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CEO Insights Seminar on September 13th at the RiverSide Playhouse

- Stemilt President West Mathison Speaking - 

About West:

West Mathison, 34, has served as the president of Stemilt Growers since 2005. The Mathison family has owned and operated Stemilt, a leading tree fruit growing, packing, and shipping company based in Wenatchee, WA since 1964.

West graduated from the University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, WA in 2000 and has worked in management at Stemilt since 2002. Under West’s leadership, Stemilt has evolved into the nation’s largest supplier of sweet cherries and organic tree fruits.

Speaking Topics:

• Leadership;
  in a family business what is the most important leadership characteristic?
  Who teaches leadership?
• Supply Chain;
  taking something with a 100 variables and making systems out of chaos.
• Strategy;
  sorting out the correct path in a maze of many trails.

Details

Date:  Tuesday, Sept. 13th

Time:  4pm – 5:30 pm

Location:  The RiverSide Playhouse, 233 North Wenatchee Avenue

Cost: $15 (net proceeds go to Wenatchee High Future Business Leaders of America)

REGISTER HERE

Speaker:  West Mathison
Date & Time:  September 13th, 4:00 – 5:30pm
Price:  $15 (net proceeds go to local charity)
Location:  The Riverside Playhouse (map)

West Mathison, 34, has served as the president of Stemilt Growers since 2005. The Mathison family has owned and operated Stemilt, a leading tree fruit growing, packing, and shipping company based in Wenatchee, WA since 1964.

West graduated from the University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, WA in 2000 and has worked in management at Stemilt since 2002. Under West’s leadership, Stemilt has evolved into the nation’s largest supplier of sweet cherries and organic tree fruits. Stemilt is one of the largest employers in the Wenatchee Valley, with 1300 year-round employees and upwards of 2,500 during cherry season. Stemilt operates four fruit packing facilities in Washington, and one in Stockton, California.

Stemilt is a leader in the fruit industry, supplying national and regional retail chains in the U.S., as well as export markets around the world with apples, pears, cherries, and stone fruits. Stemilt has over $500 million in sales annually.

As President, West is focused on Stemilt’s mission statement of generating financial returns to the land by building consumer demand.

West will be speaking on:

• Leadership; in a family business what is the most important leadership characteristic?  Who teaches leadership?
• Supply Chain; taking something with a 100 variables and making systems out of chaos.
• Strategy; sorting out the correct path in a maze of many trails.

To Register:

 This ran last month in the Wenatchee Business Journal – look for Part 3 in the March edition.

Last month I laid out how the non-techy led Chamber came to embrace social media as a tool we needed to use.  This month I would like to explain how we use it at the Chamber.

 We opened two twitter accounts for the Chamber in June of 2009.  I chose twitter to start with because it seemed the simplest.  I still think this was a good strategy – you don’t need to sink or swim with social media on day 1.  We have added a Facebook page in recent months (Wenatchee Valley Chamber) but I will focus my comments on how we have used twitter because that is the platform we have the most experience with. 

 Twitter is a free micro-blogging service.  Twitter has nearly 200 million users, although the majority does not send out their own messages (tweets).  Rather, they use it to follow people and organizations they are interested in.  That is consistent with my experience – many people have accounts but Read More »

From December 1 to December 10, order your Holiday Gift Boxes!
In conjunction with Stemilt Bountiful Fruit Store, the Chamber is proud to bring you premium apple and pear gift boxes for the Holiday Season.

These elegant, single-layer, black boxes make GREAT and HEALTHY locally-purchased thank you gifts for clients and employees. Think about it: one simple order and all your holiday shopping is done and packaged! Also, a portion of each purchase goes to support the Chamber!

Your selections this year include top-quality
Red Delicious Apples,
Gala Apples
Honeycrisp Apples and
Bartlett Pears.

Each box weighs 10 lbs and contains 20 pieces of fruit.

You have two purchasing options: either local pick up or Fed-Ex Shipping (so you can send our delicious apples to relatives in those other states that aren’t blessed with our fresh fruit).

For local pick-up on December 16, The Red Delicious, Galas and Bartletts are available for $15 per box, and the Honeycrisps are available for $20. The pick-up station will be at Comfort Inn, 815 N Wenatchee Ave, Wenatchee, for 8:00 AM to 2:00 PM. If you order ten or more boxes, we will deliver them to you!

To ship a boxof 12 pieces of fruit (either Red Delicious, Galas or Bartletts) costs $39.99 or $44.99 for Honeycrisps. The price including 2 day Fed-Ex shipping and the cost of the fruit. Fruit is shipped out of December 20 and arrives on December 22:please be sure to let the recipient know he or she will be receiving fresh fruit on that date.

TO ORDER YOUR GIFT BOXES:
Contact the Chamber at (509)662-2116, email HERE
or use the Apple and Pears Flyer and send it back to the Chamber. Non-members must include payment with submission of order form.

Sponsored by Stemilt

In May 2010, as a part of our Economic Indicators Series, the Chamber hosted a panel discussion forecasting the agriculture outlook for 2010.  The panel consisted of the following participants:

West Mathison, Stemilt;
Karen Wade, Fielding Hills;
Bruce Grimm, Washington State Horticulture and Marketing Association.

Working with NCW Economic Development District, the forum was simultaneously cast as a webinar. Today, you can view the event as it happened in May.

Thanks again to Stemilt for their support of this program.