I’ve been glad to have DutchCrafters as a long-time advertiser on this site. I thought it would be nice to hear a bit about how this furniture business got started, and how it works with Plain craftsmen today. Below, DutchCrafters CEO Jim Miller shares answers to five questions about his interactions with the Amish and how his business works. I hope you enjoy it. Special thanks to Milca…
You may remember the story of Amish convert Matthew Secich of the Unity, Maine Amish community. Secich was previously a well-known chef working in upscale restaurants, before becoming a member of the Unity community last autumn, where he lives with his wife Crystal. Now Secich runs Charcuterie, a store specializing in specialty meats and cheeses. He ran into challenges earlier this year when health regulations threatened…
The 20-family Smyrna Mills, Maine Amish community, founded in 1996, is the oldest in a state with relatively few Amish. A recent article in the Bangor Daily News visits a Smyrna Mills Amish business, Sturdi-Bilt Storage Buildings, a maker of portable structures including sheds and tiny homes. You can lean more about it in the short video below. You’ll also notice one unusual element in this community…
As mentioned last week, reader Ed has a batch of photos from the latest Bart Township Fire Company Mud Sale. This first one might surprise you. Ed gives a little background: This was one of the stands set up at the sale; they were selling answering machines, cordless and cell phones. I was approached by an older Amishman (probably around my age) who with a…
In today’s video Amish Cook editor Kevin Williams gives us a peek into Mary’s Bakery in the Hardin County, Ohio Amish community (we recently saw another video from Kevin here of a toy and furniture business in this same community). As Kevin notes, it is a quite small bakery, but one chock full of nice things to eat – homemade cinnamon rolls, cookies such as…
We’ve covered the Amish at Union Grove, North Carolina several times (recently in a post on my last visit in the fall of 2014). In today’s video, Ida, host of Sweets and Beyond, takes us inside the Shiloh General Store, one of several Amish businesses in that small settlement (read more on Shiloh General store including address and hours). Shiloh General Store is just what the name suggests–a…
We’ve “visited” Amish stores selling wooden toys before – recently the Tinker Toy Shop (Ohio), and also the Raber Family Toy Shop (New York). Crafting simple toys is a niche within woodworking, perhaps the most popular Amish industry. Today’s video shows an Amishman in Shipshewana, Indiana, demonstrating the art of woodturning as he creates that classic toy of yesteryear–a wooden top. It’s an eleven minute…
It’s been over five years since my Amish business book (Success Made Simple: An Inside Look At Why Amish Businesses Thrive) was released, and it’s neat to still bump into people who’ve read it or at least heard of it 🙂 I recently met someone in the latter group from Portugal, of all places. In a nutshell, I interviewed 60 Amish entrepreneurs and then distilled their wisdom…
Jim Cates follows up last week’s post on income and material differences in Amish communities with part 2–on the challenges of making money, including the attraction of marketing schemes, and what happens when business deals go bad. Money…Is a Terrible Master The full quote actually goes “Money is in some respects life’s fire: it is a very excellent servant, but a terrible master.” No less an expert than…
On our recent list of five Amish publications you might like, we included the Plain Communities Business Exchange, a monthly paper for and about Amish and other Plain businesses. Today we have an interview with PCBE’s Carl Heule, who leads public relations for the publication. Carl shares what the PCBE is all about, who reads it, and his thoughts on a few of the more unusual Amish…