Swan Valley looks to brand sustainable businesses

Businesses in the Swan Valley are broaching the subject of a community brand that sells the valley as a place where sustainably made products can be bought and sustainable businesses can grow.

Roughly 50-55 people attended an introductory meeting with Swan Valley Innovations on April 12, hosted by Northwest Connections director Melanie Parker.

“Part of our vision is to really brand the Swan River Valley as a place where people can get local food, local energy, local products,” she said. “To us, sustainable is this generation using resources in a way that doesn’t affect the next generation.”

Parker is spearheading Swan Valley Innovations as something she hopes can be the driver for the community brand, additional tourist and consumer traffic to the area, and the development of new sustainable businesses.

It would start with a web page that brings access to all of the Swan Valley’s sustainable businesses into one place where they can easily be found. If the concept of Swan Valley Innovations finds success and grows, the progression would be to find a space along Highway 82 where all Swan Valley products can be found in one building.

Northwest Connections brings college students into the Swan through educational programs they run. The curriculum centers around environmentally sound use of the forest and sustainable business development.

Ryan Yates, who runs Alchemy Enterprises, and his wife Pam, who runs Alpine Fur have hosted Northwest Connections students at their businesses in the past. Yates said he thinks Northwest Connections is a good place to spearhead a community business brand through because of the business experience they have.

“I think they’re trying to take those things they’re doing and expand it to stimulate economic growth and development,” Yates said. “Northwest Connections started up something the valley needed.”

For the last 18 months the Yates have been talking about creating a web page for their businesses, but haven’t been able to find the time.

They live 11 miles north of Condon, where they’ve run various businesses for the last 20 years. Alchemy Enterprises is a combination sawmill, carpentry, and gemstone faceting business. Alpine Fur processes wool products from raising the sheep to making the yarn. A lot of businesses in the Swan are similar to the two run by Ryan and Pam—artisanal, off the land, using locally found natural resources, with the largest amount of consumer traffic in the summer.

“A lot of talented people are in the Swan,” Yates said. “Trying to figure out how to take the raw materials we produce and make it a finished product.”

For Yates, Swan Valley Innovations is also about making connections with other community members and making the business effort more of a communal effort, more sustainable for the individual business owner.

Sustainable business is about more than just a business for Yates.

“I would be looking for something that I can put together that isn’t like a job, it’s like a way of life,” Yates said. “In the overall sense, it would be something you can do to make a living and try to maintain the environment you’re living in.”