by JEFF SPRY for Cascade AE
A recent Made in Sisters tour offered an eclectic sampling of light industrial, interesting retail and manufacturing businesses in the greater Sisters Country area.
The tour showcased a sampling of key local enterprises and fostered an ever-increasing network of vital business relationships to solidify the idea of Sisters as a viable and thriving location for continued commerce.
A wide range of products and services were highlighted including Metabolic Maintenance, Rescue Response Gear, an outdoor sportsmen’s firm manufacturing custom ropes and harnesses for Search and Rescue teams, Ponderosa Forge and Ironworks and Energyneering Solutions Inc.
Metabolic Maintenance is a producer of vitamins, mineral, nutritional supplements and herbal extracts to the physician-exclusive market with a total catalog of 150-160 products. The company was founded by Ed Fitzgerald in 1994 and employs 32 people, 75 percent of them from Sisters. They are ready to expand in the years to come and about to enter the competitive retail world with their entire line of specific amino-acid and health related lines, moving beyond their healthcare professional customers.
“We moved here from San Diego and chose Sisters because I wanted a good place for my daughter, Kelly, to grow up, go to school and play sports,” Fitzgerald said.
At the Ponderosa Forge roadshow stop, owner Jeff Wester proudly displayed their quality line of hand-forged tools, fireplace doors, andirons and elegant iron railing. Wester started the business in 1988 in a tent set up in the back of a house. Visitors were led into the heart of the operations inside the original 1991 fabrication shop and blacksmith room with its cold and gas forges and loud forging hammers.
Using a mixture of historic benches and traditional equipment, paired with more modern CNC cutting machines, Wester produces some of the finest iron, bronze and copper work in the West.
“There’s always a big surprise to people how much is being done in Sisters,” said Benny Benson of Energyneering Solutions.
“Our core business is engineering in the bio-gas and bio-mass energy world and the operations management team is based right here in Sisters, as well as some of the actual overhaul work. There’s a real uniqueness to the area and our ties to the airport give us that needed mobility.”
Benson was initially drawn to the area for its quality of life and desire to grow and expand his businesses.
“With the internet and air transportation in Sisters I can conduct business worldwide,” he said. “The tour was real positive and further highlighted we’re not just a sleepy tourist town. Sisters needs to have a technology, commercial and industrial backbone in order for it to exist as a recreational tourist destination and allow it to be whatever it wants to be. It gives you the best of both worlds.”