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A winning business – Cottonwood Enterprises of Bozeman

When Terry Cunningham tells people what he and his wife Laura do for a living, he often gets a surprised response.

"People say, ‘I guess somebody has got to do that,’" Terry said, with a laugh.

Their business, Cottonwood Enterprises, specializes in running sweepstakes, games and contests for national retailers like Hasbro, Keebler and Brach’s.

By KAYLEY MENDENHALL Chronicle Staff Writer

http://bozemandailychronicle.com/articles/2004/11/29/news/backroads.txt

And their Bozeman home is the headquarters where thousands of mailed-in game pieces and sweepstakes entry forms wind up.

"We have eight P.O. boxes. It’s not unusual for us to have multiple boxes or trays of mail," Terry, 45, said. "Laura goes to the post office every day."

That short trip into town is nothing compared to the commute the Cunninghams made when they lived in Atlanta. Terry was vice president of promotions for Turner Broadcasting — where he and Laura met. She was the director of marketing for Turner Publishing.

Laura, 37, spent time in Helena while growing up and the couple often vacationed in Montana with a dream of eventually retiring here.

"After a particularly stressful day in Atlanta … we said, maybe we could start our own agency in Montana," Terry said. "We moved out here on a leap of faith."

That was six years ago and the leap, it seems, ended with a soft landing.

"We do at least 100 promotions a year," Terry said. "It’s never boring, that’s for sure. In some cases, you’re changing people’s lives."

They make phone calls and send letters informing people about their wins on a regular basis; they recently informed the winner of an essay contest that he or she would receive $100,000 to pay off college loans.

"It’s amazing how often people don’t believe they actually won something," Laura said.

She and Terry are constantly explaining that someone actually does win every contest and sweepstakes out there. The industry is highly regulated and the Cunninghams number every entry for every promotion and then use a computer program to randomly draw a sweepstakes winner.

For contests, they’ll often bring in local experts to help judge the entries.

Nancy Quist, owner of the baking supply shop Fancy Flours, was recently asked to help judge a Keebler s’mores recipe contest. The Cunninghams narrowed down the entries to 75 and Quist helped pick three finalists from that group.

Then, Laura and Terry made the recipes and Quist and her staff picked a final winner.

"The great thing about Bozeman is that there are so many uniquely talented people," Terry said. "We like to reach into the community and pick out the experts."

That’s likely to continue happening as business remains steady and Cottonwood Enterprises grows by word of mouth from clients, Terry said. The Cunninghams have been working in the field long enough that they have contacts at corporations that use special promotions as a marketing tool.

"It’s an almost universal promotion practice," Terry said.

Companies hire people like Terry and Laura to take care of the details of the time-consuming promotions. Nationwide, Terry said, there are about three-dozen companies that specialize in the same things as Cottonwood Enterprises.

"We have our 20 to 30 clients we work for and we’re happy with them," Terry said. "We like the fact that we can do this out of our house and we don’t want to expand beyond that."

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