Gillison's Variety Fabrication has been around since 1977 and has been family owned since then.
Read more: Local, Agriculture
With all of the bad economic news we hear every day, it would nice to hear something positive.
There's a business headquartered in Benzonia that continues to thrive in these tough economic times because of the niche markets it serves. "We build self-propelled man-lifts called our "orbit lifts" for custom maintenance pruning," said Matt Gillison. And in the case of the Ministry of Forests and Range in the Canadian Province of British Columbia, they're being used to pick pine cones so they can grow their own seedlings. "We build a lot of different custom hedging equipment...pretty much any application," said Gillison.
Gillison's Variety Fabrication has been around since 1977 and has been family owned since then. It got it's start when engineers from Michigan State University asked Matt's dad, ron, to create a hedger for the safer pruning of trees.
Things have going full-board since then as Gillison's developed more and more machinery to be used in fruit and nut orchards. Matt Gillison said, "We build cherry harvesting equipment...double incline harvester for cherries throughout Michigan and we have some in Washington State. We build tree grapples for easy removal of downed trees in orchards."
In its beginnings, Gillison's did the lion's share of its business locally, but now about 80 percent of what they make is sent out of state and in some cases overseas. "We do a lot of business throughout the West Coast, Oregon, California and the the Southeast...Georgia," said Gillison.
That's not to say that Gillison's doesn't do a lot of business here in Northern Michigan. They say their sales are doing very well in the area. "Local sales this past year have been very good actually compared to what you might think...sprayers, tractors were all quite well this year," said Gillison.
And despite what's happening in many sectors of the economy, Gillisons says they really haven't been affected by the recession. "The last couple of years have been really good here, but we're spread out and we have such niche markets that we're dealing in. I don't think we feel it like the automotive per se," said Gillison.
For more information on Gillison's Variety Fabrication, click here.
