Humboldt Made Seeking Regional Expansion

Rosa Dixon

Humboldt Made has supported local businesses since 2010 and as it builds collaboration, its executive director envisions a new direction for it – expanding its scope into a “Redwood Regional Made” program.  The goal of uniting North Coast small businesses into a powerful regional team was described as a new goal during a June 8 online presentation to the Community Economic Resilience Consortium by Humboldt Made’s executive director, Rosa Dixon.

Humboldt Made is a non-profit organization supporting local product makers through a variety of activities, including marketing, events and tourism promotion.

Humboldt Made’s members – there are 170 of them – have benefited from promotional programs and participation in events, mixers and food product expos.

The events include Friday Night Markets in Eureka and, on Aug. 21, in Arcata featuring El Pulpo, a 26-foot tall mechanical flame-spouting octopus crafted by famed local artist Duane Flatmo.

Local businesses have also benefited from collaboration, which Dixon sees as a plus that can be expanded.

“Humboldt Made is doing something unique – we are not competing, we’re collaborating and that is really an important distinction,” she said. “And we’re stronger when we’re together.”

Dixon has been actively pursuing grant funding for an expansion of that.

“I have this vision that I’ve had for a long time which is we expand that to the four counties and we have this Redwood Regional Made program that has a really strong impact on the northwest redwood curtain coast,” she said. “I’ve talked with Del Norte and Mendocino and Lake County and they don’t have enough makers to have their own but all of us together, it would be perfect — we could do shows together we can have workshops together and so that’s where I’m hoping it’s going to go.”

She used the example of the Eel River Valley-based Jersey Scoops ice cream maker and shop.

“There’s not a more collaborative business than Jersey Scoops, they use so much local products and promote it and put the branding on their packaging and talk about it,” she said. “I mean, they don’t need to do any of that, right? They would still have the best caramel salted caramel ice cream without talking about it coming from (caramel product maker) Hum-Yum. But they do that because that’s their vision. And so I think leading by example like that, it isn’t that hard.”

Ross Welch is executive director of North Edge Financing, which was formerly known as the Arcata Economic Development Center before it expanded its business support to surrounding counties. He vouched for the regional approach.

“People really want to shop local in our area and see the benefit,” he said, adding the effect can be strengthened “if we could just boost the regional stuff a little bit more.”

Calder Johnson of Redwood Region RISE highlighted the combined economic effect of numerous small businesses.

“I do think that sometimes there is a tendency for funding to drift towards singular large big projects because that’s often how we tend to think about things,” he said. “And I think that that often obscures the importance of everything that we’re talking about here today, of small businesses, of the aggregation of small businesses spread throughout the region that are ultimately the huge economic powerhouse.”

Wil Franklin, director of the Small Business Development Center (SBDC) of Humboldt and Del Norte Counties, said SBDC is well-positioned to assist the regional vision.

“I also see a way forward in Lake, Mendocino and Del Norte as a region given SBDC’s organization already,” he said. “So I want to just let everybody know that Rosa and I are going to push this because this is a magic sauce, this collaboration,” he said. “And it’s just another great example of how we can do so much more by not reinventing the wheel but using partners that that have their own expertise.”

Dixon said this year will be “the year that I really want to see us going after some grants and really developing some of these programs because there’s no reason to not keep pushing and to make this bigger, regional, because we’re just stronger in numbers.”

Humboldt Made’s business promotion includes its Digital Passport program