FNBA: Making It #4

PROFILE

ALICE ROGOFF Publisher

JAMIE GONZALES Editor

This publication was produced by the special content department of Alaska Dispatch News in collaboration with First National Bank Alaska, member FDIC and Equal Housing Lender.

VIKI SPIROSKA Production manager

The ADN news department was not involved in its production.

MAIA NOLAN-PARTNOW Editorial Director

JOSHUA GENUINO SENIOR Art Director REJOY ARMAMENTO graphic designer

DIA MATTESON

Copyright © 2016 Alaska Dispatch News P.O. Box 149001 Anchorage, Alaska 99514

After working her way to the top, Dia Matteson took over the family businesses on the Kenai Peninsula, in Wasilla and Anchorage. tories of business success in Alaska have reoccurring themes,

but two most notable are “outside the box” thinking and core values rooted in family and community. These themes become more important to success as Alaska businesses adjust to the new reality of Alaska’s economy.

We live and work in a time of reduced state spending and lower state income from the petroleum sector. As our economy changes, successful Alaska business owners will be those who adapt to these new challenges and strategically take advantage of different opportunities. The stories you’ll read in this, our second year of sponsoring Making It, tell of four Alaskan businesses. Each business started with creative thinking and desire on the part of the owners to earn a living in the community they love.

For Heather Shade and Sean Copeland, starting Alaska’s first distillery was their way to live in Haines and create their own jobs. For the fatherson team of Mike and Kyle Davis, and Kyle’s wife Emily, it started as a “crazy idea” for an adventure company in the shadow of Denali. Ten years later their expanding business is going strong.

Family plays an integral role in the success of many Alaska businesses.

At Ray’s Place, four generations work together to make the Spenard restaurant a success. Family time is important off the job as well, so Ray’s Place is closed every weekend and for two hours every weekday afternoon.

Family comes first is the foundation of their business plan.

Business owner Dia Matteson literally grew up in the business. When she purchased the Anchorage, Wasilla and Kenai Peninsula HarleyDavidson dealerships from her father, it was after working her way up from her childhood-pocket-money job of cleaning the floor to managing the Anchorage dealership while earning her MBA. Focusing on the importance of place and family, these Alaskans are willing and able to adjust to the changes in our state economy. They are all good financial forecasters and savvy business people. Like many successful Alaska business people, they are making it in Alaska where business is anything but usual.

–Betsy Lawer Chair and President First National Bank Alaska

n November, when other Alaska H.O.G. (Harley Owners Group) members have winterized their bikes and lovingly tucked them into garages to wait out the snow and ice, Dia Matteson is still out riding.

Last year, the House of Harley-Davidson owner figured out a way to extend her season from six months to 12: she rolls out the trike.

She’s got studded tires, a heated jacket and heated gloves, so she stays toasty on the ride from Anchorage to Wasilla, which is important, since she’s back and forth between the two cities every Friday. In addition to House of Harley-Davidson in Spenard, Matteson also owns Denali Harley-Davidson (Wasilla) and Kenai Peninsula Harley-Davidson (Soldotna).

“I love my job,” she said. “I cannot imagine doing anything else.”

Four and a half years ago, she bought the dealerships from her dad, Barry Matteson. He was ready to retire after 40-plus years, having grown the business from a residential garage-based shop into Motorcycle Times Inc., the umbrella corporation for all three dealerships.

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MAKING IT | ISSUE #4

PROFILE

MOTORCYCLE TIMES INC.

What started as a family business still stays true to its roots, but it’s broadened the definition of family.

“I'm going to be like Barry when I grow up,” Matteson said with a laugh, recounting a recent crosscountry road trip her dad had planned. While she was referring to the retirement-era road trips, she’s quick to admit that she and her dad are a lot alike when it comes to how they do business.

“He always has had good vision and planning. He was always tirelessly working on something. He'd come home and he was still working. I’m the same way,” she said.

