Business Of The Year
2017 Family Business of the Year (Midsize Firms): Hewes Marine Company, Workpointe, Burgermaster
Colville-based Hewes Marine Company is the winner of the Gold Award.
FULL SPEED AHEAD: Dave Hewes, right, and Bill Hewes with Bills wife, Launa, on the production floor of the Hewescraft factory in Colville. Photo courtesy of Hewescraft. This article appears in print in the December 2017 issue. Click here for a free subscription. Known simply as Hewescraft, this rural Colville company builds heavy-gauge, all-welded aluminum…
2016 Family Business Awards: Business of the Year, Large Firms
Gold: R.D. Merrill Company; Silver: Peninsula Truck Lines
GOLD AWARDR.D. Merrill CompanyLocation: Seattle in the 1890s, Richard Dwight Merrill built a business based on timber. Six generations later, the company he built, R.D. Merrill, has 1,700 employees and operations in timber, retirement homes and property development. Merrills great-great-grandson (and the companys current chairman), Charlie Wright, took the first step toward diversification in 1993…
2016 Family Business Awards: Business of the Year, Midsize Firms
Gold: Decagon Devices; SIlver: Nakanishi Dental Laboratory, State Roofing
GOLD AWARDDecagon DevicesLocation: Pullman Renowned Washington State University soil scientist Gaylon Campbell worked part time to blend an engineering background with customer needs and create an instrument that measures water potential. Decagon Devices, soon to be Meter Group Inc., makes instruments to test plant-available water in the soil. They are used in environmental monitoring and…
2016 Family Business Awards: Business of the Year, Small Firms
Gold: Fitterer's Inc.; Silver: Plemmons Industries, Morpac Industries
GOLD AWARD:Fitterer’s Inc.Location: Ellensburg Established in 1896, Fitterers Furniture has its roots in the founding of Ellensburg. Brothers Phillip and Frank Fitterer came to Yakima from Minnesota in the late 1880s and then moved to booming Ellensburg to work for the pioneering Horton House hotel. When it closed in 1896, they began operating a secondhand…