TOP 100 PRIVATE COMPANIES IN WHATCOM COUNTY

[BASED ON 2022 SALES]

More than a list, the Top 100 private companies of Whatcom County is a testament to astute entrepreneurs and savvy investors, business owners and team leaders, early risers and nose-to-the-grindstoners.

Here, in one snapshot, are the establishments that make Whatcom a coveted place to work and live. Incredibly, the top 100 generated almost $4 billion in sales. Importantly, hiring remains a priority across industries, with 93% of this year’s respondents reporting they will be taking on more employees at all levels.

Tucked into the stats, are a sampling of stories that span over 140 years. Samson Rope began making high-performance rope in 1848. This year, Bellingham Millwork Supply and Totally Chocolate celebrate 30 years of an enduring workforce and commitment to craftsmanship. Started 56 years ago, Dawson Construction’s leap in sales, a $36 million increase over the previous year, reflects Whatcom’s astounding growth. And Vander Giessen Nursery, founded in

1938, is in its fourth generation of family leadership and one of 19 companies new to the top 100, revealing our county’s roots in family-owned companies.

But the arc of this story is so much greater than our county. With remote jobs now viable realities, Whatcom, snugged between mountains and sound, is a place where meaningful work fuels fulfilling lives. Nationally, Whatcom has been recognized by organizations like SmartAsset, a financial information website, as one of the ten wealthiest counties in Washington State as well as a great county to start a small business.

This is the account of the ongoing and unfolding story of privately launched and locally owned prosperity. This is Whatcom’s best.

PHOTO: iStockphoto.com/natrot

#30 | Scholten’s

Heather Lea

When you’re eating a vegetable or lining your horse stall with hay, do you ever think, “Where did this come from?”

Well, hopefully it came from a local farm. Whatcom County is an agricultural hub, after all.

Located in Lynden, Scholten’s Equipment buys, sells, rents, repairs and delivers farm and construction equipment. With a second location in Burlington and a substantial market in the rest of Washington, Oregon and British Columbia, Canada, Scholten’s is one of four major agriculture dealers in the area.

A 43-year-old business, Scholten’s was started by Duane and Arlene Scholten in 1980. The company employs 55 full-time employees, with 35 of those folks living in Whatcom County.

Duane tells us that Scholten’s was “started from scratch, fixing neighbors’ tractors on the end of the Jones Road east of Sumas on my in-laws’ dairy farm in between milkings.”

Who can think of a more wholesome, homegrown beginning?

In the early days, Duane Scholten purchased late-model, low-hour tractors out of Iowa, where he is from. He’d then resell these valuable finds to Sumas neighbors. A year after founding the company, Duane and Arlene bought a place by Nooksack Valley High School. In 1983, they hired their first two employees. One of those employees is still working at

Equipment

Scholten’s Equipment today.

By 1984, incorporated and ready to expand, Duane and Arlene rented a bigger shop in Clearbrook, and in 1988, they purchased the Kubota dealer (Kiels) in Lynden. Together, the Scholtens ran both locations for one year, then moved the Clearbrook team to Lynden. In 1993, the business opened a new location in Burlington, on Cook Road.

Today, Scholten’s Equipment is an authorized dealer of Kubota, CLAAS, JCB, Trioliet, Jamesway, JBS, Massey Ferguson (hay and forage only), Kawasaki, Hesston, Land Pride, Rankin, Haybuster and Westendorf.

Future plans include setting up a location in Eastern Washington, finding and building a larger location in Skagit Valley, and adding storage in Lynden.

Scholten’s Equipment was chosen as Business of the Year in 2013. In 2019, the company celebrated 30 years in the estimated $20 million local business market (including their competition) and filmed the occasion. A photo on the company’s website homepage shows a happy employee gathering.

“Another feather in our hat,” Duane Scholten said, “was being chosen over 30 years ago to be a JCB dealer because customers (unbeknownst to us) had requested JCB choose us! We were quite small then.”

As Duane points out, a good website

can be monumental in business sales, and he is most proud of scholtensequipment.com, which, he said, has brought in a lot of walk-in business. The company’s videos are especially impressive.

