COLFAX TWP., BENZIE CO. -- Two friends from Benzie County work hard together, when they're not at their regular jobs, to take on the winter sports activity business.
They spend hours making snowshoes out of old tires.
For years, Steve Herkner has been helping his friend Scott Griner with his family's maple syrup business.
That requires them to be in the woods in the Winter to tap the trees from the middle of February until the snow is gone in the Spring.
They say snowshoes make the task a little easier, "When the snow is waist deep and you're tromping through it, it's nice to have snowshoes and that's how we got started," said snowshoe maker Steve Herkner.
Steve and Scott were using snowshoes made out of tires in the woods, but those shoes began to wear out and they were looking for new shoes.
They ran into a snag when they found out the man who made them no longer was, "He was out of business and he said he hadn't done anything with it in 10 years and he didn't want to fix them and he didn't want to make any new ones. So Scott and I talked about it a little and decided maybe we'd try to buy him out," explained Herkner.
That's what they did.
Steve and Scott bought the idea and all of the equipment and formed their own company called S&S Snowshoes.
Their product is aptly named the Treadrite Snowshoe.
It even has a patent, "We didn't actually invent it, so we don't have an inventor's patent. We have a design patent and changed just a couple of things on the buckles," said Griner.
The snowshoes are hand-made in their Benzie County shop and each one takes an hour and a half to make.
Scrap tires are plentiful and there are local suppliers that set aside the type of tires needed to make the shoes, "What we need is the bead that locks on to the rim and we cut that out of each tire and then we start from there," explained Griner.
Scott and Steve are in their second year of making their Treadrite Snowshoes.
They've been marketing them at several trade shows and sell them at the Pantry Shelf convenience store in Grawn.
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