Current Issue
April 2009 Issue
Cover Story
Rough waters
By Bob KretschmanThe 2-acre back lot of Adventure Bound River Expeditions is quiet and still in February’s frosty air. Life jackets, camping equipment, outboard motors and inflatable rafts are stored away, and vans and buses used to transport customers to the river wait silently for warmer weather and peak flows.
Tom Kleinschnitz, who owns Grand Junction-based Adventure Bound, is waiting, too, to see how many vacationers visit this part of Colorado in a year when the troubled national economy has almost everyone watching their dollars and cents more closely.
“I’m projecting to have a...
Articles
On management: So the kid says to me…
By Pat WiesnerSo the kid says to me …
“How much money do you make?”
I told him. Then I told him that it wasn’t quite fair because I was retired and the more interesting question was just how was I still making money when I wasn’t working. “I want to be a salesman,” the kid says. “I want to make a bundle! I know what I have do, and that’s learn to be a good talker!”
What do you think I told him?
* * *
For years I’ve threatened to do some classes for Junior Achievement, the national organization that teaches middle- and high-school kids about business and why it is relevant to...
Rundles wrap-up: Suckers
By Jeff RundlesI follow the business news like the news hound I am, and of course the all-consuming recession is beginning to bug me. You get the run-up in the stock market one day on better-than-expected home sales reports, then a plunge the next day because some giant corporation announces poor earnings. I have never liked roller coasters, and I am not going to start now.
Then I read about professional sporting teams feeling the blues. Season ticket sales are off, attendance is down, and many are being forced to offer the public such unheard-of amenities as smaller hot dogs for a...
Colorado Cool Stuff: Vez Sandals
By Eric PetersonAfter designing and developing sandals for Chaco, Steve Chavez wanted to do his own thing. “I found myself going in a different direction artistically,” he says, noting that he’s “addicted to leather and women’s footwear.”
After Chavez left Chaco in 2006, he came up with a business plan to make handcrafted leather sandals, his wife signed off on it, and Vez was born. Now he makes five styles of fashionable women’s sandals: the emotionally named Passion, Delight, Ecstasy, Desire and — new this spring — Euphoria. “I’m trying to keep it fun and convey it’s art and not...
Colorado Cool Stuff: Vedante Pop Bands, Collars and Leashes
By Eric PetersonAfter a long career as a fashion designer and owner of Los Angeles apparel companies, Barbara Kantor “semi-retired” to Boulder in 1997. The avid walker often took to the Boulder Creek Path after nightfall, but thought most reflective clothing lacked style.
One evening in 2006, she was walking with a friend, discussing the possibility of starting another apparel company making fashion-forward “super-reflective” wearables. A few blocks later, they witnessed a pedestrian get struck by a driver who didn’t see her black jacket, and Kantor knew her instincts were correct.
...Colorado Cool Stuff: PepPods
By Eric PetersonThe minds behind the PepPod, Zach Zeldner and Skip Meador — whose business cards sport the respective titles of “Zookeeper” and “Head Cattle Brander” — met playing soccer in Boulder and discovered tablet-based effervescent drinks on trips overseas.
“Effervescents are really big in the rest of the world,” says Meador, noting that most are hydration-based or vitamin-based, not formulated as energy drinks like PepPods. The pair founded the company in 2005 and developed the product for three years, testing formulas on friends, perfecting both the flavor and formulation of...
Colorado Cool Stuff: The Buffalo Collection
By Eric PetersonJulie Littlefield’s family started commercially herding buffalo on their 8,000-acre Scenic Mesa Ranch in the early 1990s, and then they got into the recreation business by opening the ranch to hunters and anglers. Overnight lodges followed about five years ago.
“We needed furniture, and we had plenty of buffalo hides,” Littlefield says. She put two and two together and started producing-high end couches, loveseats, chairs and ottomans from the hide, with the help of “a ski bum from a North Carolina furniture family.”
Soon she enlisted Paonia-based Kendall Custom...
Battle of wounded knees
By Lisa MarshallAt age 44, cyclist Scott England has endured no less than 10 surgeries on his knee, shoulder and toes. He goes to physical therapy twice a week, has weekly pain-numbing injections in his joints, and even owns his own ultrasound machine.
Runner Kathy Gebhardt, 51, is on “volume 3” of her medical file, with five knee operations behind her and a total joint replacement looking inevitable.
Competitive rower Dr. Richard Flanigan, 70, is already sporting the scars where doctors replaced his worn-out hip and knee with brand new ones.
Scott England goes through his daily...
Guest column: Redefining ‘disability’
By Theodore A. OlsenLong ago, I was diagnosed with epilepsy. My seizures were infrequent, brief and mild but disruptive. Thankfully, they have become fully controlled with the help of neurologists and medication. My treated epilepsy didn’t keep me from graduating law school with highest honors, representing employers for more than 30 years or running marathons.
But under the new amendments to the Americans with Disabilities Act, I’m “disabled.” Because my epilepsy is a “disability,” if I were an employee, I could claim the protections of the amended ADA. These are protections that I –...
Small biz tech-startup: Lightening Hybrids Inc.
By Eric PetersonINITIAL LIGHT BULB:
Brothers Dan and Sam Johnson, formerly chief executive officer/founder and chief technical officer of Loveland’s SA Robotics, teamed with Colorado State University’s Tim Reeser to launch a hybrid car company. Dan sold his equity stake in SA last year and began looking with Sam for a new entrepreneurial opportunity.
Bonnie Trowbridge, Tim Reeser, Dan Johnson and Sam Johnson
After discovering hydraulic hybrid truck technology by sponsoring a team of CSU engineering students, the Johnsons came up with an idea for a startup that would not only...