GROWING UP IN HOG HEAVEN “I literally grew up here,” Matteson said, pointing up the stairs at House of Harley-Davidson. “We had a bed and breakfast upstairs called Hog Heaven.” Her childhood bedroom was just up the stairs from the shop. She remembers racing down the stairs to visit her dad while he worked on bikes. Now, there are preowned motorcycles parked where their living room used to be.

In elementary school, her dad would hire her and her friends to do odd jobs, like clean the showroom floor, for a little pocket money. When she was 14, she landed her first real job. It was the busy season, so her dad hired her to work in the retail clothing department. She loved everything about it.

“From that day on, I never wanted to work anywhere else,” she said. And she hasn’t.

She spent every summer working full-time for her dad. A high school teacher nominated her for an elite business camp in Chicago (“because I’m super nerdy”) and the weeks spent at camp solidified her decision to go into business. Through high school and college she worked her way through nearly every department— Sales, Parts, Accounting, Service—everything but wrenching on the bikes. She took over as general manager in Anchorage as soon as she earned her bachelor’s degree in business. While she managed the Anchorage dealership, she also worked her way toward an MBA. “I had no life for a while, just working and school,” she sa id . “I wou ld get f r ust rated in classes sometimes. Some people hadn’t even had jobs yet, real jobs. But I also loved the fact that I had a better angle on things. I could apply what I was learning on a regular basis.”

Growing up in the business has also made her intimately familiar with the market, the seasonality of her industry and, most importantly, the customers.

UNDERSTANDING HER CUSTOMERS “I have customers that come in every day just to drink coffee here,” Matteson said. “They come and hang out.” And she makes sure they have year-round activities that keep people coming through the doors.

In the summer, it’s live music out back, near the campground they maintain for road-tripping bikers who are making their way through the state. Or it’s community rides for charity with H.O.G. members.

For the last 10 years, they’ve been holding Beauty and the Bike workshops, an introductory course to Harleys for women only. This year, they’ve started offering Harley 101 classes to men and women, a way to make the prestige brand accessible to newbies who just might turn into regulars. At the Kenai Peninsula and Wasilla locations, they host H-D Riding Academy courses.

“You’re putting on a show every day and sometimes it’s the same show to the same people every single day. But this is their escape,” she added. “We had a UPS driver who came here every single day to eat his lunch.” He bought two bikes from her.

Customers who buy a bike at the House of HarleyDavidson get a chance to sound the Hog Horn in celebration. In the corner of the showroom, there’s a chain hanging from the 30-foot ceiling connected to a fog horn the whole neighborhood can hear.

“They pull the horn and everybody cheers,” she said.

One of her challenges is maintaining that enthusiasm across locations and throughout the year.

She credits her dad with teaching her to navigate the seasonality of running a motorcycle business in a state where snow and ice make roads tough for twowheeled travel six months out of the year. “You make hay when the sun’s out,” she said. They do the bulk of their business in four months. “The rest of the year, you’re living off the storage.”

And she knows the grass isn’t really greener in other markets. “I’m in a 20 Club. A bunch of dealers get together and share financials and we talk about business. They all have to be non-competing dealers, so I definitely see the other markets. Every market has its struggles. There is no easy market.”

THE BUSINESS:

Motorcycle Times Inc.

THE LESSON: Hold a job in every department and one day, when you’re in charge, you’ll be adept at fielding employee and customer questions.

BEING IN THREE PLACES AT ONCE When Matteson bought the company, it included the Anchorage, Kenai Peninsula and Mat-Su locations.

She spent a year back-and-forth between Anchorage and Wasilla acting as general manager in both locations before promoting one of her Anchorage Sales managers to the GM position in Wasilla.

“The Valley is the fastest-growing market. It’s a lot of opportunity,” she added.

With the Kenai Peninsula location, she inherited a longtime GM. “Si, who runs my store down there does an awesome job. He’s been doing it forever. He has it very finetuned ... that’s part of why I don’t go down there as much. I have complete faith in him,” she said.

