Resource Revival: Creative Recycling With Rural Inspiration

Glendive Chamber of Commerce and Agriculture

Mosier, Oregon

With the Columbia River Gorge as an inspiring backdrop, Graham Bergh blends entrepreneurship with innovative green design through his company, Resource Revival, all from a work-at-home base in rural Mosier, Oregon. Transforming bicycle parts otherwise destined for the landfill into hip home and gift accessories such as picture frames and bottle cap openers, Resource Revival creatively built a business by taking the recycling loop full circle and hand-crafting niche products.

The conception of Resource Revival came one fateful day in 1991 when Graham, who lived in Portland at the time and biked to graduate school in urban studies at Portland State University, got a flat tire. Rather than just replacing the bicycle inner tube and moving on, Graham stopped to examine the rubber material and started thinking that the tube could be material for something else. Then he made some telephone calls to friends at bicycle shops. "I found out the average bike shop throws away about one thousand inner tubes a year and that there are 7,000 bike shops in the United States," says Graham. "I've always been a die hard crusader to take things without a use and give them new life. Old inner tubes gave me my first inspiration to create an actual usable, salable product."

Balancing this new business idea with finishing up his Master's Degree and a day job in recycling education, Graham took three years to research the possibility of Resource Revival, including writing a business plan and creating sample products, garnering feedback from professional designers. In 1994, Graham launched Resource Revival out of his bedroom in Portland where he immediately landed an order for their first product -- "Tube Tie" straps made from recycled bike inner tubes -- from the well-known national outdoor and active gear retailer REI.

Business volume and new product ideas continued to grow over the next ten years, resulting from various artists drawn to Resource Revival's creative recycling mission and Graham's open-ended management style. The designers came up with unique, stylish products like picture frames made from bike chains and Resource Revival's signature product, the bike part bottle opener. In 1997, rave reviews in the New York Times ("Bicycle Parts Are Lovely, Who Knew?"), receipt of an International Design Resource Award and a growing wholesale customer list -- including Nike, The Nature Company and Bloomingdales --enabled the company to take on larger office space and continue to develop new product areas. "From the start, Resource Revival has strived to go beyond just a company that uses recycled materials, but to be a good environmental company. As a result, we minimize our effect on global warming," explains Graham. "For example, our products have almost no packaging compared to other gift products."

Then in 2004, after ten years of growing the business in Portland, Resource Revival relocated to a ten-acre property in Mosier, Oregon, seventy miles east of Portland, in the foothills of magnificent and often snow-covered Mount Hood. "Once I got the business going, I knew I wanted to return to my rural roots," explains Graham, who grew up on a 160 acre Vermont farm in a home-based business environment with his dad working as an architect and his mother as a non-profit consultant. "Looking back, the entrepreneurial spirit was embedded in my family, with my parents raising us with the freedom to explore different ideas and the message to do what you love in a place you want to be," Graham adds.

A Mosier base made strategic business sense for Graham and Resource Revival since it's on the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, with protected public land and minimal development in this stretch leading into Portland. The result is no traffic on an easy one-hour drive for deliveries into Portland when needed and postcard perfect natural inspiration, including waterfalls. "Mosier provides the epitome of modern rural living," Graham explains. "I have this inspiring view of snow capped Mount Hood out my window and starry night skies, yet I'm only an hour from an international airport. I can still pick up high speed Broadband wireless internet access from across the river." Graham and his team revived several old outbuildings on the Mosier farm to create a warehouse, office and workshop space, in addition to Graham's home, which he shares with his four-year old son, Tabor. High insulation to the noisy workshop enables the office to be in a connecting room, but with no sound issues. "I figured I can sit at a desk and work anywhere, why not sit in the middle of nowhere with a view?" shares Graham good-naturedly.

The separate buildings give Resource Revival headquarters a campus-like feel, space for Graham and his business partner, Jim Hassert, to creatively blend and bounce ideas around. While Graham spends much of time at the computer managing the company inventory and customer communications, Jim is often found welding, sanding and grading the hand-crafted products in the shop. "Having accessible outdoor space enables us to weave creativity into the business," explains Jim. "Just stepping outside for fresh air or a pick-up Frisbee game can really turn around your day."

Graham agrees with Jim's assessment. "Having space between these buildings blends work and leisure in a natural setting, encouraging ideas to enfold. I'll work in the office, have lunch, play the guitar, hang outside with Tabor and head into the shop to play around with the seeds of a new product idea," says Graham. Another positive side to a rural-based business for Resource Revival is no interruption to this daily workflow. "Back in Portland, even though we didn't even have a storefront, folks were always stopping in and taking time out of our day, resulting in a productivity drain," explains Graham. "Working rural, we have less distractions and can fully focus on the task at hand."

Graham and Jim share a strong commitment to enhancing local employment opportunities. Resource Revival typically hires about five part-time employees are to assist with warehouse packing, shipping, and production. "Resource Revival employees one percent of Mosier," Graham says with a grin, quantifying his company's impact on a town with a population of 412. "Everyone should have a healthy livelihood, and we want to provide a situation for that without harming the environment."

Given the limited employee candidate pool, a challenge for Resource Revival as a rural-based business is finding the right employees. "I've learned to hire more on personality than experience," Graham confides. "With people working together in close quarters on my property and in my home, the chemistry needs to be positive."

Another on-going challenge for Resource Revival is to continue to provide the same high level of customer service. "We built this business on a more urban perspective of perfection, so we never wanted to now say, 'Oh, we're in Mosier now, so we can't do that,'" explains Graham. This means paying a premium for daily UPS pick-up and occasionally driving last-minute packages down to the UPS pick-up spot at the Mosier Gas station at the bottom of the hill to meet timely customer orders.

"I like these rural routes," explains their UPS delivery person, Ralph, as he creeps up the quarter-mile-long gravel driveway to Resource Revival. Besides taking advantage of high speed Internet communications via satellite, Resource Revival has likewise leveraged the use of cost-effective delivery options available, even in rural areas. "Delivery services such as UPS with daily pick-up enable us to use our time more efficiently and avoid the stress of having to drive to the post office at the last minute to get things mailed," comments Jim.

Resource Revival's business has grown on word of mouth and reputation, not advertising. "For the first couple of years we invested in a trade show presence, particularly gift shows, since fifty percent of our business occurs during the holiday season between October and December," says Graham. Today, with about ninety percent of the revenues coming from wholesale accounts -- including a large account providing bar signage made from bike inner rubes for the Fat Tire Beer brand of New Belgium Brewing -- trade shows became less of a priority. "It was a quality of life decision since trade shows were stressful and caused me to be on the road for chunks of time," explains Graham.

While gift items made from bike parts remain the core business for Resource Revival, a passion for new product lines and ventures keeps the company evolvinng and innovative. Not all new ideas resonate with customers, however. A separate brand of furniture made from reclaimed wood and a line of products from recycled computer parts are examples of ventures that didn't take off. "I'm proud of the fact that we've taken risk and made mistakes. The bicycle products core of our business has always kept us going," adds Graham.

Today, drawing inspiration from the surrounding Mount Hood foothills, Graham thoughtfully ponders the course for Resource Revival, analyzing how to further target and capitalize on the growing market of 95 million Americans who consider themselves "bike enthustiasts" by focusing on gift items using bike parts. "The challenge is to figure out how to keep Resource Revival a fun, profitable company without adding to the global issues of global warming," explains Graham. "If we can have a manufacturing facility that does not pollute, provides creative employment opportunities for people, and ships our quality products in minimal packages that can be recycled, that would define success to me. "