A Washington Post business article published last week, headlined, “There are some jobs now in manufacturing. Kids just aren’t interested in taking them”, was noteworthy on two counts. For one it summed up the workforce challenge in manufacturing without losing sight of the sector’s albatross: a more qualified workforce may be slow to materialize unless the perception of a manufacturing career profoundly changes.

Also of note was that mainstream business media covered the story at all. Certainly in Denver, in Colorado, one’s hard pressed to find any coverage of manufacturing issues.

The irony is that for the manufacturing economy to make a comeback that some forecast, the sector would benefit from more media visibility. Today’s maker economy is a couple generations removed from industrial-only sector of the mid-to-late 1900’s, but for some the imagery of hard hats and welders continues to define the sector. The challenge is how to change the public’s perception of manufacturing.

Two features published in today’s CompanyWeek convey a different look. Eldon James and Hope Foods, companies in different market sectors, are compelling examples of the tech-driven, modern manufacturers who are less often seen but very prevalent. It’s become conventional wisdom that to change the manufacturing brand, images of bending, shaping, fabricating and cutting must fade away.

But it’s a mistake to tell only part of the manufacturing story or demean the blue-collar component that’s built-in to the fabric of the maker economy. Some of the most compelling stories we publish are of companies that build stuff, big stuff. Check out today’s Wazee Companies profile.

Certainly technology has changed manufacturing. Jobs are less dangerous, less dirty. But other differences are more meaningful and inform today’s manufacturing brand in a positive way, including the breadth of the what’s now being made in the U.S., the growing prospects for collaboration between makers as a result, and the shifting perceptions of the value of today’s university degree. Young, smart people are beginning to realize that launching and owning a business, for example, is a fantastic option. Entrepreneurship is again cool – especially in those sectors at the intersection of lifestyle and business. (Or as my friend Chuck Sullivan likes to say, “of lifestyle and commerce.”)

Manufacturers are also connecting in surprising ways, borrowing products and processes for use in new applications. Eldon James is leveraging technology and products perfected in bioscience for use in making beer. “What we found is that our antimicrobial tubing that has been accepted very well in medical…is very effective at inhibiting bacteria that spoils beer, and also wine spoiling bacteria, “ says Marcia Coulson, president and co-founder of the company. An EJ beverage division was launched this year.

Hope Foods is likewise managing bacterial contamination – with technology that’s been around for decades but just know becoming mainstream in food preparation.

We may be aspiring to rebrand the wrong stuff. The tale of manufacturing today is one of large and small companies, of brewmasters, designers, and organic growers alongside machinists, welders and equipment operators, fueled by technology and inspired by innovation that’s jumping from one industry sector to another.

This isn’t necessarily how industry, its trade groups or government or media, tend to view the issue. Here, maker groups and government efforts tend to align vertically, by industry. Or, by company size: larger businesses able to buy memberships or pay for lobbying. Or, by geography.

For their part media are in a strategic retreat, limiting not expanding their gaze and largely incapable of rebranding anything that’s not to do with the service-related advertising dollars we incessantly chase.

A more practical plan to rebrand manufacturing would be to bring together companies and visionaries from different industries, in media and in person, to share ideas that will drive more innovation and collaboration. The companies that benefit will be a magnet for kids who want high- paying jobs out of college, not an extended stay in the parent’s basement.

Let’s showcase the entire breadth and impact of the new maker economy – hardhats, kitchens, cleanrooms and cranes.

And read about in the Washington Post.

America’s manufacturing evolution is also the story of Ft. Collins-based Forney Industries. Founded in 1932 by James Forney, the company has evolved from primary manufacturer to a distributor of goods made by others, much of it offshore. Today Forney sells industrial goods procured from a global supply chain to thousands of U.S. retail outlets like Ace Hardware.

That Forney successfully adapted where others did not is noteworthy. Hundreds of manufacturers weren’t as fortunate, or skilled, in dealing with the offshoring wave.

Yet Steve Anderson, Forney’s grandson and President and CEO today, is looking forward, and like many, sees opportunity again for U.S. manufacturing and related business. He and chief operating officer Kyle Pettine have a clear view of the factors driving manufacturing back to the U.S., like rising overseas wages, lower domestic energy costs, quality-control, and simply a desire to do more business locally. Manufacturing has momentum.

For Forney Industries, a growth surge might translate into a growing industrial business as manufacturers increasingly look for locally made products and goods, for raw materials, fashioned parts and high-tech components. Goods that Forney will distribute in the U.S. market.

“The industrial market is one we’re starting to pay attention to,” Anderson says. “It’s a $400-$450 billion market, and we’d like to be a bigger part of that. To do that we have to go out and get involved with manufacturers and the distributors who sell to manufacturers. We’re going to start in Ft. Collins and branch out from there.”