That’s key to running a business with three diverse locations, Matteson said. “You have to really have people you can trust.”

What started as a family business still stays true to its roots, but it’s broadened the definition of family.

The only relative on the payroll is her nephew, Dillon, a mechanic at House of Harley-Davidson. And her dad maintains an office there. “He gets to keep the office until I pay off the loan,” Matteson said. About four more years to go.

“All the employees here, we’re like family,” she said.

Friends and family have asked, “What would you have done if this didn’t work out?”

“I have no idea,” she says. She’s positive this is where she’s meant to be. “I am not passionate about anything else like I am about this.”

ISSUE #4 | MAKING IT

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SPOTLIGHT

One couple navigated uncharted straits to infuse whiskey and other spirits with Alaska flavors and history.

here's no such thing as a normal

business day for Heather Shade and Sean Copeland.

"On any given day there are hundreds of things that need to be done and we'll need to pick maybe the best 10 to do that day," Copeland said.

While it's not uncommon for new business owners to be busy, what is uncommon is having an audience watch every step of their daily process.

The duo owns and operates Port Chilkoot Distillery in Haines, Alaska. At their distillery, they do everything from crafting recipes and distilling spirits to bottling their products and shipping their wares across the state. Patrons can watch it all from the comfort of Port Chilkoot's tasting room. From a spot at the bar, patrons can see the 125-gallon copper pot still running just eight feet away, watch whiskey get barreled, peek into the boiler room if the door is open and can smell the herb, oak and spirit

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MAKING IT | ISSUE #4

aromas as the various liquids distill.

"You can basically get a tour of the place without actually getting a tour," Copeland joked.

LOCATION FIRST Copeland and Shade, both Haines transplants, knew two things for certain: they wanted to live in Haines and to do so, they needed to create their own jobs.

"Sean claims I was already talking about opening a distillery when we met," Shade said.

She thinks there were other good ideas. "This one has enough complexity and sustainability in the long run to keep us engaged and interested."

Copeland said Haines isn't a place known for its production. It's small, remote and only gets one barge a week. He said the only other manufacturing company in town builds hot tubs.

"I don't think many other people would want to start a factory in Haines," Copeland said. "But to us, this felt right. We'd get to make a business

where people could enjoy the whole package— from the building to the product."

While Port Chilkoot officially opened its doors in 2013, the couple spent over a year getting the business ready.

Shade wrote a business plan that would allow them to create and export their products.

Copeland, a contractor by trade, set to work restoring and converting a historical bakery into a space where the distilling equipment and tasting room would be at home. The restoration process took a year. Installing the equipment took another six months.

In October 2013 they had distilled their first whiskey.

Now they have five signature spirits: 50 Fathoms Gin, Boatwright Bourbon, Wrack Line Rye, Icy Strait Vodka and Green Siren Absinthe.

"All of them are a tribute to our local fishing community," Shade said. "That community is a staple of our economy here. Icy Bay is where our fleets go fishing, 50 fathoms is a good depth for

PORT CHILKOOT DISTILLERY

halibut fishing."

In the tasting room their staffers craft unique cocktails using those products or serve the alcohol straight. The adventurous and the indecisive can try it all in mini sampler-sized flights.

"We like to mix drinks with local seasonal fruits," Shade said. "The nature of high proof spirits is that they're designed to be in a cocktail, so we make cocktails that are both our twist on the classics and best highlight the unique flavors."

needs to have a secure building and equipment in place before they can even apply for the federal permit to run a distillery. For them it meant cutting way back on personal spending and forgoing fun. They couldn't even practice recipes in the interim—home distilling is still illegal in the U.S. "There wasn't a list of how to start a distillery," Shade said. "We're regulated by a lot of different federal and state agencies, so we've had to be really proactive about figuring out what the requirements are and asking the right

STARTING FROM SCRATCH Small-scale distilling is still a fairly new venture in the U.S., thanks in part to leftover legislation from the Prohibition era. Shade and Copeland were at the forefront of a craft distilling renaissance in Alaska. It was fun to be at the beginning of a movement, they said, but the road to becoming an established distillery had many more challenges than other start-ups.

