Clif Burnette, President: Alaska Textiles.

• Author: Slaten, Russ
• Position: View from the Top

Were it not for his grandfather's funeral, Clif Burnette would have been born in Alaska. His family came to the state before he was born in the early 50s, from Los Angeles. His dad was an Air Traffic Controller, and Alaska was a great place for a young man to start a career (Burnette thinks it still is). He has three sisters and a brother; his brother and younger sister were both born in Bethel, as he would have been. He lived in Bethel, Nome, Tanana, and Kodiak, where he spent most of his youth. His father retired from the Federal Aviation Administration in 1975 and moved the family to Tacoma, Washington. Burnette always came back in the summers to work in the canaries and later to commercial fish, eventually settling back in Alaska.

ABOVE AND BEYOND: I was drawn to Alaska Textiles because of the opportunities I saw when I walked through the door. After running the apparel department for Alaska Commercial Company in Barrow, I came to Alaska Textiles, a company with eight employees and very little direction. I felt if we could define our direction and create new practices that take care of our customers with "Above and Beyond Customer Service," we could be a very successful company. Today we have twenty employees in Anchorage, sixty or so in our manufacturing plant in Edmonton, Kentucky, and sell around the world from our Anchorage Headquarters.

SECRETS TO SUCCESS: When I was a young up and coming businessman, I was fortunate to have a mentor by the name of Bernie Brotman. With eighteen young men's clothing stores in Washington state at the time, Brotman was not only an innovator, but a teacher. He taught me how to build a business with the strong values of trust, integrity, respect, and adaptability. He also made sure that we had our priorities straight: "Take care of your health first, family second, and business third, in that order." Brotman came up with the...