State of the state: April
Manufacturing: Ski-lift builder opens larger plant in Grand Junction
A ski-lift manufacturer that is diversifying into wind-power generation equipment celebrated the opening of a larger factory in Grand Junction in January. Leitner-Poma of America, owned by Italy-based Leitner Technologies, now occupies a new 90,000-square-foot facility on 18 acres in the Bookcliff Technology Park near Grand Junction Regional Airport. Prinoth, a sister company that makes snow-grooming equipment, moved into a new facility adjacent to Leitner-Poma.
Leitner-Poma, which has been in Grand...
The economist: What’s the definition of a depression?
By Tucker Hart Adams“What’s the probability that the U.S. economy will never recover?” the reporter asked.
There aren’t many questions about the likelihood of an economic event occurring that I can answer with a great deal of confidence, but that one was easy. “It’s zero!” I replied. The U.S. economy has been through dozens of business cycles — 33 according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, which has dated them back to 1857. In every instance, after a period of contraction, the economy recovered.
Although the reporter was my most pessimistic questioner, for the first time in...
Vine arts & entertainment: West Elks, the ‘other’ Colorado wine region
By Alta and Brad SmithOne of the prettiest drives in Colorado is on the West Elk Scenic Byway, a gawker’s paradise that loops through mountains and valleys south of Carbondale. On the western loop of the byway, just off 8,755-foot McClure Pass on Colorado 133, is an agricultural area known for its cherries and apples but also increasingly known for its wine.
More than 60 wineries spread across Colorado now, but the state has only two areas the federal government has designated as a grape-growing region called an American Viticultural Area (AVA). The designation conveys distinction, pride...
Colorado Cool Stuff: April
By Eric PetersonThe Buffalo Collection
Julie Littlefield’s family started commercially herding buffalo on their 8,000-acre Scenic Mesa Ranch in the early 1990s, and then they got into the recreation business by opening the ranch to hunters and anglers. Overnight lodges followed about five years ago.
“We needed furniture, and we had plenty of buffalo hides,” Littlefield says. She put two and two together and started producing-high end couches, loveseats, chairs and ottomans from the hide, with the help of “a ski bum from a North Carolina furniture family.”
Soon she enlisted...
Who owns Colorado: Steamboat Springs still has plenty of snow but could use another head of steam
By David LewisIf what you live for is white and fluffy and falls from the sky like manna, you might like Steamboat Springs.
In an average winter, perhaps 250 inches to 300 inches of snow fall on the Colorado mountains. And you will remember how remarkable last year’s snows seemed. Yet we still wish to add that in the winter of 2007-2008 Steamboat had a hair under 500 inches of snow, and more than 100 inches in both December 2008 and January 2009.
This winter “hasn’t been a killer winter, but it’s not bad. Not like last year but not bad,” says Randy Rudasics, small-business...
Sports biz: Skin game
By Stewart SchleyAttention, stupid people: You’re invited to a football game Sept. 18 at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park.
You’ll love it. The players are all women, and they’re nearly naked.
Seriously. Can you dig it? Women, panties and full-contact football. Hut, hut, hut.
So high-five your buddy and fire up the Camaro and get on out here. It’s $15 a ticket, and the guy who invented it expects the debut game to sell out. (Which would produce about $270,000 in gross revenue before food and beverage. Hubba hubba.)
Oh, and the team is called the Denver Dream. Get it? Like, wow, I had a dream...
Executive edge: Sheila Gutterman & Suzanne Griffiths
By Lynn BronikowskiAs the economy began sinking last fall, phone calls to the Littleton law offices of Gutterman Griffiths PC began rising.
“People who had wide assets were saying, ‘This is a good time to get a divorce because I’d get it cheaper,’” recalls Sheila Gutterman, president and co-founder of the nine-attorney family-law practice. “They wouldn’t have to pay as much maintenance or alimony with assets down.”
Sheila Gutterman (seated) and Suzanne Griffiths
Or as vice president and co-founder Suzanne Griffiths succinctly puts it: “When money goes out the window, love is close...
Rundles wrap-up: The I-70 mountain corridor mess
By Jeff RundlesLord knows why I even decided to look into what’s being done to fix the I-70 corridor through the mountains.
The traffic problems from Floyd Hill, through the Eisenhower Tunnels, into Summit County and on into Vail have been vexing for many, many years, and I knew when I got into this that I would find study groups, more study groups, Environmental Impact Studies, “stakeholder” meetings, yadda, yadda, yadda.
In other words, this being a problem needing to be addressed by government – the state government, the federal government, and all the county and municipal...
On management: Kindle vs. The Post (or the Rocky)
By Pat WiesnerJust last week a friend told me, by e-mail of course, that “the use of technologies as an alternative delivery/viewing mechanism is mostly a generational consideration, though the lines are blurring. “I saw a gentleman who was at least in his 80s sitting in Starbucks the other day with an Amazon Kindle,” my friend wrote. “I asked him how he liked it, and he said it ‘wasn’t perfect’ but he liked it. He was reading his Wall Street Journal on it as we spoke. The movement away from print media will continue and eventually accelerate.”
As you can imagine, being in the...
Cote’s Colorado: Coming soon (maybe) to a website near you: ”Rocky II”
By Mike CoteWelcome to the printed page, the place where black meets white, where inks meets paper, the format ColoradoBiz uses for bragging rights to a circulation that tops 20,000. We’re reaching thousands more readers every month online at cobizmag.com, where we can track how each story, commentary, blog, video or podcast fares in real time.
We have a running in-house contest on what online item will attract 5,000 readers in one morning. (Can words show cleavage?) But we’re probably setting our sights too low. Multiply that times 10, and we’re starting to look at some real...
