(techno music) - [Narrator] Today on Business Made in Montana, we introduce you to more companies that call Montana home, create interesting and unique products, hire Montana workers, and keep the state's economy rolling.

We're crossing Big Sky Country to tell you the stories of Business Made in Montana.

- [Woman] This University of Montana School of Journalism student production is made possible with support from: the Greater Montana Foundation.

The Greater Montana Foundation benefits the people of Montana by encouraging communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to present and future generations of Montanans.

And by the University of Montana.

- Welcome to Business Made in Montana.

I'm Dillon Sierra.

Today we'll bring you the stories of businesses making it work in Big Sky Country.

Art Castings of Montana is a full service bronze foundry.

What does that mean?

They use quality and craftsmanship to recreate famous pieces of art in bronze.

Let's go to Belgrade and find out more.

- The casting, the actual physical casting part is, is by far the coolest thing for me, and I think for people to watch.

Like I said, there's very few things you can do anymore where you actually get to create things in the world we live in today.

You know, to heat the metal, to watch it change from a solid to a liquid, to be able to physically actually dump something that's 2,000 degrees into a mold, and then you're able to have something, when it's done, you see the fire and smoke and it is a beautiful process.

The color is one of the most beautiful colors you can see, the orange is amazing, so, so my name's Gary Turner.

I'm the owner of Art Castings of Montana.

I originally grew up in Dylan, Dylan, Montana.

I always wanted to get back to this part of the state.

And we were able to start this business in 2000, so, which was wasn't the best of time, like I said right then we were kind of obviously, the events of 9/11, the economy wasn't great, but we've been very fortunate, we have a lot, a lot of the clients that we have are some of the best as far as the industry.

They're the Frederic Remingtons of today.

A lot of our artists are from Montana.

A lot of artists come to Montana because of the wildlife, do a lot of western wildlife, so you are able to see grizzly bears and wolves and everything in person.

- Well I'm retired from another job, and so I started doing, because my wife's a full-time artist, and so I have fun.

It keeps me busy.

Right now it's paying for itself, except for this one.

The big bear, I haven't got a buyer yet.

I choose them because they're the best, to me they're the best right now, and they really pay attention to the bronze.

It's, I mean they really pay attention to every aspect.

- What we do is the artists bring us an original, which most of the time is in clay.

Sometimes we get wood, stone, but mostly it's clay.

We make a mold of a piece, which is a two part, it's a polymer rubber material that attaches to the clay, and a plaster apparus hard shell.

- I basically own the mold department, and then I contract with them to do all their molds.

So I, basically I'm working for the artists.

When they come in here, they have a piece that they need done, they pay me to get it done, and then what works really well is I'm here onsite, so that I can go to the guys in the foundry and say how would it work best for you guys?

Because I can do it a lot of different ways to make these molds, but I try to make it the best for the artist and also for the foundry itself.

We're more worried about getting a good mold for the artists so that we can represent his work, so I kind of take the original apart so that I can see what I'm doing when I'm cutting the mold apart.

And it's locked, and then we do it with an X-ACTO blade really even, so that it will lock together really tight.

Then we can rubber band this back together, and they'll be able to pour hot wax into this piece.

- From that we will actually pour a wax, which is a duplicate of that original into that first mold.

From that, then we'll do a process called gating or spruing.

- I sprue, or it's called spruing or gating the pieces, so I'm forming pathways for the bronze to go in, and for the air to go out.

- And then what we'll do is build a ceramic mold around the piece at that point, so at that point the wax comes out, we have an empty casting or shell, ceramic shell, and from that point we can actually have a ceramic mold which is an exact duplicate, again, of the original, but in negative space.

We'll actually pour the bronze into that.

Then we get a casting, so we went through all those first steps to get a casting, and then we'll take and weld it together through a process called TIG welding.

At that point, then we will do the patina, which is basically the finish process where we get to finish color.

We've been at this new facility for about five years now.

That was a huge change, being able to run a business, build a new building and move everything while basically keeping going at the same time.

That was a huge challenge.

Just developing different processes as we've grown and changed, and like I said the employees are very involved.

I'm very blessed to have awesome employees, and they're very involved in as far as, letting them, if they see a new way to do things, or try to do things, we're very open to new technology, new welders, new processes, different waxes, we're always trying to come up with different things, different ways to do things, so.

- To find out more about this unique fine arts bronze foundry, go to artcastmt.com.

In 1996, Spencer Williams purchased a small pet toy company in Livingston because he had a special place in his heart for animals.

Instead of outsourcing to Asia, the company moved to a new eco-friendly facility in Bozeman.

Now they make some of the world's safest and highest quality pet toys.

Let's take a look at West Paw Design.

