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Old 03-18-2009, 07:28 PM
 
21 posts, read 71,101 times
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I will be graduating from college next spring and would love to live in a small town somewhere in western Washington. I'm considering starting my own business but haven't been able to think of any good business ideas. What types of businesses would do well in smaller towns in western Washington? Any ideas of new businesses that are needed or would be welcomed? Thanks.
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Old 03-21-2009, 09:38 PM
 
1 posts, read 2,284 times
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Default business in peninsula area

hi there,

i lived in port ludlow, port townsend area after leaving the us air force in 1990. I moved in with folks while i went back to school in port ludlow, roughly between hood canal bridge and port townsend. school was electronics/science/mathematics in Bremerton, so i drove across hood canal bridge EVERY week day for about 3 years. Over that time, i saw the changes occur. First, i could keep my brights on almost all the the time while on the peninsula, then toggle them once across the bridge to kitsap county.

i noticed over that time, growth really was taking off; this was 90,91,92;
let's look at cities and their primary businesses;

1. port townsend - up until a few years ago, the pulp and paper mill was one of the primary businesses in port townsend. some of the population are military, navy. There is a base nearby on one of the islands; it is a ammo dump for all navy ships coming into the puget sound. So port townsend, hippy hangout, a lot of volvo cars with stickers that says 'we're all here because we're not all there!" the arts is very big there. they have the wooden boat show there every year, so boating, and building boats is a large part of the industry near town.

2. sequim - traditionally, farmer town, my dad likes to call sequim the 'banana belt' because the weather systems from the west and from the south converge there(the bottom of the clouds looks like a straight line).
retirement community is big there. there are strawberry fields which i have gone to pick several times with my family there. good hiking around sequim, on the beach, check out the Dungeoness spit. this is a very long and narrow beach that goes out to a lighthouse, that apparently people can rent out, but they have to perform lighthouse duties too!(which would be kind of cool).

3. port angeles - traditional timber town, pulp mill. haven't spent much time there except for taking the ferry over to Victoria on Vancouver Island. there is a large amount of people who both take cars/and walk on the ferry on this route that either live on peninsula or elsewhere. so businesses like the restaurants, arts, and those kind of things probably also are there.

my dad did some consulting back in early 90s, he's a retired forester who at that time was supervising tree planters(mexican immigrants he said). so he would pick up the seedling truck and meet with the planters at various locations around the peninsula; one of these was on the western slope of the peninsula. obviously there is no work on that side of the peninsula, except for places like aberdeen and hoquim on the ocean.

the only other thing that i can think of is look for state jobs in these areas;
department of wildlife, department of fisheries, department of transportation, ect, ect.
some of the jobs may be infrastructure support jobs like; electrician, office worker, or other jobs that you can find anywhere like janitor.

with the above in mind, i would go to the WA state government web page, and check out the employment statistics for peninsula.


after living there, i transferred up to Bellingham for my 4 year electronic engineering degree. i graduated back in 94. it took me 2 years to find work in my field. until i got it, i was moving furniture, doing part time work. at that time the electronics industry was in the dumps.

finally for me, after several years, it has paid off; all the hard work. so this first job was in totem lake for Zetron, where i was test engineer for 8 years, then laid off from there. i spent following 2 years learning microsoft.net programming; cross trained into software programmer. then another 2 years at MAckie in woodenville; they make mixer boards/speakers, a few months at a company downtown seattle called coco communications, where i designed my first semi-automated test system, 2 years at T-Mobile where i designed many test systems, and now, where i have been a month, as manufacturing test engineer at Microsoft Xbox. i provide technical background to the microsoft folks as to evaluating manufacturing contractors production plans and i build automated test systems for microsoft product that will be used over in china and taiwan. .

so, that's it about me since about 1990.

how about you. what kind of work do you like to do friend?

have a good day.

Ron in Everett.
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Old 03-22-2009, 12:25 PM
 
Location: PORT ANGELES, WA
806 posts, read 2,332,709 times
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I live in Port Angeles and we could REALLY use a "FUN" place to meet and eat. The restaurants here are bad. Either they are perfect for a party of adults (wine, dinner, etc.) or they are just greasy spoons. What about people with families! What about some pinball and appetizers, big screens for games, chicken wings and music!! (you have to go clear out to silverdale for that kinda place)
There would be plenty of applicants. There's some really fun people here begging for a good place to go. (p.s. NOT Applebees!)
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