We’ll devote time and energy this fall doing what many of you do — assessing the popularity of our products (in our case, content), determining what’s working and what isn’t, and developing new content that do what most good products do: meet a demand in the marketplace or solve a problem.
Here’s a list of what you liked, the most-visited content pages at www.companyweek.com, January through September this year:
- Column: Walmart says no, but rural Colorado’s apparel manufacturing initiative storms ahead
- Industry-report: Colorado’s bike manufacturers
- Company profile: Kodiak Cakes
- Industry category: Food & Beverage
- Column: Middle-market companies steal the show at the inaugural Colorado Manufacturing Awards
- Industry category: Industrial & Contract Manufacturing
- Industry category: Brewing & Beverage
- Industry category: Lifestyle
- Industry category: Aerospace & Electronics
- Industry category: Built Environment
And here’s a couple takeaways:
Manufacturing companies are interested in each other. We organize and archive company profiles by industry type at CompanyWeek, and this list reflects the popularity of those archives. It’s no surprise, really. It’s the only resource of its kind. But the practical takeaway is that many of the early-stage and middle market companies we profile are interested in how others are managing the challenges, needs, and opportunities outlined each week. Plus there’s business to be had in company-to-company connections.
There’s growing interest in a manufacturing resurgence in lifestyle industries. There was obviously the most interest in a good old-fashioned David-and-Goliath story when brawny Walmart tapped Rural Colorado Apparel Manufacturing a finalist for it’s Manufacturing Innovation Fund then rejected it in favor of more academic exercises, like The Science of Making Old Clothes New Again.
RCAM has since been told no again by Walmart, but here’s guessing that it’s only a matter of time before an authentic manufacturer taps the upstart apparel cut-and-sew resource to make garments — utilizing labor sourced from rural America. RCAM is a sleeping giant, either as an entity or as a concept.
The #2 ranked content on the list was first published over a year-and-a-half ago, in June 2015. Our report on Colorado’s bike manufacturer continues to do well in web searches. Interest is high in U.S.-made gear.
Witness the Food & Beverage juggernaut. We’ve documented Colorado’s food and beverage surge — it’s the fastest growing manufacturing sector in the state. Utah’s Kodiak Cakes is the no. 1 read-profile this year, a result in no small part to its legion of fans active on social media.
But F&B has also been the no. 1 category archive destination this year, a trend that should continue as we shine a light on more regional companies driving a revolution in what we eat and how we distribute it.
Industrial manufacturers continue to be the under-publicized bedrock of sector. If others forget about cutters, benders, machinists, and welders, we won’t, and neither will readers or visitors landing at CompanyWeek.com from web searches.
Finally, on the other end of the spectrum, here’s the best column I wrote this year that nobody read. Can’t win ’em all.
Bart Taylor is publisher of CompanyWeek. Reach him at btaylor@companyweek.com.