- The origins of West Paw go back to a company called Pet Pals, and when I was 23 years old, I wanted to move back to Montana, and knew that Bozeman would be the place and I had heard that there was a woman who was selling a company called Pet Pals, and I said, wow, that sounds really like what I'd like to do, and met with her.

My hope had been to get into manufacturing, because I loved making a product.

I grew up with a love of animals and pets, and we were crazy about a dog that we had at the time, a chocolate Lab, and the idea to get into the pet business and be able to manufacture a product, right here in Montana, just hit my desires so much that it was sort of a no-brainer.

So West Paw currently makes the injection molded durable dog toys called Zogoflex toys.

We also make fabric, squeaky dog toys, and fabric beds and mats for dogs.

My favorite part of the manufacturing process changes frequently, (laughs) I think it's because I love the fact that we make product, it goes back to why we got into this business in the early days.

So right now, my favorite piece of manufacturing happens to be a new robotic packaging machine, because it is the neatest, Montana-designed, Montana-built robot that I have seen, and it really helps us package our products so much faster, and it allows our employees who were spending time packaging those products to add value in other ways in the company, which is awesome.

The process that I think is most impressive to watch has to do with our hand sewing.

When you look at somebody out there sewing a dog toy by hand, making sure that it is gonna be durable to the teeth, and the temperament of dogs, that's something that doesn't exist in the United States today.

We're the only company that does that.

I'm incredibly proud of the people who do those products.

- My name is Jason Bloom, and I'm the product designer here at West Paw.

I'm in charge of helping with the creation and development of all the new products that we make here.

Since we have labor that's in the States, it's a lot more expensive than if we were to outsource this to a company overseas, so we really have to be mindful of how long it takes to make these products, because that means that somebody out on the floor is taking that much time and getting paid for that much time.

- My name is Sarah Hamilton, and I'm the product life cycle manager.

We have really great success in our injection molded toys, and I see that growing.

We are working on being really innovative in injection molded toys, and also using our material, which is called Zogoflex, which is a really durable and very safe material, and trying to use that in other ways.

- West Paw's factory is full of examples where we are saving resources, and one great visual is the banana boxes that we use throughout our production floor.

These banana boxes work great to hold our products, they have handles on them, they stack really nicely, and so we put many of our product batches into clean, used banana boxes, and those sometimes will last us for five, maybe even 10 years of additional use before they get recycled.

You walk through our production floor, you'll see prices, even by our printers in the office, of what that equipment cost, or what that mold is valued at.

The equipment sometimes is undervalued by staff, and they may not take as good of care of it as possible.

It wasn't a concern we had, our staff does a great job, but we thought it would be really important to share what is the cost of this equipment?

So that they understood again, how to maintain and improve the way they work with that machine, but also what it might cost to replace it, or buy another one.

I think what's so special about West Paw is that we have been able to create this value in this company that has endured for over 20 years, and it's based in something that is not easy to do.

It's not easy to manufacture a dog product, dog toys, let's say, in the United States, but we've done it by being very tenacious, we've done it by having an incredibly dedicated group of employees.

All the way from the customer service team to the manufacturing and shipping team, who know what it takes to be successful as a company.

West Paw was made in Montana because I am a Montanan, I wanted to create a company here that helped create value for the community.

I wanted to live here, and I love the idea of making product, and so what a great place to manufacture the world's best dog toys than in Bozeman, Montana.

- Get more information on West Paw Design, recently recognized as the best place to work in Montana, at westpaw.com.

It takes a special talent to craft local river stones into great handmade jewelry.

A husband and wife team with a special love of music created a business to suit this very need.

Let's take a look at Yellowstone Agate Jewelry from Livingston, Montana.

(classical type music) - [Paul] Well we play our instruments in the Bozeman Symphony and the Billings Symphony and some small groups.

- I never thought I would be sewing and making jewelry, since I'm primarily a musician, and have been a musician my whole life.

But it kind of fits.

The artistic work, and neither of us are trained artists, you know, and we didn't have any schooling for art, and we're completely self-taught, so.

I'm Patricia Gates.

- I'm Paul Gates, and I run the business with my wife.

Well we were doing this mostly as a hobby, and we started doing some craft shows.

We did a Made in Montana show one year, and the director of retail for Yellowstone Park, for the Yellowstone General Stores from the Delaware North Company, met us, and asked if we wanted to be in their Pathways program, which is a guest artist program.

Well we use local stones, and our focus is the stone, and all the necklaces that Pat designs, the necklace is designed to feature the stone.

I think our specialty is Montana Agate, and the various ways that we cut and polish it.

- The business really started to solidify for us when we started in the Pathways program in Yellowstone Park.

