Looking Glass Printing specializes in collectable glassware
Angie Breneman: runs pint glasses through a cylindrical printer at Looking Glass Printing near Florence recently. After the printing, the glasses are put through a continuous-feed kiln that fuses print and glass together. Photo by Tom Bauer/Missoulian
By TIMOTHY ALEX AKIMOFF of the Missoulian
FLORENCE - It’s not anywhere near the rust belt, that manufacturing mecca that runs from the mid-Atlantic to the mid-West.
It’s not even among the manufacturing centers of Montana.
In fact, if you mention manufacturing in Florence, most people just laugh.
But there is a product coming out of the north Bitterroot Valley that has so far been available to Montanans only from places like California, Kansas and Arkansas.
It is the arduous, but rewarding process of glass printing.
“I grew up in Havre,” said Robin Christoperson, owner of Looking Glass Printing in Florence. “I left some years ago to go out and I got into large-format printing.”
An affinity for collectable pint glasses, those decorated pub pounders popular with tourists and locals alike gave Chrstopherson an idea.
“I did some research here to find out how many brewers there are in this state,” he said.
Then, on a vacation to Yellowstone National Park, Christopherson found Wolfpack Brewing Company.
“I talked to a lady there and asked her where she got her glass from,” he said. “She said it came from Kansas City, which is a freight issue. She was paying more for the freight than she was for the glass.”
It only was a matter of time after that.
“I told my wife - she’s from Iowa - ‘do you want to move back to Montana?’”
“She said, ‘No way,” Christopherson said. “I’ve got three boys, and I wanted to raise my kids in a small town.”
Small town is what Christopherson got, but Rust Belt manufacturing is what he was shooting for.
“We don’t have much manufacturing in Montana to speak of,” Christopherson said. “But this is just the tip of the ice berg for us in terms of what we can do.”
Looking Glass Printing started nearly four years ago in a shop at the family’s home on Hidden Valley Road.
Besides supplying the 20-plus breweries in the state with printed pint glass wear to the tune of 100,000 pint glass this year and 40,000 growlers, Christopherson has branched into embroidered goods, printed T-shirts, coozies and just about any odd-shaped item you could want to put your logo on.
And growth means stretching well beyond the 2,400 sq. ft. garage they’re in now to a 5,000 sq. ft. facility in Florence.
“We’ve got six full-time employees,” Christopherson said. “I’d like to create a total of 10 positions.”
Robin, and his wife Barbra Christopherson are into local employment in a big way, expanding from just one employee, Angie Breneman, who’s been with the company for three years, to their current lineup.
“We really want to make this payoff for the community,” Robin Christopherson said.
But why Florence?
“I think in the beginning it was a financial thing,” Robin Christpherson said. “We kept hearing that taxes were a little higher in Missoula, and of course our family was down here.”
Barbra Christopherson said that real estate is cheaper in Ravalli County than in Missoula County, but they both recognize the potential incentive of moving to Missoula.
“I think if we did it all over again we’d consider starting it in Missoula,” Robin Christopherson said. “But we’re settled in here, we’ve got a great place, and the key is that we’re pure manufacturing, we don’t need a store front.”
Manufacturing with a view.
The pictureque setting for the current Looking Glass Printing location is easy on the eyes, but a partnership with the Montana Economic Division and a local bank in Florence are helping to move the business into a bigger location with more possibility for local jobs.
“If we create so many local jobs, they give us benefits in lending and rates,” Robin Christopherson said.
On a common day the shop off Hidden Valley Road hums with energy workers run huge numbers of glasses through the printer and then the large-capacity drier.
But Monday was no a normal day.
Christopherson recently agreed to do the printing for all the Town Pumps across Montana.
Angie Breneman, the designated printer, works off of two boxes full of bare pint glasses.
She grabs one, holds it up to the printer, the unit comes down and runs the print across the glass.
As quick as she has one done, another takes its place and she deftly replaces the printed glass in the boxes while simultaneously grabbing a bare glass.
“You going to do 5,000 tomorrow,” Christopherson jokes with her as she leaves for the day.
“I did over 5,000 today,” she replies.
Griz mania gear is visible all over the shop, from T-shirts to embroidered head bands and printed camping coffee mugs.
“We started with the breweries,” Christopherson said. “They are our bread and butter.”
A huge growth in growler sales at traditional pubs has encouraged some restaurant chains to follow suite.
MacKenzie River Pizza Co. soon will offer growlers to go, and Looking Glass will be printing them.
“The nice thing is they’re just down in Florence,” said Al Pils, tap room managed at the Kettlehouse Brewing Co. “You get to see a face associated with your order.”
Pils said Kettlehouse use to order from a company in Kansas City.
“It felt better for us trying to accomplish and achieve a local business a model, do the local thing.”
Shipping, or the lack thereof, is the biggest deal for local breweries.
“Typically the local guys are a little higher priced, but we save like five-fold on shipping,” Pils said.
Thorsten Geuer, the brewer at Bayern Brewing, said the tap room orders pint glasses and other materials from Looking Glass, and in a time where the cost raw materials for beer has sky rocketed, saving money on shipping glass is a huge benefit.
“We’re at the base of what we can do here,” Robin Christopherson said. “Our first two or three years we’ve doubled every year.”
It doesn’t make the Rust Belt out of the Bitterroot Valley, but for local businesses with an ultra-local mentality, a bit of local manufacturing is a boon for the area, surrounding states, and even Canada, where Robin and Barbra Christopherson are starting to sell printed pint glasses and growlers to breweries in several provinces.
“What I did is brought this here,” Robin Christopherson said. “And now people can come directly to the source rather than going out of state.”
Reporter Timothy Alex Akimoff can be reached at 523-5246 or tim.akimoff@lee.net.
