Page 35 - Flathead Beacon // 10.26.16

TRANSACTIONS
WEEKLY BUSINESS BRIEFING
CRICKET WIRELESS OPENS RETAIL STORE IN KALISPELL
Cricket Wireless opened a retail store in Kalispell with a grand opening celebration last week.
The company says it is ded- icated to bringing no-annual contract wireless users across the country a better wireless experience.
Cricket Wireless’ new location is at 230 E. Idaho and it now has eight stores in Montana.
Cricket o ers a nationwide 4G
LTE network that covers more than 317 million people; easy and a ord- able plans with prices that include monthly taxes and fees; and a great selection of phones.
For more information, check out the new Cricket, or visit www. cricketwireless.com. Connect with the company on Facebook at www.facebook.com/cricketnation and Twitter at www.twitter.com/ cricketnation.
Opening, moving or expanding a business in Northwest Montana? If you would like to be featured in “Transactions,” please email information to news@ atheadbeacon.com
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 33
“It’s really fun, because we do some- thing di erent all the time,” Hufstetler said.
Northern Plastics took o in 1993, but Hufstetler started in the manufacturing business years before.
“I worked for myself almost all my life,” he said.
He and his wife Sharon moved to the Flathead in the 1960s, to a ranch stretching 800 acres near Bigfork. They spent 25 years on the ranch, raising all four of their children in the valley. They were married for 59 years before she passed away in April this year.
In the mid-1980s, they sold the ranch — a decision Hufstetler still regrets — and he went back to school. He worked for the school district before becoming a probation o cer and then the director of the area’s youth court program.
Then he invented a heater. It was an idea to help battle cold, Montana morn- ings: a heater the size of a car stereo with a digital readout to set on and o times, automatically heating the car in the morning and triple charging the bat- tery. He patented the design, and sold it to a company that went under before production could begin.
The heater never sold, but it intro- duced Hufstetler to the manufacturing world, and the possibilities therein.
Hufstetler started going through
catalogs of un lled government con- tracts, settling on one seeking 500 seed trays. When he got the bid, it turned into 50,000 trays, and he had to purchase his rst injection-mold machine.
That company continued for seven or eight years before Hufstetler left and started Northern Plastics.
From there, the company has been responsible for several well-known products, including the Counter Assault Bear Keg, a bear-resistant food con- tainer now sold in Cabela’s.
“They’re doing about triple what they started with,” Hufstetler said of production.
Northern Plastics also makes Super Stackers, which hold doors apart while they dry and so they don’t knick each other up, and the water meter and man- hole covers. One of their longest-run- ning products is the gate-closer, a call- back to his ranching days.
“We’ve had those for years and years,” Hufstetler said.
And of course there’s Ginger, his constant companion out the window. On even the most industrial days, Huf- stetler still has a reminder of life on the ranch while he continues to pro- duce plastic creations sent around the country.
“It’s really been fun,” he said.
For more information on Northern Plastics, call 406-257-6300.
mpriddy@ atheadbeacon.com
Public Meeting
Columbia River System Operations
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation and Bonneville Power Administration invite the public to help identify issues that the agencies will analyze in the Columbia River System Operations Environmental Impact Statement. The agencies will use this EIS to assess the e ects and update their approach to operations of 14 federal dams and related facilities in the interior Columbia River basin.
The agencies welcome your comments, suggestions and information to help inform the scope of issues, potential e ects and range of alternatives evaluated in the EIS.
Tuesday, November 1, 2016 4p.m.to7p.m.
Red Lion Hotel Kalispell 20 North Main Street Kalispell, Montana
For more information about the Columbia River System Operations EIS, please visit this website: http://www.crso.info
Information is also available by calling 800-290-5033.
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OCTOBER 26, 2016 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM
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