"The laws weren't really modernized to accommodate this kind of business," said Shade.

"There were pages and pages of laws pertaining to breweries and just a couple sentences about distilleries."

Those few lines didn't specify how businesses could distribute their wares to bars or liquor stores, didn't allow for tasting rooms on site and didn't allow them to sell their products directly to individuals. So they took matters into their own hands. They started the Distillers Guild of Alaska and were lobbying for bills to be passed so they could get into the tourism market and become a destination to try spirits.

Now they're able to distribute bottles and serve up to three ounces per customer, per day in their tasting room. Their next battle is a push for legislation that would give them the same lower tax rates as small scale breweries.

Distilling is a business that's prohibitively capital intensive upfront. A potential distillery

questions—from how to follow code to finding people locally to install uncommon equipment."

JOB CREATORS This year Port Chilkoot is looking at producing 12,000 bottles of spirits. Roughly half of the liquor—minus some reserves left to mature in barrels—will be sold in stores and Alaska bars and half will be sold by the bottle or served as drinks in their tasting room to locals and travelers. And it's not just the two of them running the show now. To date, they've added seven jobs to the Haines community.

"We're at the point where we're not a startup anymore, so we're focusing on setting up the business to be sustainable in the future," Shade said.

Each year since its inception,

the company has had to rewrite their business plan—they're growing too rapidly. Copeland is currently making plans to build a new warehouse to store their aging whiskey barrels so they can mature for a longer amount of time. He's also looking for ways to expand their tasting room.

"It's just a little too small for the traffic we had this year," Shade said. "We can grow easily with the demand we have now."

They're also looking for more ways to use resources closer to home. Already their absinthe uses herbs (wormwood, lemon balm, hyssop) grown by local farmers, but they're hoping to find more ways to shorten their supply chain.

And even as they look at local assets, the duo is eyeing Outside markets where they can export their 50 Fathoms Gin, their most popular and award winning product.

For them, there's no end to the creativity they can put into it, the knowledge they can amass or the directions they can go with their company.

But Shade said they're proud of what they've accomplished thus far.

"We feel like we did what we set out to do," she said. "We get a lot of visitors that have read about us and get a lot of feedback about this being one of the highlights of their trip to Haines: spending time at a high-quality, small business that represents the community well."

THE BUSINESS:

Port Chilkoot Distillery

THE LESSON: Find a place you love and make it an integral part of your products.

ISSUE #4 | MAKING IT

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PROFILE

DENALI PARK ADVENTURES

Adventure company owners adapt business knowledge to rugged Alaska terrain.

hen Kyle Davis came to Alaska in 2006 the trip was meant to be a visit with his father, Mike. But a sojourn to Denali and an off-the-cuff comment about how cool it would be to start an adventure company in the shadow of the mountain ended up launching a business. They’re celebrating a decade of success this year.

“It was a crazy idea, but after more talking about it and discussing the possibilities, we realized it might actually be a good idea,” Kyle said.

Denali ATV Adventures officially started leading ATV tours in 2007. They took visitors to the Denali-area wilderness, riding over bogs, bumping over rugged terrain and enjoying scenic vistas.

“It blew up from there,” Kyle said.

According to Mike, two elements have been key to the company’s success. First, their combined business knowledge: Kyle managed a mobile communications store in southern California prior to this venture and Mike is a professor of accounting at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. They understood how to develop business relationships. The second tactic that put them out in front: “guerilla marketing.”

“We made sure we were highly visible,” Kyle said.

“We put our logo all over our vehicles, put a TV with a slideshow of our tours outside our shop and made a lot of fliers.”