Forney’s experience gives Anderson a unique perspective, though, and he and Pettine see nothing inevitable about a flood of new manufactured products changing the U.S. economy overnight. The challenge? Workforce. For U.S. industry to bounce-back and power innovation and development in a bigger way, a new generation of industrial employees must begin to materialize to power America’s new ‘maker economy’.

‘We’re almost starting over,” Anderson, says, drawing on the firm’s manufacturing roots but also its front row seat to a sector that changed radically in the last half of the 20th century. “For the past decades we’ve asked others to do the work for us. That means we have to start educating kids now – we’re behind.”

Pettine adds, “From my perspective we’re getting to a critical point – we’ve got a gap in our workforce as the baby-boom generation is retiring. There isn’t a next-generation manufacturing workforce.”

He puts a sharp point on what’s at stake. “Would we buy American if we had the option? Of course,” Pettine says. “So would our customers.”

So a generation or so removed from manufacturing but committed again to filling more orders with American-made products, leadership at Forney is working to fill the labor pipeline that would juice a new manufacturing surge. A new manufacturing coalition has formed in northern Colorado. Anderson’s on an education committee. He’s honest about the scale of the challenge, of labor enabling the next iteration of his family business.

“The baby-boomers want their kids to be doctors and lawyers – but unfortunately doctors and lawyers represent a small percentage of our workforce. Few parents today see their kids working on a CNC machine (basically, computer-guided machine tools), and that’s wrong. But we’ve done it to ourselves. We’ve taken shops of out the high schools; kids don’t have to work with their hands.

“Our goal on the manufacturing side of things today is to get kids back to having some interest in what a manufacturing career would be,” Anderson says, “and what’s happening here is that manufacturers are creating that curriculum that should be taught in the schools but don’t have any way to share it. We’re trying to get that knowledge off the shop floor and to educators at the community college level.”

What Anderson and others would acknowledge though is that community colleges aren’t enough. For one, some community colleges are overwhelmed today with vocational demand. It’s not uncommon for colleges to have wait lists for classes like welding.

But even if the community college talent pool improves – and grant money pouring into the system and legislative focus can’t help but improve the system’s poor showing in manufacturing – Anderson believes universities will have to play a bigger role.

“At Forney we support the supply-chain management program at Colorado State University, but there aren’t a lot if any courses in how to control process or manufacture goods today. Or what it’s like for a business to be ‘lean’ (a manufacturing production practice). We’re pulling a lot of kids from the supply-chain track at CSU – but have they had any exposure at all to what it takes to manufacture? Probably very little. We need more kids exposed to the possibilities of a manufacturing career.”

In the end, industry – manufacturers – will have to lead the way. As Anderson and Pettine point out, industry knows best which jobs-of-the-future will materialize. In many cases they are leading. Wolf Robotics, a Forney neighbor in Ft. Collins, runs a 30-intern program with CSU that continually develops the talent Wolf needs. Others operate similarly.

Even so, according to Anderson, universities can play a more active role. “CSU should really be reaching out…to manufacturers, to say, ‘tell us about your story; tell us about what you need.’ That would help tremendously.’

Will a U.S. manufacturing resurgence write a new chapter for the company? For Kyle Pettine, it would be mean less flights to China and more to San Diego, or Michigan, a prospect that seems to appeal to him primary because it would be mean more dollars staying in the U.S.

Whatever the case, Forney Industries seems capable of adapting to whatever the future holds.

Contact Steve Anderson at (970) 494-6806, and Kyle Pettine at (970) 494-6839.

Who best represents the interests of industry, upstart entrepreneurs who innovate and force change but often flame out, or established voices who’ve paved the way for those to follow?

The question frames not only the dust up between Tesla and the powerful dealer network that control auto sales in the U.S. (read Jeff Rundles overview from last week), but the fight that’s brewing locally between craft cider makers and national beer brands who see opportunity in the fast-growing, hip new beverage sector.

I’ll leave it to Ed Sealover of the Denver Business Journal to report the details, but the upshot of the cider kerfuffle is this: MillerCoors and Anheuser Busch have convinced two state representatives, Dan Pabon (D, Denver) and Frank McNulty (R, Highlands Ranch), to introduce legislation to eliminate a regulatory step that as a practical matter would lower the price consumers pay for MillerCoors and AB cider. Local makers would be strapped to meet the price break. Quoted in the DBJ, Brad Page of Colorado Cider (read the CompanyWeek profile here) sees it as a death-knell for small producers in the sector.

