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Tanner Montague came to town from Seattle having never owned his own music venue before. He’s a musician himself, so he has a pretty good sense of good music, but he also wandered into a crowded music scene filled with concert venues large and small.But the owner of Green Room thinks he found a void in the market. It’s lacking, he says, in places serving between 200 and 500 people, a sweet spot he thinks could be a draw for both some national acts not quite big enough yet for arena gigs and local acts looking for a launching pad.“I felt that size would do well in the city to offer more options,” he says. “My goal was to A, bring another option for national acts but then, B, have a great spot for local bands to start.”Right or wrong, something seems to be working, he says. He’s got a full calendar of concerts booked out several months. How did he, as a newcomer to the market in an industry filled with competition, get the attention of the local concertgoer?

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by Matt Krumrie
11/01/2003

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Foot in the door

BALTIX FUELS FAST GROWTH WITH ECO-FRIENDLY FURNITURE

by Matt Krumrie

Spend time with Tom Heerman and you get the impression of someone who is an analytical genius who can break down any problem and solve it in no time.

Spend time with Chuck Lodge and you can’t help but be energized by his intelligence, his knowledge of the business world, and his passion for success — and that’s without even knowing the product he is selling.

Together, they are part of Long Lake-based Baltix Furniture, a company that designs and

Brad Bruhn

develops environmentally sustainable workstations made frommaterials such as wheat byproduct, sunflower hulls, soy, recycled plastic milk containers and recycled newsprint.

Heerman, 44, is the president of the company. Lodge is the national vice president of sales. Baltix employs five people at its Long Lake office, but through its virtual sales representatives throughout the United States — outsourced engineers, manufacturers and distributors — has a team of about 200 people. The company produced revenue of $2 million in 2002 and expects that to jump to $4 million in 2003.

“We’re going to be shocked if we don’t double in revenue every year the next few years,” says Lodge. He believes Baltix is the only company concentrating solely on sustainable office products.

Baltix Furniture happened almost by mistake. Heerman and Lodge were working together in the booming dot-com world in the late 1990s. The company they were working for went from four to 120 employees in 10 months before being bought out. But during that growth spurt, the company needed to purchase office furniture.

In Heerman’s spare time, he was developing new models for office workstations. The designs took the company by storm, and were developed for the company to use instead of purchasing traditional office furniture. When clients came to the dot-com, they were so impressed by the furniture that they did whatever they could to get their hands on it for their own office space.

The furniture originally had nothing to do with being eco-friendly, but was made from Baltic birch (hence the name Baltix). As Heerman’s passion for the environment took over (combined with the realization that the dot-com world wasn’t as booming as once thought) he ventured out on his own, and in 1999 Baltix Furniture was started with a base of about 100 customers.

Heerman says operating in a developing market is challenging for a small firm. “The amazing part about all of this is that this is such a new market, we’re almost inventing the market,” said Heerman. “Even the Fortune 500 companies don’t try to develop a market, they try to reach a market they identify with and move ahead. When you think about what we’re doing it’s kind of crazy.”

Heerman says he has always had the entrepreneurial drive to start a business. Lodge has worked in various positions with GE Capital and IBM before coming to Baltix within the past year. They are building a sales network quickly, yet cautiously.

“It’s been one of the most brutal economies in the past two decades,” says Lodge. “It has been ferociously tough for the traditional office furniture environment. What we have chosen to do is work hard on laying out our infrastructure and launch our solutions by working on our design, our sales channel, and getting recognition. We believe confidently as the market gets better and sustainability becomes more of an everyday specification we’ll be ready.”

The individual reps located in over 40 cities don’t solely sell sustainable furniture, but they sell it as part of their independent dealership. Lodge says they studied Web sites, government initiatives, and identified the top “green” marketplaces in the United States. In the past nine months more than 650 new leads have been generated from trade shows, and potential clients now loom in Europe, New Zealand and other faraway places the company didn’t think it would reach this quickly.

Live and breathe

Joel Pfister is the president of Golden Valley-based Source Engineering, a company that sells the aluminum components used in the manufacturing of the trim on Baltix workstations. He sees the passion that Lodge and Heerman bring to the company, and isn’t surprised by its rapid growth.

“The most important thing is these guys live and breathe what they are doing,” says Pfister. “But they also have a very astute vision of where they want to be in the marketplace.”

Pfister feels the energy Lodge brings to the business everyday. He jokingly calls him Turbo Chuck, “but I mean that with the highest amount of respect,” says Pfister. “He is trying to execute on where Tom wants to go, working with vendors, suppliers, growing the dealer network, marketing the company and getting exposure. He has a lot of cards in his hand but plays them well.”

As for Heerman, Pfister says “Tom’s gears spin just as fast as Chuck’s, but he doesn’t have all the horns, bells and bright flashing lights. He is very thoughtful in terms of what he says and how he feels and what he thinks, that’s just kind of his nature.”

One of Baltix’s biggest local supporters is the University of Minnesota’s College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (CALA). Thomas Fisher, a professor and Dean of CALA, encouraged the university to consider using Baltix furniture in its new wing, and frequently mentions Baltix initiatives in lectures and speaking engagements.

“One of the biggest challenges is trying to contain a degree of enthusiasm when you want to do so many things at the same time,” says Lodge. “You have to attack them incrementally as opposed to simultaneously.”

After some searching, Baltix teamed up with JonTi-CrafT, a Wabasso, Minnesota-based manufacturer of early learning wood furniture to manufacture Baltix products. Since teaming with Baltix, JonTi-CrafT has developed its own line of earth-friendly furniture for kids called Sproutz.

“I think they have found a niche and really grown with it and taken advantage of the opportunity,” says Tom Franta, vice president of sales at JonTi-CrafT. “I think there was a real desire for offices to have sustainable office furniture, and very few companies were green. With our production capabilities and resources, it has been a perfect fit.”

Brad Bruhn is an account executive with William J. Business Interiors in Wayzata, and a dealer for Baltix Furniture. He has slowly seen the urge for more companies to go green.

“It’s in an infant state in the Twin Cities from an office furniture standpoint,” says Bruhn. “The world of furniture is very competitive, but the world of furniture was also very dirty. Sustainability is catching on in different parts of the country, and they do it better than anyone I know.”

Erik Knutson is the ecocollaborative development operator for Baltix. Basically, when it comes to understanding the rules, regulations and guidelines to develop sustainable furniture, he is the resident expert. Like Heerman and Lodge, he probably never thought he would be in such an unusual position.

“Chuck and I come from a background that furniture was something we sat on,” says Knutson. “But that can be a benefit because we have an outside point of view for this industry. We still have a lot to learn, but I think we might look at the industry a different way.”

Adds Lodge:  “This is a unique opportunity in our lifetime to see something that does not tie us to oil and other finite resources that are out there, or the pollution and the chemicals used in traditional office furniture and workstations.”