Business around the Northwest

Against the grain: In spite of the economy, local businesses are expanding, Kitsap Peninsula Business Journal

Guitar company shapes vision, reaches 35 years, Bend Cascade Business News

How do mental health issues directly affect the workplace?, Kitsap Peninsula Business Journal

► On the record

“We’re continuing to grow, it’s just a matter of do we need 10 new employees or five?”

- Brandon Byars, manager of recruitment services and workforce planning at Kaiser Permanente

Reporter's Notebook

Ho Ho Ho-memade

My husband and I have instituted a new Christmas shopping rule this season – all of our gifts have to come from local retailers. It’s proving a little harder than I expected, not because of a lack of great options, but because I’m battling pure habit.

As Target is my go-to store of choice, I find it a bit tricky to pause and think about where else I can find what I’m looking for. It’s not hard, but it does require more brain power than hopping in my car and ending up at Target.

But now I’m spending where it has far greater impact – locally – and I think I’m spending less because I’ve put so much thought into what I’m buying that there’s less impulse shopping. (Although that’s not always the case, as I impulse bought a $12 bottle of the most beautiful sparkle nail polish I’ve ever seen at Willow’s the other day.)

But I can almost guarantee nobody will be getting multiples of my presents.

So far, I’ve snapped up a pair of knitted bootie slippers, a screenprinted T-shirt made by my neighbor and bacon flavored salt. (I hope nobody on my gift list is reading this!) And, bonus, I got to connected with some of the folks who created these wonders.

My hope is by changing my holiday shopping habits – by changing my frame of mind – it will carry over into the rest of my spending.

And – shameless plug! – for a great source of wares made my local artisans, check out the 2Hand Revolution Holiday Craft Show and Fair Trade Expo tomorrow from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
at the August Moon Community Center, 111 W. 39th St. in Vancouver. It’s organized by Brown Warrior Publishing staffer Jessica Swanson, yours truly will have a crafting table and Reporter Charity Thompson will allegedly be teaching kiddies a song or two!

-Megan Patrick-Vaughn can be reached at mpatrick@vbjusa.com

Business around the Northwest

Working to combat crimes at job sites, Portland Daily Journal of Commerce

Snohomish to postpone high density rural projects, Snohomish County Business Journal

Health plan hikes show little letup, Spokane Journal of Business

► On the record

“It was a year that nobody wanted it to be.”

– Dave Roewe, executive director of the Building Industry Association of Clark County, reflecting on the building industry in 2008

Reporter's Notebook

Loving The Craft

Alexander MacKenzie, founder of Vancouver-based Highland Light Productions, made a career in movies by accident.
“It never occurred to me” to be in film, he said.
But as a child, MacKenzie played on the “Howdy Doody” set with a family friend who worked on the show.
“It was like daycare for us,” he said.
Later, as a sailor, MacKenzie met a screenwriter at a bar in 1970 who was preparing a script called “The Last Detail.” He paired its star with MacKenzie for a character study.
“The Navy sent me on temporary duty to Columbia Studios and introduced me to this skinny kid in the corner, Jack Nicholson, who was from New Jersey just like me,” MacKenzie said.
The Navy assigned MacKenzie to the studio, where he was an extra and crew member for “The Longest Yard,” “The Rockford Files” and more.
MacKenzie completed six tours in Vietnam and stumbled back into movies while vacationing in Hawaii near a movie set. Today he’s making plans for Highland Light to shoot feature films with local crew and actors.
He’s nonchalant when talking about his career, and that’s partly why he’s come so far. MacKenzie wasn’t starry-eyed, he said, so directors assumed he knew what he was doing.
MacKenzie is in a unique profession, but his advice for film newbies applies to any industry: Love the craft, learn all aspects of it and help others get ahead while you do it.
More about MacKenzie’s plans for Highland Light is in the current issue of the VBJ.

--Charity Thompson can be reached at cthompson@vbjusa.com

Business around the Northwest

The best (and worst) of business 2008, Seattle Business Monthly

Recession-proof industries: fact or fiction?, Bellingham Business Journal

Potlatch to spin off Idaho manufacturing business, Idaho Business Review

High-tech scans for Rover, Spokane Journal of Business