Up that point, we'd been making jewelry for ourselves, for our family and for a few friends.

Well, we started researching where people find agates in Montana, and we found that the Yellowstone River drainages are one of the main places that people find agates, and we just live just blocks from the Yellowstone River, and so we started coming down here and walking the gravel bars.

We like to walk up and down the gravel bars, and we kind of quarter them so that we don't miss so much, and what we're looking for are potato-shaped stones that have this alligator skin on the outside, and if we see something that looks like that, then we'll pick it up and take a closer look.

On a sunny day, you can hold the agate up for the stone, and if it's translucent it's probably an agate.

It's pretty challenging, because as you can see, there's a lot of gravel, and, this rock, before it's processed, it's not really anything spectacular, and it's not until it's cut and polished that it really starts showing the patterns and all the colors that will make it into a piece of jewelry.

- We find the stones, then we cut them into slabs, on some big power saws, then we do the shaping on grinders, we put the dome, and do the polishing on grinders, and then we either set it in silver, or some sort of a bale or wire wrap it, and then design a necklace for it.

- And when I design the necklaces what I try to do is create a beaded necklace that will kind of intensify the colors and the shapes in the pendant.

Well, most of our selling is done through the Pathways program in Yellowstone Park, although we do have a store in Livingston, the Pickle Barrel, that carries the jewelry.

Actually they have carried our jewelry since the very, very beginning.

And then we also have the Northern Hotel in Billings that carries our jewelry as well.

- Yeah we have online orders that have been everywhere from Australia to Europe, so that's too many there, but mostly it's in the United States.

Well I think it's been very successful.

We never intended to have a company, and so we don't push it as hard as I suppose we could, but we have so many other things we do that it just fits in as one of the things we do.

(classical type music) - To find out more about this specialized hand made jewelry, go to yellowstoneagatejewelry.com.

In 1960, Boyd and Don Smoot bought a honey company, and moved it from California to Power, Montana.

This family business has grown a lot over the years, but claimed by many as the best honey in Montana, the Smoot Honey Company is making sure that the rest of the country gets a taste of their product.

- We're located in Power, Montana, which is a little tiny town about 25 miles northwest of Great Falls, just off I-15, on your way to Canada, from Great Falls.

We've been in operation here at Smoot Honey Company since 1964, so we're roughly what?

53, almost 54 years old now.

My name is Mark Jensen, and I am the vice president of Smoot Honey Company.

So what we do here is we produce honey, or the bees produce the honey, and we keep the bees who then produce the honey, so that's our primary function or our primary source of income is honey production.

- My name's Dan Smoot, I'm the president of Smoot Honey Company.

My grandfather and my dad started the business, or my grandfather started the business.

Dad joined and, ran bees down in California, right around where Disneyland sits.

They decided to move their business from California to a couple of different locations they were looking at, one was in Canada, one was in Wyoming, and then here in Power, Montana.

Chose here, moved up here in 64, and my dad ran the business by himself with help from hired guys 'til about '96, when myself and my brother in law and my cousin joined the business.

- A lot of the honey that we produce, we pack ourselves and sell either to bakeries, breweries, meat processing plants, and a lot of it goes into consumer, grocery store sized containers as well, so.

Once the honey gets taken off, we bring it into the warehouse, and it lives in what's called the hot room, which is where it's warm, the beehives, the bees tend to keep the beehives somewhere around 95, 96, 97 degrees, and so we keep this room about the same temperature, in the high 90 degree range, that keeps the honey more liquid, and then easily able to extract.

Once we pull that honey out of the hot room it goes into the extracting room, and then basically frame by frame, it's all automated now, and we have folks that can drive the machines, but, we have a machine, that it cuts the wax caps off the honeycombs or the frames, which exposes the honey.

It runs through a conveyor system that goes, and then runs it into what's called the extractor, and that is just a basically a big centrifuge, or a big merry-go-round, and it spins 'round and 'round, and the honey throws out of the combs, and then it runs through a series of pumps, and through a couple of different machines that cleans up the honey, sorts out the bee wings and the wax and all the stuff, the undesirable elements that are part of the extracting process, and then it runs into settling tanks, which floats more of the bits and pieces out of the honey, then we drain the tanks into 55 gallon barrels, store those away for later use.

We have three tanks that will hold about 75 barrels between the three of them, and each of those, then we drain the honey out of those into 55 gallon barrels, and like I say, then we weigh each barrel, they weigh, gross weight, how much the barrel weighs, then we get a net weight of honey, and then we stack them away in a warehouse until either we sell a semi load of honey to another honey packer, or we pack it ourselves, one or the other.

- Our average honey production's about 105 pounds per hive per year over a 53 year span.

