Company News
Amidon Jewelers has moved its corporate offices to the building it owns on Washington Street in Claremont. The company’s corporate and operational staff had been housed in Hanover, where the jeweler had been a presence on Main Street since 1935. The company announced the closing of its store in the Nugget Arcade building, where it had been operating since 2004, late last year. Amidon co-owner Steve Doubleday said Competitive Computers, of Claremont, assisted with the new network and other IT requirements for the new offices. Current Concepts, of Lyme, also helped with networking Amidon’s location and phone switching. Doubleday and co-owner Katie Goode operate stores in West Lebanon, Claremont and Keene, N.H.
Runnings, a general merchandise chain store with headquarters in the Midwest, opened in Claremont last month in the former Lowe’s Home Improvement store on Washington Street. The Runnings product line includes clothing, outdoor equipment, lawn and garden, automotive, animal care, sporting goods, hardware and power equipment. The company purchased the 125,000-square-foot building last August and at the time said it expected to bring about 60 full- and part-time jobs to the city.
Hartford-based Concepts NREC was one of six Vermont companies to attend last month’s AeroMart Montreal 2015 event, which is designed as a networking opportunity for U.S. and Canadian aerospace companies. The two-day event allowed suppliers and contractors to participate in one-on-one business meetings, conferences, thematic sessions, and technology and product workshops, according to a news release from the Vermont Global Trade Partnership. Concepts NREC specializes in turbomachinery design and development and provides engineering and advanced manufacturing services, as well as software and education, for the aerospace and naval/marine fields.
Long Trail Brewing Co., of Bridgewater Corners, ranked No. 30 on the Brewers Association’s annual list of the top 50 craft brewing companies and No. 36 on the list of overall brewing companies in the U.S., based on beer sales volume. The brewer’s Long Trail, Otter Creek, The Shed and Wolaver’s brands were included in the ranking. Boston-based Harpoon Brewery, which has a brewery in Windsor, ranked 15th on the craft brewing list and 21st on the overall list.
B Lab, the Wayne, Pa.-based nonprofit organization that certifies companies on standards of social and environmental performance, accountability and transparency, has named King Arthur Flour to its fourth annual “B Corp Best for Workers” list and recognized the 225-year-old flour and baking resource company for creating “the most positive overall employee impact.” The list recognizes businesses that earned a worker score in the top 10 percent of the more than 1,200 Certified B Corporations in more than 120 industries around the globe. Certified B Corporations are companies that use the power of business to address social and environmental problems.
Two Upper Valley firms that supply and service the government with computer equipment sales and service have been awarded contracts under a procurement program overseen by NASA. Lyme Computer Systems, of Lyme, and Red River Computer Co., of Claremont, are among 118 small businesses that won small-business set-aside contracts to supply federal agencies with information technology products and product-based services, according to a NASA news release. Separately, Red River has announced that it has achieved the “Advanced Internet of Things Connected Safety and Security Specialization” certification from Cisco Systems. In a news release, the company said it is the first federal partner to achieve this certification, which indicates expertise in designing, integrating and maintaining Cisco video surveillance and access control products. In addition, Red River has been named to The Channel Company’s CRN Tech Elite 250 list, which recognizes IT providers that have invested in the training and education for advanced technical certifications from software and equipment vendors.
Keene, N.H., native Jeff Dill has been named chief executive officer of Grantham-based Woodbrowser Inc., a 3-year-old company that offers online and traditional trading services to the softwood lumber and panel markets. Dill has more than 30 years of building materials and trading floor management experience, most recently at Forest City Trading Group, where he served for 14 years as president of Buckeye-Pacific in Portland, Ore. Prior to that, he spent eight years with Seaboard International Forest Products in Nashua, N.H. Dill started his career at Perkins Home Center, his family’s retail lumber operation in Keene. Woodbrowser serves purchasing accounts in 26 states and four countries at more than 200 mills and brokerages in North America and Europe. Its proprietary “Rough Cut” delivered pricing system for available inventories “provides purchasers with instant quotes to their locations, removing the need for ‘base pricing’ or initial quotes,” the company said in a news release. The company also operates a warehouse in Grantham.
Terry Robb, of Claremont, has marked 40 years of service with Curtis 1000, a provider of print and direct marketing services. Robb covers Vermont and New Hampshire for the company, providing consulting services for marketing and business operations. Curtis 1000 offers print, promotional and direct marketing services. It is part of Taylor Corp., a business marketing communications company that maintains headquarters in Minnesota and has more than 80 subsidiaries in the United States, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, France, India, China, Bulgaria and the Philippines.
Claremont-based Stillwater Forestry LLC has launched a website, http://www.stillwaterforestry.com, as an information portal that features educational resources on subjects such as timber harvesting, boundary line management and forest management plans. The website includes a mobile-optimized design and a blog with content from forest management contractors, a gallery of completed projects and a feedback section where customers can leave a review.
Items of interest to the local business community are published weekly in the Business & Money section of the Sunday Valley News, and are also collected on the Company News page of Enterprise. Email submissions to: biznotes@vnews.com. All items are subject to editing.