The Tesla situation is relevant and instructive here. Influencers from the powerful established auto dealer network are forcing Tesla, the most innovative, disruptive U.S. automaker in decades, to conform to a decades-old sales methodology, against its will. On the surface it seems self-defeating for an industry seeking to improve its global competitiveness to undermine a smaller, more innovative operator. Tesla strengthens America’s global auto brand.

Fortunately it looks like the sides are working toward a resolution. No surprise, Tesla may be leading the way. In New York, the automaker’s agreed that in the in future, dealerships will be the point of sale. And states who’ve been convinced to tell Tesla how to run its business, like New Jersey, seem to be coming to their senses.

Or more accurately, lawmakers lobbied into action may be coming to their senses. Those who would intervene on behalf of Coors and Anheuser Busch to the detriment of the small guy should think long and hard about the impacts. The craft beverage sector is a proven winner for Colorado and the region. If the bill hurts growth companies in the space, it’s bad policy.

The premise for reform is not without merit. Colorado’s liquor laws are outdated. Reforming the way beer, wine, cider (and the next beverage) are distributed and sold seems a worthy endeavor.

But as with craft beer, this fledgling maker sector can do great things for the economy if nurtured. So many positive things happen as a result of successful risk-taking and entrepreneurship in the maker economy – jobs, innovation, branding for the state, wealth-building – that it’s critical to support, not undermine, promising businesses like Colorado Cider. Or Tesla.

MillerCoors and AB might argue the point. The regulation may be onerous. There’s a good case to be made for regulatory reform.

But did Colorado state representatives Pabon and McNulty wake up one morning and decide that providing MillerCoors and Anheuser Busch regulatory relief to help them sell more cider should be a legislative priority? Of course not.

Colorado’s business community must rally around the little guys at a time when the economy really needs them. Colorado legislators should slough off intervention and scuttle narrow reform in favor a well-planned and fully-vetted regulatory rework. Let’s send the right message at a pivotal time. Support new makers and manufacturers. Support the little guy.

New economic realities are bringing manufacturers together across Colorado. Unlike the employee-driven efforts of an earlier generation, today’s organizers are business leaders facing new challenges to growth but who also see opportunity as the post-recession manufacturing economy takes shape.

On Colorado’s western slope, industry has led the formation of the Western Colorado Manufacturing Alliance. The WCMA is hosting the Western Colorado Manufacturers Summit April 10 in Grand Junction. Eric Goertz, VP of Operations at Capco, Inc., a western slope manufacturer, is acting chairman of the Alliance.

Goertz, an engineer by trade, is as pragmatic as he is optimistic about what’s to be gained from organizing.

“I am sure the reasons for ‘why’ we are working to put together manufacturing alliances may differ, but the end results should be very similar,” Goertz says. “Obviously if manufacturers band together, we can avoid duplication of efforts in a wide array of topics, from changing health care regulations to employee training programs. We can also learn best practices from each other, work to buy locally which helps bolster the local economy and workforce, speak with a unified voice and make policy changes happen if needed.”

He’s also aware of the limitations of trade groups and cautions against unrealistic expectations. “The question in my mind was, given some investment of time and talent into the local economy, specifically manufacturing, could I see an ROI from these efforts? Thus far, I will say that I have become more connected with the types of manufacturing that takes place locally, and we (Capco) are starting to use suppliers from our local market a little more than we did a year ago. I am pleased with our progress; we’re hoping the Summit is successful.”

Similar efforts are taking shape along Colorado’s Front Range. A northern Colorado manufacturing ‘partnership’ is building, as is a new alliance stretching south from Castle Rock to the New Mexico border. Led by Springs Fabrications’ founder and CEO Tom Neppl, who’s also now the industry chair for the Colorado Springs Regional Business Alliance, the Southern Colorado Regional Manufacturing Initiative will host a kick-off reception April 30 in Colorado Springs (details are being finalized), with an expo and week-long event in the works for late summer.

Neppl’s company has enjoyed strong growth the past few years including a high-profile role in Japan’s Fukushima nuclear accident. But he’s also keenly aware of the hard hit manufacturing endured in southern Colorado the late 2000’s, and is optimistic as to what can be gained from building closer ties throughout the community.

“The February 2014 economic report prepared for the Southern Colorado Economic Forum noted that El Paso County has lost some 13,000 manufacturing jobs since 2000,” Neppl says. “Most can be attributed to the exodus of our semi-conductor industry. Real job losses probably exceeded that. This is reason enough to increase the focus on manufacturing in our region.”

But Neppl’s also an energetic promoter of manufacturing. For him, coming together as a sector has everything to do with the opportunity – and the promise of a new manufacturing economy.

“Manufacturers typically provide above average wages and benefits. They’re also more likely to teach people technical skills that are transferable. Learning a skilled trade increases the likelihood of earning a stable paycheck and often provides opportunity for personal and professional growth.”

