How the Mother Earth News Ruined My Life By Makin' Me Successful, Famous and Rich

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(Well, at least successful and famous)

These drawings--based on a much longer series of color photographs that in MOTHER NO. 41--show how the Sticker really "chews'em up" And ,improved model (see photograph) is, if anything, even better!

What happens if you start a small business which makes a product (a low-cost, high-capacity log splitter) designed to help people live simpler, more self-sufficient lives?

Well, I can tell you what happens if that product suddenly appears on the cover of THE MOTHER EARTH NEWS©. You end up dealing with seven lawyers, three CPA's, one computer, and forty employees!

Taos Equipment was formed a little over two years ago in a two-car adobe garage 14 miles south of Taos, New Mexico. The company now operates out of 40,000 square feet (including a new plant in Albuquerque), and we're working with a very much larger corporation (Arnold Industries of Toledo, Ohio) that provides the technical, financial, and marketing support we need to manufacture and sell our log splitter throughout the world.

WE BEGAN AS DROPOUT FIREWOOD DEALERS

We really didn't expect all this to happen. My partner, Larry Krogness, and I were both dropout firewood dealers when we started the business. He had been a machinist and mechanic. I had been a college English teacher and a journalist. We had both moved to Taos for the usual reasons: We wanted to live simpler, more self-sufficient lives.

We began our manufacturing operation as an offshoot of our firewood business when we started making and selling very expensive hydraulic log splitters. Our production equipment consisted of some hand tools and a steel cut-off saw bought on credit. We did not indulge in any careful planning . . . and so . . . . we immediately . . . . . began to lose money . . . . . . with great simplicity and self-sufficiency.

IT'S ALL MOTHER'S FAULT!

Then, early last year, we started producing The Stickler . . . an inexpensive (compared to the hydraulic splitters-including our own-on the market) and very effective log splitter that almost anyone could afford to buy and operate. And even more important, the editors of THE MOTHER EARTH NEWS featured our new splitter on the cover of the September-October 1976 issue of the magazine (MOTHER NO. 41).

Largely as a result of that single cover story, we now operate so much manufacturing equipment that, if we turn it all on at once, we risk dimming the lights at the local junior high school.

It's all MOTHER's fault! The Stickler alone made no dramatic changes in our business or in our way of life. We produced and sold Sticklers for eight months prior to MOTHER's article with only modest success. By "modest success" I mean that during August 1976the last (and most successful) of those eight months -we sold something over 200 of the units on-for the first time-a just-slightlybetter-than-break-even basis.

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