My name is James Raim, I'm co-owner, Smoot Honey Company.

Being a beekeeper, you're outside most of the time, it's great.

It's one of those jobs that, you get up Monday morning, and you're going to work, and you don't have any problems with it, and I have lots of friends that, ah, it's Monday, I gotta go to work, I hate my job, I hate the people I work with, and I have no problems with my job or my coworkers at all, I enjoy my work.

I came from California, big step up here.

Sacramento, over a million people, to Power, 150 people.

Quite a change.

- We stay here, because we like Montana.

Like I say, first of all, we've made our homes here and live here, and have for a long time, but it's a nice area, despite the wind, it's a nice area to live, but the school district is nice, the kids get a good education here, we have a great teaching staff, that's a bonus for staying here, and besides who really wants to live in California, if you're not gonna live up in the Redwoods or something like that?

For honey production, there are very few states better than Montana.

- To get more information on the best honey in Montana, go to smoothoney.com.

Our next business employs a very fun group of people.

They're very passionate about made in the USA, and love the fact that they're manufacturing blades and swords.

Zombie Tools in Missoula has become a major supplier of blades and swords across the world.

Let's check out how this self-proclaimed crazy group manufactures their product.

- [Man] Missoula's just the perfect sized town.

To live, start a business, raise a family, I guess, if you want.

- [Younger Man] I've traveled the world, I've been to five different countries in Europe, and there's no place like home.

I miss the mountains when I'm away from them.

- It goes way back to the year 2000, where one of the original founders of Zombie Tools and I met, we decided that we both liked swords, and we started our own sword-fighting club, the Drunken Jedi Pirate Circus, and, that went on for at least seven years.

And then we were drinking one night at my apartment, and I bring up the idea of why don't we make swords for the Zombie Apocalypse?

Which totally freed us up.

We could make whatever we wanted.

We could make it fantasy, we could make it tactical, we could do whatever we want.

We could blend everything together, and still make a really great product.

- All of us have our own personal blades that we take out in the woods, and they get used, and we need something that's gonna stand up to the abuse that we put it through, and if it stands up to our abuse, it's gonna stand up to the customer's abuse.

- Our goal when designing swords is to try to make them as functional as possible.

I don't believe in charging this kind of money for something that's just going to hang from the wall.

The idea is that I design it on the computer, and once we have a design that we think is good, we cut it out of cardboard and hold it and swing it around the shop, have a great time whacking each other with a piece of cardboard.

From there, once we have a design that we like, we send it off to a water cutter, and get the design cut out.

- [Man] We start the heat treating process, where that's the process of taking it from a softened state to a hardened state.

- And then when it's ready to go we got a clamp system to ensure straightness on it, because a lot of our products are huge, you know?

So 1500 degrees dipping in oil, sometimes can get you a (mumbles) so we clamp it out, drop it really quick to temperature, and what that does is makes it really hard, it's actually almost brittle.

- So from the heat treating process, we go to the tempering process.

From there it goes to our grinder, and our grinding technique is a technique just called stock removal.

So we don't forge it, we will take the heat, and the heat-treated product, and remove stock to get our initial bevel on.

From the initial bevel, it goes over to our handlers, and we put the handle slabs on.

- And then we pin them on, and by pinning them on, it just secures it, it kind of mushrooms out, and then that's actually what holds the blade on.

Then we'll kind of grind the bevels in, and soften all the edges, and of course put texture on it, making it look old.

- From the handling stage, it gets a sheath made for it, then it gets taken over to etching, where we put our signature Zombie Tools etch on it.

From there, it gets sharpened, wrapped, and shipped.

- It just amazes me, we're in the middle of the Rocky Mountains, making a Japanese sword that we're sending to Germany.

I mean, that on paper?

Come on.

- We've had our blades sold on six of the seven continents, and we even had one guy take a picture of one of his blades on Antarctica, so they've been around the world.

- Ah!

I have so many, so many future plans for Zombie Tools.

At one point in time, I thought that I'd like to build it up so that we had 20 employees.

I'm pretty happy around 10.

Dealing with that many people is problematic and takes more time than I'm willing to put forth.

I've got grinding to do, for Christ's sake.

- For more information about the best American-made blades and accessories, go to zombietools.net.

Well, that's our program.

We hope you've enjoyed meeting these interesting people and businesses that help our diverse and evolving Montana economy.

On behalf of the students, faculty, and staff of the University of Montana School of Journalism, thanks for watching Business Made in Montana.

I'm Dillon Sierra.

- [Woman] This University of Montana School of Journalism student production is made possible with support from: The Greater Montana Foundation.

The Greater Montana Foundation benefits the people of Montana by encouraging communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to present and future generations of Montanans.

And by the University of Montana.