Wyoming has attracted unique manufacturing and business concerns with its favorable cost structure and access to transportation networks, combining to create a positive force in Wyoming economic development.

For the owners of Little Bits Inc., it took their daughter bringing home a white cat to launch the Buffalo business owned by Joseph and Shelly St. Pierre.

The retired couple — Joseph a veteran and Shelly from manufacturing and accounting — named the white ball of fur Little Bit and started a kitty litter company in his name three years ago.

“When we began this business, we wanted to make a product that would be healthy for our cat and the consumer that also kills odors and would be environmentally friendly,” Joseph says.

From Earth to Earth

A soft economy almost meant the end of Little Bits Inc., but an oil spill, a little help and Shelly’s penchant for money management soon turned the cat litter manufacturer into LBI, a developer of toxic substance bioremediation products.

“One day we had a spill of oil in the plant, and we cleaned it up with our litter,” he says. “From that point on, we started looking at manufacturing an environmentally friendly spill absorbent. It exploded and moved us in a new direction, helping us to grow into a viable and much-needed industry.”

Marketed under the names of DualZorb, PondZorb, DrainZorb, S.N.A.P.O and AcidZorb, the patent-pending products are made completely of beetle-kill lodge pole pines. Company research shows that they absorb petroleum hydrocarbons, remediate contaminated soils on site, suppress hazardous fumes and are 100 percent biodegradable.

“We take a product that would have rotted in the forest, and now we are ‘cleaning the environment with the environment,'” Joe says, quoting LBI’s slogan. “It’s 100 percent green and can be disposed of without special handling.”

Duration, the cat litter, is still part of the product line, a green litter that works so well it can be used as garden mulch after the cat has finished with it.

In Casper, Defense Technology makes so-called less-than-lethal products, including gas canisters, chemical grenades and rubber bullets for self defense for the police and military markets. In Freedom, Freedom Arms manufacturers a variety of revolvers and accessories.

Byan Systems in Lusk develops and makes hydraulic gate components used for commercial and residential applications. Its products are in place in the gates in front of the White House. And in a state known for its open spaces and outdoor splendor, it's no surprise to find Riverton-based Brunton, which makes a range of of outdoor products, from cooking gear, to compasses, binoculars and portable power devices.

Bridging the Gap

In 2008, Wyoming's economic development got another boost from Mike Lilygren, Brendon Weaver and Cade Maestas, who combined their retail and manufacturing backgrounds with their love of the outdoors to form Lander-based Bridge Outdoors, a wholesaler and product developer of outerwear, outdoor equipment and accessories geared toward the smaller retailer.

“In our experience in the industry, we had seen the major brands focusing on the big-box stores,” explains Lilygren. “They were cutting prices and building products specifically for them and pushing the small retailers to the side. We realized with our expertise we could work with the small independents and help them get their names on their products.”

Customers range in size from one store up to 12 or 14 in a small chain. “We develop and design the products and work with Asian factories,” he says. “Let’s say we do a sleeping bag. One small store in Alaska can buy 10 of those sleeping bags, whereas one of our larger groups could buy 100 of them. We combine those orders and bring them together with different logos.”

Why Lander? “We wanted to raise our families here and we came up with a way to make that happen,” Lilygren says. “I grew up as an Army brat and I’ve lived lots of places, but Wyoming appeals to me because of its pace and people. From a business standpoint, the tax structure works well with no individual or corporate income tax, shipping costs are contained and the work ethic is very strong.”

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Soda, anyone?

Most folks may not know what trona is, but they are very familiar with what it can become: baking soda.

Church & Dwight, one of the nation’s oldest manufacturing companies, has been mining and manufacturing Sweetwater County’s seemingly endless Green River Basin trona deposits since 1967 under the iconic Arm & Hammer label, employing almost 200 people in a 500,000-square-foot facility. The sodium bicarbonate produced from this raw material is used in a number of household products, including laundry detergent, kitty litter and carpet deodorizer.

With five area manufacturers, the trona industry has become a major player in Wyoming economic development base. Experts predict that the Green River basin is large enough to meet the entire world’s needs for soda ash and sodium bicarbonate for thousands of years.

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A Real Shocker

It can take a minimum of 8,000 hours of apprenticeship training and four years of classroom time to become a licensed journeyman electrician, and since 1965, hundreds of Wyoming workers have been certified as such through the Wyoming Electrical Joint Apprenticeship and Training Program.

The program is a cooperative training effort between the National Electrical Contractors Association (NECA) and locals of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), whose jurisdictions cover all of Wyoming. Go to wyojatc.org for more.