As pioneers in relatively unknown ideas and new lines, like self-propelled forage harvesters, Kemper heads, Haybuster, Ty-Crop and JCB, Scholten’s Equipment stays on top of things with an aggressive yet friendly approach. Duane’s connections to the Midwest have allowed the company to become a leader in the industry over the years.

On doing business in Whatcom County, Scholten said, “Where else can you go and look at night and there isn’t a security fence keeping you out? (We’re) very blessed to be here (and) we have great employees!”

Scholten’s Equipment is employee owned, and Mr. Scholten himself has always sought to create an environment where hard work and positive attitude are “handsomely rewarded.”

“We have a strong belief that you must enjoy your job at Scholten’s equipment,” Duane said. “While closing a deal on a big, new 600-horsepower-class chopper is quite a rush, there is nothing more satisfying to me than being able to come to work every morning and say ‘Hi’ to everyone and share a cup of coffee with our team and family.” ■

PHOTO: Sam Kristofferson

#83 |

The Lost Co.

Heather Lea

Some of the best ideas come from thinking outside the box. That’s exactly what Mike Randol and a former business partner did in 2016 when they started Whatcom County’s first mobile bike shop.

To keep costs down — instead of renting space somewhere — Mike and his partner bought a 1988 Ford U-Haul truck and converted it into a business on wheels called Mister Lost’s Mobile Bike Shop. The truck body was covered in cedar siding to fit well into the Pacific Northwest backdrop of stellar mountain biking.

Although being mobile helped the bike shop stand out against its competition, one year later the business had outgrown the mobile model’s capabilities. It was time to rent an actual brick-and-mortar building in the Sunnyland neighborhood. There, the business focus went to e-commerce and online media, and in 2018, the bike shop was renamed The Lost Co.

“We suddenly realized the massive potential of the internet,” Randol said, “and [grew] the online side of the business as a primary source of revenue.”

The Lost Co. increased the volume of service work it provided, but more importantly, the team was able to work efficiently without having to drive from site to site.

“This increased efficiency meant we had more time to learn the intricacies of

selling online, which proved to be a pretty massive undertaking,” Randol said.

Creating YouTube content proved to be a smart business decision. The company’s videos got consistent views, and website sales shot up.

Fast forward to 2023, and The Lost Co. has six employees, a 5,000-square-foot shop in the Roosevelt neighborhood, and close to 150,000 YouTube followers.

“I’m extremely happy with the community we’ve built, which consists of die-hard mountain bike enthusiasts around the world,” Randol said. “It’s very gratifying to share technical knowledge, product reviews and adventures with an audience of folks that are just like us.”

Randol said he feels that bike shops can come across as intimidating or snobby; he and his team strive for a fully inclusive experience for anyone who requests assistance.

“I don’t care what your knowledge is with bikes or how much money is in your pocket,” he said. “We interact with each customer in the same professional manner to best gauge how to help each individual for exactly what they need.”

Randol wears many hats, with a hand in nearly every aspect of the business (with physically performing service on bikes and suspensions or shipping and receiving being the only exceptions). His goal is to grow the business to the point

where he can focus solely on being the lead creative director for The Lost Co.’s marketing.

Something worth mentioning is The Lost Co. doesn’t actually sell bikes. It focuses on parts and accessories — specifically, on high-end and technical parts — and provides in-house suspension service, along with rebuilding and servicing most suspension forks and rear shocks, also in-house. That’s not common; that work is typically shipped out to be done externally.

Front-burner projects for The Lost Co. include making more video content for YouTube and other social media platforms. Making videos requires a lot of time and resources which, Randol says, the company struggles to fit into its calendar and budget.

However, video content is a massive driver in traffic to The Lost Co.’s website and overall brand awareness.

“We have more video ideas than we know what to do with,” Randol says. “I hope that one day we’re able to have enough resources to bring those ideas to life.”

