A new west code

A new west code

Let Our People Go Skiing

Let Our People Go Skiing

It's one of six lines in the Code of the New West — the tenets that shape how we build this company. Let our people go skiing. It doesn't mean what it sounds like, not exactly. It means the Tetons are right outside the door, and a job here shouldn't cost you the reason you live in this valley in the first place. Ski, climb, fish, run the river — whatever gets you outside, we'd rather you go do it than watch the clock.

It's easy to write a line like that down. It's harder to build a company where it's actually true. So instead of telling you what it means, we'll show you — through Arik Miller, one of the makers who lives it.

That's the tenet, working exactly as intended. Not a perk. Not a slogan on a shirt — though Arik happens to have one of those too. A genuine trade: the company gets a maker who comes back to the anvil with something to say, and Arik gets a Saturday on the river before he ever picks up a hammer again on Monday.

You can see the trade in his latest piece. Arik's newest custom build is a 7" Nakiri in 1084/15N20 Damascus, with a Hawaiian koa handle and a bolster hand-inlaid with fine silver, cut from a wrought iron wagon wheel rim forged over a century ago. Seventy hours of hand work went into it — the forge side of the same man who spends his weekends reading whitewater.

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