Celebrating the best of 2016 manufacturing, as we did last month, was easy. So many companies and success stories, so little space. CU’s Leeds School of Business Colorado Business Economic Outlook 2017 provides great context for a forecast for the year ahead. The highpoints of the Leeds report: Manufacturing employment will grow 1.6 percent, adding […]
Rural America’s decisive role November 8 gives way today to the tough reality that economic prosperity is as elusive after the election as before. Small towns and communities face an uncertain future. Colorado’s rural outposts must also stand by and watch urban counterparts make national headlines for job growth, rising property values, and increasingly diversified […]
Ross Reels had been in Montrose, Colorado, since 1983, a leader in precision machining in the fly fishing industry. But David Dragoo, president of Mayfly Outdoors, had already made a fateful decision after acquiring Ross and taking over operations in early 2014. “Essentially, we’d decided then that we were going to move the company,” he […]
The wine sector is the crazy old uncle of Colorado’s prolific beverage industry. A wealthy uncle to be sure, with fertile bottomland, magnificent crops and impressive factories. Eccentric to the point of being a bit standoffish, miffed by the sudden success of brewing and distilling nephews, his mood’s improved lately. A burst of creativity — […]
“We should expect more from an ice-cream sandwich.” — Pete Bredemann, founder, PeteyBird Ice Cream Sandwiches America’s food revolution rolls on in Boulder, Colorado, where natural products enthusiasts convened last to week to parse, among other things, the metaphysical state of ice cream snacks. Of course, there were more tangible outcomes for the 25 natural […]
Speculation about the impact of a Trump presidency on U.S. manufacturing has developed along familiar lines, much in keeping with America’s split-personality on the sector. Last week, media surmised that robots will thwart Trumps effort to reshore jobs at the same time his election may discourage the migration of businesses offshore. Midwest manufacturers are “wary […]
Even as manufacturing’s percent of U.S. employment lingers around 10 to 12 percent of total employment (and about 9 percent in Utah and Colorado), U.S. manufacturing is alive and well. American industrial output is at an all time high. We’re simply making more, with less. From Vox.com: Since 1987, US manufacturers have increased their output […]
We’ll devote time and energy this fall doing what many of you do — assessing the popularity of our products (in our case, content), determining what’s working and what isn’t, and developing new content that do what most good products do: meet a demand in the marketplace or solve a problem. Here’s a list of […]
How important is it that we continue to incubate small businesses so they become thriving companies? Michael Porter, co-chair of the Competitiveness Project and the Harvard Business School, declared on CNBC’s Squawk Box. “We’re stalled in America. Our performance, economic performance, on many metrics is worse than we’ve seen in many generations. I mean not […]
Despite the best efforts of candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, manufacturing continues to get killed in the business press. In Monday’s debate, Clinton even used a term endearing to government and policy wonks — “advanced manufacturing” — to promote its importance. But business media remains generally unimpressed. It’s more popular today for local and […]