Who would have thought:
State of ideasCraig McEwen
The Forum - 03/03/2007
What do Cream of Wheat, Mr. Bubble and the Freeman Headbolt Heater have in common?
They are among hundreds ? maybe thousands ? of products, inventions and companies North Dakota entrepreneurs have launched since the late 1800s.
?The late 1880s to the 1920s was the golden age of entrepreneurship in the state of North Dakota,? said state native Bruce Gjovig, founder of the University of North Dakota Center for Innovation and Business Development at Grand Forks.
Then came the Great Depression, a worldwide economic downturn prompted by the 1929 stock market crash lasting through the 1930s.
?In many ways, North Dakota didn?t get over the Depression as fast as other parts of the country,? Gjovig said. ?From really 1930 to 1980, we didn?t have the rate of entrepreneurship as the rest of the country.?
During that time, however, ?you saw a lot of really good problem-solving entrepre-neurism ? people finding better ways to do things,? Gjovig said.
Financial panic in 1893 led to Grand Forks grain miller Thomas Amidon saving the Diamond Flour Mill from fiscal ruin by inventing a porridge called Cream of Wheat.
Wholesale grocery distribution company Nash Finch ? today a Fortune 500 company with annual sales of $4.6 billion ? got its start in 1885 as a candy and tobacco store opened by brothers Fred, Edgar and Willis Nash in Devils Lake.
Bertin Gamble and Philip Skogmo, late-1800s chums from Arthur, N.D., built retail giant Gamble-Skogmo Inc. from a single Fergus Falls, Minn., Hudson-Essex car dealership they bought for $10,000 in 1920.
When the company was sold in 1980 to California-based Wickes Corp., the enterprise included hardware and auto supply stores, Woman?s World, Mode O?Day clothing stores, Red Owl grocers, Synder Drug, Tempo Discount Stores, Alden?s and several other discount outlets.
In 1942, over-the-road linoleum salesman Harold Schafer started hand packaging and selling Gold Seal floor wax in discarded cans scavenged from local dumpgrounds ? now called landfills, said son and former North Dakota Gov. Ed Schafer.
By the 1960s, Schafer?s Gold Seal Co. was known for three more popular products: Glass Wax, Snowy Bleach and Mr. Bubble.
In 1947, Upham, N.D., native Andrew Freeman patented the Freeman Headbolt Heater, rigged from scrap copper tubing and heating elements from old flat irons. By 1951, the company produced 240,000 of the devices and sold them in 28 states.
In 1984, 27-year-old Doug Burgum, another Arthur native, became president of Great Plains Software, a young Fargo-based software development company.
?We want to be the very best company that North Dakota has ever seen,? Burgum said in a 1985 Forum interview.
In 2001, Burgum sold the 1,100-employee company to software giant Microsoft in a $1.1 billion stock deal.
Interest in innovation and entrepreneurship is growing in North Dakota, Gjovig said. ?We?ve really had a reemergence since the 1980s.?
But so has the rest of the world, he said.
?To catch up, we really have to go faster,? he said. ?We?re becoming an entrepreneurial and innovation economy. Now we?re seeing more innovation to innovate. Some is problem-solving, some is need-based, a lot more of it is opportunity-based.?
Cream of the crop
Diamond Flour Mill was hanging by a thread financially after the panic of 1893.
A decision by partners George Bull, Emery Mapes and George Clifford to begin producing Cream of Wheat eventually led to them moving the company to Minneapolis in 1897. The Cream of Wheat Corp. went public in 1929 with its stock listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
The company was acquired in 1962 by Nabisco, later becoming Kraft Foods, which sold the Cream of Wheat and Cream of Rice divisions to New Jersey-based B&G Foods Inc. in January as part of a $200 million deal.
Car heater a hot item
In 1930, inventor Freeman started working on a solution for starting frozen vehicle engines. He called it a head-bolt heater.
?I threw that head-bolt heater in the ash can several times, but dug it out and continued to experiment until it worked,? Freeman said in a 1966 interview.
Freeman launched Five-Star Manufacturing, which made and sold the Freeman Internal-Combustion Engine Head Bolt Heater for $10 each.
A 1932 University of North Dakota electrical engineering graduate, he was co-founder and general manager of Minnkota Power Cooperative from 1940 to 1982.
A little of everything
Discovering a market for auto parts and accessories, Gamble and Skogmo opened their first Gamble Auto Supply store in 1925 in St. Cloud, Minn.
Three years later, the company had grown to 55 stores and its headquarters was moved to Minneapolis. By 1939, the company had 1,500 dealers and 300 corporate stores in 24 states. Gamble-Skogmo eventually reached 4,200 outlets with 26,000 employees in 39 states and was the 15th-largest U.S. retailer before being sold.
Schafer hits the road
In 1936, Stanton, N.D., native Harold Schafer started selling self-polishing floor wax produced in 55-gallon drums by Minnesota-based 3M Corp., which he packaged in cans and sold door to door.
Schafer?s big hit came in 1948 when he introduced Glass Wax, a product initially developed during World War II to clean airplane windshields, his son said.
?That took the company national,? Ed Schafer said. ?From 1948 to 1956, it was the No. 1-selling window cleaner in the U.S.?
In 1950, Schafer launched Snowy Bleach and in 1961 began marketing Mr. Bubble as an alternative to expensive packets of scented bubble bath sold primarily in drug stores, Ed Schafer said.
Harold Schafer sold the Gold Seal Co. to Airwick Industries in 1986.
Haircut hut
North Dakota ingenuity remains alive and well today. Forced out of his Grand Forks barber shop by the 1997 flood, Blaisdell started cutting hair in a used car dealer?s women?s restroom.
In 2005, Blaisdell invented the Barber Stop, a self-contained barber shop kiosk that can be operated almost anywhere. It sells for $15,000.
?I?m doing about 17 to 20 haircuts a day,? he said from the kiosk he now operates in Grand Forks? Home of Economy.
?All you have to do is plug it into an 110 (volt) outlet and you?re in business.?
Readers can reach Forum Business Editor
Craig McEwen at (701) 241-5502
http://www.in-forum.com/articles/index.cfm?id=158224§ion=business