Initially, the duo thought they would be the only outfit operating ATV tours in Denali. When they discovered another company was also running tours—primarily for cruise ship passengers—they saw it as an opportunity.

“We tried to collect everybody they were missing out on,” Kyle said, so they looked to customers who were

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unable to book through cruise lines. “We focused on all the small booking companies and walk-ins. It took a lot of hard work and talking to as many people as possible.”

In 2012, they decided the next move was to open Denali Jeep Excursions, a company that would show customers the Denali Highway (a stunning stretch of road where most rental vehicles aren’t allowed).

Other Denali businesses where they had fostered relationships in their early years were quick to understand the appeal of the Jeep tours and include them as an option in their adventure packages, said Kyle.

But they weren’t done launching new ventures. In the last year, the company opened a zipline course, Denali Park Zipline, and started another business, Denali Park Adventures, that acts as a parent company to the three adventure tour businesses (ATVs, Jeeps and ziplines) and operates as a booking agent. Through that company, customers can book any of the Davis’ tours. They can also book package tours, combining their excursions with those offered by other outfits, like an ATV and rafting combo.

“We want people to think of us as the company to come to for adventure travel in Denali,” Kyle said. “We want to show people a part of Alaska that, if they didn’t go out with us, they’d never see.”

What makes the company unique compared to other businesses in their industry, Kyle said, is that they’re constantly upgrading their equipment. ATVs are used for just one summer and then replaced the following season.

Jeeps are used for about 25,000 miles and then sold for newer models.

“Obviously safety is number one, so it’s good to have new equipment, but it also means there’s no downtime for

THE BUSINESS:

Denali Park Adventures

THE LESSON:

You may be taking clients to explore hidden Alaska, but make sure your business is easy to find.

our guests,” Kyle said. “Beyond that, with our volume of guests, if we have an ATV down for a week, the revenue lost would have bought a new one.”

Though buying new each year is a decidedly more expensive business decision than repairing broken equipment, Kyle said for them it’s worth it.

The companies remain family-owned. Kyle and Mike act as directors of operations and finances, respectively and Kyle’s wife, Emily, is the director of sales.

Emily has a doctorate in neuroscience and has used her problem-solving and analysis skills to help the trio make smart business decisions.

Mike uses the family’s businesses as practical examples in his business classes at UAF. He’s quick to mention how frequently family-run businesses don’t work out in the long term. His businesses are the exception.

“Honestly, I’ve been floored over the years at how well we’ve been able to work together,” Mike said.

For Kyle, Mike and Emily, there is no off-season; they work year-round. Kyle says it’s one more key to their company’s success. Each fall the owners work to update their websites, brochures, staffing and itineraries.

“We’re also one of the few companies that if you call in December, we’ll answer,” Kyle said. They’ve learned through experience that many of their customers start planning their Denali adventures in the winter. They don’t want folks to be met with just a voicemail. “We’re constantly focusing on the future of this business.”

FEATURE

RAY’S PLACE

Four generations work together to make Ray’s Place an Anchorage favorite. hen the doors reopen for dinner at 5 p.m. weekdays, the Vietnamese restaurant on the north end of Spenard Road soon floods with people. The parking lot fills to overflowing; the tables are packed with families and couples and groups of friends and coworkers. It's busy at lunch, too.

But every weekend and for two hours every weekday afternoon, the restaurant closes its front doors. Cooks and servers return to their full-time jobs as mothers, fathers, aunts and uncles and grandparents. At Ray's Place, family comes first—it's been that way from the beginning.

"The Vietnamese culture is really family oriented, so it's kind of a family venture," said Curtis Yim, sitting in the restaurant dining room one quiet Thursday afternoon.

When he first launched the eatery with his wife, Joanne, their four children were young. As the family grew, the restaurant business did, too. Two locations, four generations, 24 years and thousands of satisfied customers later, Ray's Place is an Anchorage institution.