He adds, “Manufacturing is once again in the spotlight, and nearly every region in the world is focused on growing its manufacturing base. We should be no different. Today’s industry is a modern, tech-driven sector that provides a more stable economic base than service jobs. Manufacturing creates wealth.”

It’s hard to argue the point, and Colorado’s economic leadership certainly wouldn’t. With each month the Office of Economic Development and International Trade seems to announce a new manufacturing initiative, grant, or opportunity emanating from policy-makers or public-sector sources. Earlier this month OEDIT announced a multi-faceted initiative called the Colorado Acceleration Agenda, or COAA, that would in part establish a Technology Commercialization and Manufacturing Corridor along the Front Range from Larimer County to Pueblo. This in addition to the myriad programs coursing through economic development circles to develop workforce, procure federal dollars and generally promote ‘advanced manufacturing’.

In the end, industry’s own grassroots efforts may be as effective as government’s well-intentioned (and well-funded) top-down programs. Both should work to improve economic prospects for the region.

Can Cory Gardner defeat Mark Udall and become Senator? Dick Wadhams thinks so. But as much credit the Colorado GOP is also receiving nationally for nominating a more ‘electable’ candidate, a win against Udall would still be a surprise.

A Republican hasn’t won a statewide election for Colorado Governor or U.S. Senate since Bill Owens in 2002. Dems control the legislature and Governor’s office, and as GOP operative Wadhams and others have noted, a candidate has yet to emerge who can seriously challenge John Hickenlooper. The Governor casts a large shadow on the ticket. He’s assembled a formidable electoral coalition. In Udall’s case, Democratic incumbency is a plus.

Gardner’s yet to articulate a platform but early pronouncements from the gubernatorial field provide strong clues. They suggest the GOP ticket will run on the repeal of Obamacare, Dem overreach on gun legislation, opposition to same-sex marriage and economic sluggishness – a slow recovery.

Will this platform appeal to young voters, women and minorities and social moderates in Colorado who increasingly decide elections? It’s principled. It also similar to what’s been defeated here before. And Gardner’s ‘Battle for the Future of America’ theme runs headlong against a few economic realities.

Contrary to the gloomy tone the of the GOP’s economic assertions, growth and vitality are on display here. Energy is feeding an industrial comeback. Entrepreneurship is thriving. Yes, the western slope is lagging. But on balance the Colorado economy is a formidable engine and compelling story, a national model in some respects. As Brian Burney, CEO of Oliver Manufacturing (profiled in today’s issue) told me, “It’s a good time to be a manufacturer.”

Manufacturing may provide an opening for any candidate willing to make it a campaign issue. Last week Manufacturing & Technology News summarized research that according to the publication, concludes “There is a wide disconnect between the American public and policymakers in Washington, D.C., on the importance of manufacturing to the U.S. economy and the need for action to restore American industrial competitiveness.” Or more succinctly, “Americans Want Washington To Deal With Manufacturing, But Washington Is Not Responding.”

Run on manufacturing!

M&T News reported on some of the findings:

– When asked, “which of the following industries is the most important to the strength of the American economy?” 32 percent of Americans said “manufacturing,” followed by 19 percent saying “high tech and knowledge industries,” 12 percent saying health care, 11 percent saying agriculture, 8 percent saying housing and construction, 6 percent saying finance, and 4 percent saying services and retail.

– Voters reject the idea that other sectors like high tech or services can replace manufacturing. Only 34 percent of Americans agreed with the statement that “the strength of the American economy is innovation and competition — and if manufacturing leaves, we will move into new areas like high tech or services which will take its place in the future”.

– With 88 percent of Americans agreeing with the statement that “American manufacturing means American jobs,” the survey found that “support for American manufacturing and manufacturers is nearly universal.”

– Most Americans (84 percent) support the adoption of a national manufacturing strategy that is focused on tax, education and trade policies (with 7 percent opposed to such a policy).

Ah, the elusive national manufacturing strategy. Another finding strikes close to home. “Most Americans “don’t want to hear about ‘advanced manufacturing,’ ” the survey found, with 44 percent agreeing with the statement: “All manufacturing is advanced — they need to stop trying to come up with new language and focus on strengthening all of manufacturing.”

Colorado policy-makers are tangled up promoting ‘advanced manufacturing’. Even those paying attention are confused. Word is out that ‘advanced industries’ is the new catchword. One wonders where craft brewers, burrito makers, or sew shops fit in this nomenclature.

They’re all important. Congressman Gardner may do well to glance nearly straight south from Yuma, his hometown, to LaJunta, where Oliver Manufacturing’s gravity separators are a global hit.

Campaign inspiration awaits.