The Chuckanut and Galbraith trail systems near town are the perfect terrain for mountain biking. And with a strong biking community in Whatcom County, The Lost Co. has nowhere to go but up(hill). ■

PHOTO: Sam Kristofferson

#95 | Bellingham Wind Works

Heather Lea

In the heart of the Fountain District in Bellingham, you’ll find a music shop that has catered to the musicians, teachers and students of Whatcom and Skagit counties since 2005.

After watching local music stores shut down in the early 2000s, Bellingham Wind Works saw a niche to be filled. In 2012, owners Kat and Ed DeVaney expanded to provide repair and restoration services for band and orchestra instruments, along with services for percussion instruments, accordions, harmonicas, guitars and other fretted instruments.

Ed originally worked for The MUSIC Shoppe as its instrument repair technician. He purchased the repair shop from the previous owner in 2005. In 2011, he and Kat purchased the building, renamed the shop Bellingham Wind Works, and started offering retail sales and rental instruments at the request of customers.

The shop offers almost every type of musical instrument repair, Kat says, including a full retail showroom with new and used musical instruments, a full selection of print music, and a wide variety of musical instrument accessories, including reeds, mouthpieces, strings, lubricants, cases, harnesses and straps, jewelry, ornaments, children’s instruments and gifts.

Looking to rent? The shop does that, too. Bellingham Wind Works offers the rental of band and orchestra instruments made by major manufacturers such as Yamaha, Conn-Selmer, Buffet Crampon, Jupiter and Eastman, as well as hard-to-

find rentals, such as English horns, oboes, bassoons and upright basses.

“We have student and step-up instruments that include everything you need to get started on your musical career, and they are available to anyone in Washington state,” Kat says.

Ed and Kat, husband and wife, are both trained repair technicians with experience repairing brass and woodwind instruments. Like many small business owners, the two have held a variety of roles over the years, including window dresser, delivery driver, technician, social media manager, educator, janitor, human resources department, office manager, shipping and receiving manager and general overseer.

The company employs nine full-time staff members, seven of whom live in Whatcom County. The three part-time employees also live in Whatcom County. Staff members and owners partake in training, classes and seminars, and they are always learning from customers.

“Our greatest accomplishment is providing for our employees and customers through consistent growth,” Ed says. “We are very proud of our staff of experts, who are regularly performing musicians and many of whom hold advanced degrees in music.”

Keeping up with new products and trends, Bellingham Wind Works will soon carry a new line of clarinets by Royal Global and a popular range of bass clarinets. Reed instrument aficionados may

have seen these clarinets played by New Orleans clarinetist Doreen Ketchens or Michael Lowenstern, of Julliard.

“We are very proud that over the last 18 years we have grown from a one-person instrument repair shop to a full-line band and orchestra music store that people visit from all over the world,” Kat says. “We have worked on and restored some of the rarest and most unusual instruments in our field.”

Ed and Kat have collaborated with local businesses such as Evergreen Music Studios, Bellingham Music, The ReStore, Bellingham Symphony Orchestra, Skagit Symphony and The Bellingham Theatre Guild. They also have actively donated to fine arts organizations such as the Blaine Fine Arts Association and the Family Interactive Gallery at the Whatcom Museum, providing instruments, music and financial assistance for performances, petting zoos, art pieces and auctions. They also have donated more than 100 instruments to Bellingham music programs.

Bellingham Wind Works serves 35 schools across three counties, with two school representatives offering weekly delivery services and working directly with teachers. Nominated by local teachers, Bellingham Wind Works has received a “Friends of Music” award from the San Juan Music Educators Association.

Whether you’re a budding musician or a professional, Ed and Kat say you will be at home in their store. ■

PHOTO: Sam Kristofferson

We at Business Pulse magazine believe the following companies qualify for the list based on previous years but were unable to confirm their numbers as of press time (in alpha order):

American Canadian Fisheries, Brooks Manufacturing Co, Infusion Solutions, Louws Truss, Seeking Health, Superfeet, Wood Stone Corp, and others.

If you would like to be included in the list for next year, please contact us at info@whatcombusinessalliance.com.