HOW IT ALL STARTED It all started when a military man from Shishmaref fell in love with a woman from Vietnam. Linda Seetomona agreed to follow Ray back to Alaska if he brought her children, too, so that's exactly what he did. When the family arrived in Anchorage in 1975, Joanne Yim was just 13.

She adjusted to the cold, grew up and took a job at the airline catering company where she met her own future husband. If you ask Curtis Yim, it was destiny.

Together, they dreamed about opening their own restaurant one day.

"I just learned from cooking at home and cooking for a big family," said Joanne Yim. "I always tried new things, and they all liked it."

Her Vietnamese cooking fed an increasingly international crowd— her Alaska Native stepfather, her Hawaiian husband of Chinese descent, her Mexican brot her-in-l her-in -l aw. Fam i ly members brought friends and coworkers.

Around the time the Yim's fourth son was born, Joanne left her job at Alaska

Regional Hospital to care for her children.

"My mom said, 'Why don't you open a Vietnamese Restaurant? Because you like to cook Vietnamese food,'" she recalled.

Their first establishment, called Saigon Restaurant, operated out of a single unit in a strip mall on Tudor Road.

Their infant son slept in a stroller in the kitchen while Joanne cooked. The customers started rolling in—family friends from the hospital, the school district bus barn and the municipal offices nearby. Soon, the restaurant was expanding into a second unit; then a third.

At the time, there were few Vietnamese restaurants in Anchorage, so the Yims printed menus in English and did their best to introduce Americans to a new kind of cuisine. They made pho with chicken and beef, showing the uninitiated how to crack crisp bean sprouts and fragrant basil over steaming bowls of clear broth. They served heaping plates of spicy chicken and fried rice, adapting old family recipes to suit Alaskan's taste buds.

It worked. The business grew.

THE RECIPE FOR SUCCESS "The hard part—and I think we've gotten over that hump— is just working together as a family," said Curtis Yim. "That's why we felt it was important to close on the weekends."

Soon, the restaurant outgrew its Tudor Road location and moved to the building on Spenard. It was renamed Ray's Place in honor of Joanne's stepfather. Through word of mouth and

THE BUSINESS: Ray’s Place

glowing reviews, customers multiplied.

Years passed. The children who were young when the restaurant opened grew up and took jobs there. Eventually they had children of their own. These days, it's Curtis and Joanne Yim's grandchildren who spread their homework across the tables before the restaurant reopens for dinner every night.

Or you might run into Linda Seetomona, the matriarch who brought the family from Vietnam; or Mimi Tinajero, Joanne Yim's sister, who often helps at the front of the restaurant; or any of the other brothers and sisters who've kept the restaurant running over the years.

"To me, it's not work, it's just being with family," Tinajero said.

Most of the family members work full-time jobs outside the restaurant, but they still find the time to visit Ray's Place regularly, or help with the kids, or keep the family business going in a thousand other subtle but necessary ways.

If you ask Joanne Yim, that's the key.

"You cannot do everything without family help," she said.

"You cannot be everywhere at once. Family is important."

After 24 years in business, the Ray's Place family extends well beyond the ties of blood and marriage.

"I think what makes our restaurant special is we treat people like family, you know?" Joanne Yim said.

People who come to eat stay to share conversations. They grow attached to favorite meals: the cold noodle salads or the tamarind tofu with mixed vegetables or the savory curries or the banh mi, famous citywide.

Photos of old customers hang at the front of the restaurant.

Sometimes regulars move away, then come back to visit, stopping by Ray's with the smell of the airplane still clinging to their clothes.

When one old-timer passed away, Joanne prepared his favorite foods for his memorial, sobbing in the kitchen as she cooked.

It's like Cheers, Tinajero said: Around here, everyone knows your name—or at least your face, or your favorite dish. And that's the way the family likes it.

THE LESSON: Stay true to your family roots. With their help, you can do more.

ISSUE #4 | MAKING IT

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