Lansing State Journal
August, 2005 – Business Weekly Cover Story
By Tricia Bobeda
Henry Miller, 60, moved slowly up and down the aisles of his small country store.
Each product on the shelves had a story. Homemade jams. Painted turkey feathers hanging in frames. Wooden toy farm sets carved by hand.
Miller, who is Amish, opened the store – Meadow Ridge Woodcrafts – at the edge of his dairy farm in 2003. “We wanted to slow down,” Miller said, his bright smile bursting through a long white beard. While shopkeeping is less strenuous than farming, he’s found it lacks the freedom.
“We can’t just leave. We don’t want people to drive out (to the store) and find it closed,” Miller said.
That dedication to hard work and the “bootstrapping” business style of the Amish community contributes to its success as members move from their farms into entrepreneurship, said Dan Miller, president of the Franklin, Tenn., based consulting firm, The Business Source. There are lessons to be learned from the way Amish do business – where a handshake still has meaning, Dan Miller said.
“Their word is their bond,” he said. A career coach and author, Dan Miller, who is not related to Henry, says he’s grateful for the work ethic his Amish grandparents instilled in him.
“My business uses cutting-edge technology, but at the same time those values enhance my abilities,” said the consultant, who doesn’t follow the Amish lifestyle. Country store Henry Miller’s transition from the milk barn to the shop counter is not unusual. ”
Amish Enterprise: From Plows to Profits,” a 2004 study by Steven Nolt and Donald Kraybill, found that in some Amish communities, 80 percent of the residents have left the farm. And they’re succeeding. The failure rate for Amish businesses is low, the authors said. As an entrepreneur, Henry Miller travels the Midwest with his wife, Betty, visiting Amish shops, and furniture and craft expos. The couple doesn’t drive; friends with vehicles take them around.
The store sells baskets made by children as young as 7, because Amish children learn to make crafts with their families.
“We look for unique things,” he said. “None of them are China-made.” Meadow Ridge Woodcrafts also offers sewing materials to the 60 to 70 Amish families who live between Charlotte and Vermontville. Before the store opened, area Amish families traveled to Indiana for fabric to make their plain garb.
“We can’t go into town and buy clothes, so we supply that for our people,” Henry Miller said. He says he wouldn’t say Amish business owners are better than anyone else: “We’re just human. We try to be honest. We try to have quality goods.”
Middleman
Typical Amish products include fine indoor and outdoor furniture, quilts and leather goods. Often, Amish producers turn to non-Amish distributors, who have access to the Internet, something the Amish shun. One such distributor is Jim Goble of Jim’s AmishAmish) take pride in their work.”
All the outdoor structures Goble carries come built to a level of craftsmanship he says his customers appreciate. He has more than 2,000 pieces of lawn furniture and 30 styles of play structures: Noah’s arks, castles, monster trucks, pool structures and wishing wells. Prices can start at $100 for lawn furniture and hit $10,000 or higher for gazebos.
“Everything I sell I have one of in my own back yard,” Goble said. Goble stumbled on his Amish suppliers working as a contractor. He does business with 54 Amish families from Pennsylvania and Michigan.
“I’m just a middleman,” Goble said. The craftsmen use air-powered tools run by a diesel car engine. A crew of a dozen men can create six to eight gazebos per day.
“Their day is a lot longer than ours. They work 12-13 hours,” Goble said. Goble admires the Amish business savvy. One of his suppliers has a saying Goble lives by: “You’ve got to make hay while the sun is shining.”
Some bigger companies are doing business with the Amish too. In Middlefield, Ohio, Wal-Mart has created an Amish-friendly store, reported the Tribune Chronicle of Warren, Ohio.
The parking lot has buggy hitches and the store is stocked with plain-clothes fabric, blocks for ice boxes and canning supplies.
The Amish don’t use electricity and drive horses and buggies. Some have refrigerators and stoves that run on propane.
“They’re sticking to their guns,” Goble said about the Amish families he works with. He visits his suppliers several times a year and envies their close-knit, low-tech lifestyle.
“I think I could live my life that way,” he said. Henry Miller does. There is a phone in Meadow Ridge Woodcrafts, but Miller doesn’t use other new-fangled technology. He declined to be photographed for this article.
“Because we don’t have computers, TV or radio, families spend a lot of time working together,” he said.
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