In this new column, VTDigger business and economy reporter Anne Wallace Allen looks back at some of the innovative leaders of Vermont companies she visited with during the past year.
CORNWALL — I had been driving past the sign for the Oxford School of Rug-Hooking for months before curiosity led me down the driveway to see what was happening back there.
I found a modest parking lot crowded with out-of-state cars. Inside, the farmhouse was a quietly busy hub of industry, with a group that had flown in from San Diego working on rugs together. There was also a yarn store and a large office.
The school belongs to Amy Oxford, a longtime leader in the Vermont craft world. After I ventured inside, the company manager told the back story: Sales of Oxford’s rug-hooking tool increased 600% in 2017 after a Toronto Instagram influencer featured it in a video. Oxford, who had been assembling the tool at the kitchen table with her husband, farmed out the work to local at-home assemblers and is now working on her seventh book about rug-hooking.
Oxford’s success is a story of business and of talent, timing, hard work, luck and good judgment, and one version or another is playing out at Vermont companies all the time.
We’ve been publishing these stories through a series called Making it in Vermont for a year now. Friends, readers, and simple interest lead me to entrepreneurs all around the state. Meeting the CEOs and the workers and walking around inside leave me with unforgettable impressions of the hard work, intelligence and creativity behind some of the state’s most important employers.
Concept2 in Morrisville, which makes most of the world’s competitive rowing oars and rowing machines, is a family business that grew out of its 1976 start in a barn to employ 65 people and sell in 90 countries. When she showed us around, co-owner Judy Geer, a three-time Olympic qualifier, related some striking stories of her own pre-Title IX days as an Ivy League athlete.
Flex-A-Seal started in Hank Slauson’s living room 36 years ago, grew to occupy a former maple syrup operation in Essex Junction, and this fall moved into a new 66,000-square-foot space in Williston. Slauson showed me around both, introducing me to an engineer who had been with him from the start.
In the year since VTDigger started Making it in Vermont, we’ve featured 27 Vermont manufacturers. In keeping with the scale of so many things in Vermont, none of these companies are huge. The Elmore-based New American Stone Mills, where founder Andrew Heyn makes granite grain mills for shipment to customers around the world, has just two employees. Vermont Violins, which makes child-size violas, made 50 instruments last year in a Church Street workshop. When I visited, a varnished instrument was drying in the sunny parking lot outside the back door. Even iconic Vermont companies like Danforth Pewter and Lake Champlain Chocolates have just around 100 full-time workers.
Making it in Vermont focuses on the smaller companies partly because the larger ones have been sold to out-of-state firms that don’t seem to want to open their doors to scrutiny from the likes of us. These companies include some of Vermont’s largest or most iconic employers, like GE, the former UTC in Vergennes, Hubbardton Forge and the Connecticut-based parent company of Ethan Allen.
It’s likely a PR person at a headquarters out of state doesn’t see much benefit to inviting in a nonprofit news organization that they’ve never heard of in a place they’ve probably never been. But it’s not just the companies with out-of-state owners that block access. The Vermont-based GW Plastics and Mack Molding don’t return calls or emails either.
But there are plenty of others who want Vermonters to know what’s going on. Tours of the extraordinary R&D and prototyping facilities at Burton Snowboards are open to all comers, including members of the competition who occasionally show up.
“We’ve got nothing to hide,” said Senior Vice President of Global Product Chris Cunningham.
Darn Tough Vermont, which makes socks in Northfield, was one of the first companies we featured, and the owner, Ric Cabot, showed us around himself, talking then about future expansion. At Sweet Tree Maple, a very large producer owned by Montreal investors, General Manager Joe Russo set up a ladder so I could view the expanse of machinery from above, answered all my questions, and then lent me money from petty cash because I’d forgotten my wallet and wasn’t sure I had enough gas to get home from Island Pond.
Ann Clark, a family business in Rutland that makes most of the world’s cookie cutters, has a similarly open approach; CEO Ben Clark even volunteers his opinions on national politics, a topic most CEOs limit to jokes or eye-rolling.
Private companies have a right, of course, to keep their operations to themselves. Among other things, they don’t want to share information that would be useful to their competitors. But when they’re taking thousands, in some cases millions, of dollars in incentives from Vermont taxpayers, it’s natural for Vermonters to want to see and hear what’s going on. And these companies are important Vermont employers. In many cases, they play a huge role in our future.
And there’s no substitute for meeting the people behind the products. CEOs at Twincraft and Rhino Foods introduced me to new Americans working on the assembly line. At Danforth Pewter and Vermont Teddy Bear, I met the designers who have the enviable job of creating art and getting a steady paycheck too.
Meeting the business leaders is also crucial because these days, with the public losing faith in the political process, businesses are taking a greater role in policy development.
It’s always interesting to ask company leaders why they choose to operate in Vermont, despite the stories we hear about how difficult it is to do business here. The answers are all over the map, although many involve skiing, and most people say they’d never want to live anywhere else.
Asked if it’s more expensive to run a company in Vermont, Cabot’s answer was: “I have no idea.”
Readers seem to like the Making it stories; I get a lot of emails about them. The stories bely Vermont’s reputation for being a place where it’s hard to make a living. And who doesn’t love a Horatio Alger-like tale of the rise from a one-person operation in a barn to a profitable concern that supports dozens or even hundreds of families?