By Colin McDonald of the Missoulian
“We are in a very good spot,” Ken said, “Now it’s just making all the decisions.”
The couple knows they want to run a business based on the sapphires their claim produces. What they don’t know is this: How are they going to pull it off?
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Sapphire Studios
http://sapphiremining.com/ P.O. Box 312
Hamilton, Montana 59840
406-363-6650
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So they’ve taken advantage of resources available for business operations like theirs: They have met wit the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce and discussed their business plan. They have regular meetings with a local business group and participated in a so-called “SWOT” analysis, in which area business owners helped identify the couple’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
The conclusion of the meetings were all the same: Ken 57, and Lynette, 54, have to decide how they want their company to grow.
“You can only do so much,” Lynette said. “You have to define what you are doing.”
Ken’s family bought the claim in 1963 with four partners. At first it was simply a place to go hunting. But after Ken’s father died, he and his mother began mining the site for sapphires with picks and shovels. It was their form of family recreation.
By 1976 Ken had earned his teaching credentials and began teaching tech classes at Hamilton High School. Ken and his mother bought out the partners of the claim.
For the next 28 years, Ken would mine the claim when he was not teaching.
Gradually the operation expanded with the purchase of larger equipment and the sapphires went from filling glass jars on the home mantle to being sold on the open market. Ken loved the work and happily spent long hours at the mine digging up dump truck loads gravel laden with blue, pink, orange and yellow sapphires.
One day in 1993, Ken was at the Ravalli County Museum, when he met his wife in front of the mining display.
Lynnette had recently moved from Los Angeles and was fascinated by sapphires. When Ken said he had his own sapphire mine, she didn’t believe him at first, but agreed to go and see the mine.
The couple build their dream home with a view looking down the Bitterroot Valley, Lynnette learned ho to grade and cut sapphires. By 1995, the couple had opened a retail shop in the front of their home selling sapphires, sapphire jewelery and the opportunity to sift through 3-pound bags of gravel for the colored stones.
This June, Ken retired. Now, the couple is trying to figure out how to take their part-time hobby into a full-time job.
“That’s what we now think about 24/7,” Lynnette said.
“You get a lot of rewards that are very personal, because you know what you had to do to make something work,” Lynnette Lutz said.
For Ken, finding buyers for uncut sapphires is easy. He sells bags of untreated sapphires resembling colorful pea gravel by the kilo. For Lynnette, selling tourists on the idea of using screens to filter though the sand and gravel for sapphires is easy. Her shop is busy throughout the summer with visiting tourists and a handful of dedicated regular customers.
As Ken explained, a sapphire that is cut and ready to be placed in a piece of jewelry can easily sell for 100 times the value of the same sapphire uncut. The process of having the sapphire cut is simple and relatively inexpensive and can be done in Montana or Asia.
Lynnette has found that the visitors she can attract to her home in Hamilton enjoy and are willing to pay for the sapphires they find in the bags of sand and gravel she sells. She has even found some customers willing to buy the bags of gravel online.
For Ken and Lynnette, the challenge is finding and marketing to buyers – and, again, the time spent with the informal network of business advisers has helped to focus that issue. The options range from traveling the country visiting gem shows and conferences to setting up a shop n Hamilton.
For Lynnette, it comes down to a simple question of priorities.
“How many hours do we want to work?” she said.
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Mentors, Networks Help Businesses Gauge when to take the Next Step
When Ken and Lynnette Lutz of Hamilton needed to re-evaluate the future of their business, Sapphire Studios, they joined a local business mentor and networking group. After meeting once a month over beers with other small business owners, the couple felt much more comfortable in facing the challenge of expanding their operation.
By Colin McDonald for The Missoulian
Similar resources are available for businesses all across western Montana and usually can be contacted via area chambers of commerce.
Here’s a short list of resources to get you started:
The Hamilton Business Mentor and Networking Group with board: http://www.bitterroot.net/bng
Russ Fletcher and the Montana Associated Technology Roundtables: http://www.matr.net 542-9395 russ@matr.net
The Ravalli County Economic Development Authority: http://www.rceda.org 375-9416 Betty Davis
The Montana Cooperative Development Center: http://www.mcdc.coop
The Montana Jobs Network http://www.montana-jobs.net and Come Home Montana http://www.comehomemontana.org Julie Foster jmfoster@montana-jobs.net 777-7185
The Montana Community Development Corp. http://www.mtcdc.org