Glacierview sales and service adapts to changing market: When the spruce bark beetle took out a Kenai Peninsula company's logging trees, owners reacted and still made a profit.

• Author: Pardes, Joan
• Position: Brief Article

Doing business in Alaska is always a logistical juggling act, but running a small business in rural Alaska can be an outright challenge. For many rural-based businesses, the key to success hinges not only on how the company deals with its logistical problems but also in its ability to adapt to an ever-changing business environment.

For Lloyd Schade, manager of the family owned Glacierview Sales and Service, located outside of Homer on the Kenai Peninsula, the challenge of running a successful small business in Alaska is all in a day's work.

"It's all about necessity," said Schade. "Most of the stuff we've done over the years, we wouldn't have even thought of-nevertheless put into action-if it hadn't become a necessity. That's Alaska and that's what makes it fun."

Although no one would call the spruce bark beetle plague of the 1990s fun, Schade found several ways to guide his company through the disaster, including selling tree waste as packaged firewood to stores in the Anchorage area.

"Ninety-five percent of our trees on more than 600 acres were killed. It was a mess and getting rid of the waste was getting pretty costly," Schade said. "I was talking with my dad who was 89 at the time and always had a project going on. We came up with this little project for my folks to split and package firewood for the fireplace.

"We had all the equipment to handle the operation, except a wrapping machine, which we purchased in 1999 and the operation started," explained Schade. "With a good, clean product wrapped properly with bar code identification and at about a dollar a bundle wholesale below outside suppliers, we started to move our waste product."

Packaged as Kachemak Firewood, the American Log of Alaska, the product is a big seller at Home Depot in Anchorage, according to Andrew Pelletier, department head of the garden section.

"People love the product. It's packaged well and tight and with a handle. They just pick it up and carry it out the door. In the summer, sales pick up considerably when people are heading out to cabins or fishing. It's the only firewood we sell and we, of course, like having the Alaska product in the store," said Pelletier. The firewood is positioned right in front of the main door where people can see it as they come and go.

Created in 1979, Glacierview Sales and Service was formed to sell supplies and rent equipment to the people of its community to help build...