Portland, Oregon, the home of domestic cheese-making, tiny houses and wooden bicycles, shows where the U.S. economy is headed, a Portland State University professor told Durango business leaders Wednesday.
The industrial economy that has dominated the United States for decades is yielding to smaller producers who have personal relationships with their customers, said Charles Heying, an associate professor of urban studies and planning.
“I think we’re in this period of transition,” he said. “I think the new economy is going to look more like the artisan economy and less like the 20th-century industrial economy.”
“It’s localism, not parochialism,” he said. “It’s the Jetsons on bikes.”
Heying was the speaker at a Green Business Roundtable event hosted by the San Juan Citizens Alliance at the Henry Strater Theatre. The discussion drew more than 100 attendees.
Portland’s entrepreneurs are raising money and starting businesses in ways unimaginable a few years ago, Heying said. A Portland man, Keith Gehrke, raised $155,000 on the crowd-funding website Kickstarter for a nondisposable coffee filter and brewing system. A Portland mom, Claudia Lucero, started selling do-it-yourself cheese-making kits on Etsy. Her business now is called UrbanCheesecraft.
Small producers can find the expertise they need – logistics, Web support, shipping and tracking – for low costs, reducing the advantage of large corporations that have those services in-house.
“The digital revolution does another thing: It changes production,” he said. “We can build relationships without having hierarchies, so that’s what’s undermining large organizations.”
Portland often is the subject of jokes – the TV series “Portlandia” essentially is one long-running joke about the city’s quirks – but the small businesses taken together have serious economic muscle.
A report Heying authored found the 126 members of the Portland Made Collective employ an estimated 1,204 people and generates $258 million in revenue. Oregon’s craft brewers employ an estimated 5,650 workers, he said.
“We have four local winners of ‘Project Runway,’ Heying said. “There is no city in the world that has that many. New York doesn’t have that many.” Durango and Portland have many similarities, not least of which are bikes and beer.
“Absolutely, Durango has the same ingredients,” said Jack Llewellyn, executive director of the Chamber of Commerce.
Durango has six breweries to Portland’s 52. Both cities pride themselves on their bicycle-friendliness, and businesses have risen from the bike lanes. At the foot of Horse Gulch, Durango Bike Co. makes high-end mountain bikes, while Portland’s Renovo makes wooden bicycles that sell for up to $10,000.
Heying pointed to a couple of looming threats to the artisan economy. One is the cost of residential real estate and commercial space. The amenities that attract young entrepreneurs have the effect of driving up prices.
“That’s a real problem,” Heying said. “I’m not sure how to deal with that.”
Second, large companies can respond to entrepreneurial competition by buying it. That’s already happening: Anheuser-Busch InBev, the parent company of Budweiser, has made waves by moving to buy two Pacific Northwest craft breweries, 10 Barrel Brewing in Bend, Oregon, and Elysian in Seattle.
In Portland, Stumptown, a popular homegrown coffee chain, tried to quietly sell, Heying said. Word got out, and a backlash ensued.
“People respond to the inauthenticity of that,” he said.
cslothower@durangoherald.com
