Bart Taylor is publisher of CompanyWeek. Contact him with a source or supplier for Wagner Custom Skis, or reach him at btaylor@companyweek.com.