Annual Dinner
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responsible for total solutions in power-train product design applications. They pride themselves on being a one-stop outsourcing partner. TEAM provides power-train solutions to a variety of markets including All-Terrain Vehicles, Snowmobiles, Automotive, Golf/Utility, On/Off-road, Agricultural & Construction, and Turf & Garden care.
For TEAM Industries, this was the Ricke vision: to create opportunities for jobs in small communities using partners that already exist in the area.
TEAM Industries began as the dream of founders Don and Bea Ricke who, in 1967, established Motek Engineering and Manufacturing. Motek, now renamed TEAM Industries-Cambridge, was the first of six facilities located throughout Minnesota.
The foundation has been a partner and a resource for TEAM. Through the years, several loans have been made for facilities in Bagley and Park Rapids, including the initial construction of plants in a new location and for expansion of existing plants. Beyond that, TEAM has added to the quality of the places it has located by supporting education through special initiatives; training and education for job applicants and employees through Teamworks; by supporting Hospice and health care, such as funding a family Hospice room at the Bagley hospital; and early childhood, through support for the “WEE Care” Child Care Center. TEAM employees have helped to build the TEAM Foundation, which provides grants for these and other causes.
It was here that Don Ricke had ideas about starting his own machine shop, and two years later, he and Bea moved the family to Cambridge to start their own business. He TEAM is also a founding industry partner and two partners, whom he would buy out in with the foundation in establishing the Ingenuity 1970, ran the machine shop, while Bea ran the Frontier project, developed to attract and office and worked as educate the best and building maintenance. brightest engineering The emergence of talent in the region, new technology in branding Northwest manufacturing and Minnesota as THE the popular demand place for applied for snowmobiles put engineers. Included TEAM-Cambridge in Ingenuity Frontier in the forefront of is a program recreational markets. partnership dear The company to TEAM and the developed a mutually Rickes – Project beneficial relationship Lead The Way, a with Polaris, one of Director Ann Beck presented the Quality of Place pre-engineering award to TEAM Industries, represented by Jim the nation’s largest curriculum for Russ, Tom Hjort and Cassie Pickett manufacturers of middle and high snowmobiles, ATVs, school students. In motorcycles and personal watercraft. addition, TEAM was instrumental in founding the Highway 2 West Corridor Manufacturers With the success of TEAM-Cambridge, Association. Ricke set out to prove that people could have good jobs and live in rural areas. In 1984, he and his son, David (now CEO) built a second facility in Audubon, seven miles west of Detroit Lakes. And in 1987, TEAM Industries-Bagley was formed and began operations at Roy Lake. In 1991, a facility was built in Bagley.
This was the Ricke vision: to create opportunities for jobs in small communities using partners that already exist in the area. The result has been a dramatic economic boost in our region. Over 200 jobs have been created in Clearwater County alone. Statistics show that the annual average unemployment rate in the county dropped from 17.6% in 1991 to nearly half as much – 9.6% in 2006, which is directly attributable to TEAM’s presence. 6
The TEAM organization IS Quality of Place. It defines what a single company can do to enhance and improve communities in rural areas, and make them the best places to live and work. Since 1993, the foundation has been recognizing the contributions of individuals and organizations in northwest Minnesota. Fifty-nine awards have been given, with an unrestricted grant from the foundation to the nonprofit of the recipients’ choice. This represents $59,000 in grant making to our partners to develop assets in our communities and improve the quality of places throughout the region. (Continued on page 7)