Key Tronic Corp. had record quarterly revenue for the first quarter of fiscal 2013. The Spokane Valley contract manufacturer has been on a slow and steady roll. It keeps winning customers and hanging onto their business. Total quarterly revenue came to $97.5 million, up 40…
Late notice, but something worth considering this afternoon. Spokane Area Workforce Development Council, plus the CleenNW trade group and Launchpad INW are hosting a community discussion this afternoon from 3 to 6 p.m. at the Lincoln Center, 1316 N. Lincoln. The focus will be on…
The newsy part of last Saturday's business story on Spokane Industries was the report of a record harvest for grapes in Washington state. According to Erica Waliser of the Washington State Wine Commission, 2012 will break the harvest record: 190,000 tons of grapes will be…
Downtown Spokane bicycle shop Two Wheel Transit Bicycles is moving in November to a new retail store in the South Perry Street district. The move from 1405 W. First Ave. to about 5,000 square feet at 817 S. Perry, in the northern portion of the…
So what really kept the Spokane Fox Affiliate off DirecTV for about nine weeks? One story running today in the SR said it came down to a contractual dispute over money. Jon Rand, an executive with Northwest Broadcasting, parent firm of KAYU-Fox 28, said that…
The Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission (UTC) on Thursday approved requests by the state’s four investor-owned natural gas companies, including Avista Utilities, to reduce heating rates for customers beginning Nov. 1. Natural gas companies in Washington are required to adjust rates periodically to reflect changes…
Liberty Lake-based STCU is ranked 16th-best place to work in Fortune magazine’s rankings of medium-sized U.S. companies. STCU is the third-largest credit union in Washington and the largest credit union in the Inland Northwest. It has 110,000 members with branches in Eastern Washington and North…
Spokane's Red Lion Hotels Corp. said Wednesday it's closed a $13 million sale of its Red Lion Hotel Denver Southeast. This past August the publicly traded hospitality company announced it had entered an agreement with the likely buyer. Wednesday's announcement identified the buyer: Pandey Hotel…
The company that closed C.I. Shenanigans said it wants to reopen in Spokane but is having trouble finding the right spot. RAM International CEO Jeff Iverson said Spokane’s been a good market for Shenanigans, which operated for 32 years near the Spokane River just north…
Tuesday's state number for Spokane County unemployment led to a story that noted September's 8.2 percent is the lowest for this area since 2009. Specifically, since March 2009. In that month the rate was 8.6 percent. Since then, the rates all were in the high…
You can still start that company this year, if you sharpen your venture capital pitch. Connect Northwest will help you sharpen the pitch at its next public meeting, from 2:30 to 5 p.m. Tuesday Oct. 30, at the McKinstry Innovation Center, on the east side…
Needless to say, the story about Avista Corp. offering buyouts to most of its workers, which ran online Tuesday, caught lots of attention. It engendered dozens of comments as well, covering the usual spectrum. In case you want to know how generous (or not) the…
Spokane's Fruci and Associates accounting firm has purchased MartinelliMick PLLC, one of its Spokane financial services competitors. MartinelliMick will become a subsidiary of Fruci and Associates, a release noted. Fruci has been in the Spokane area for more than 70 years, working from offices in…
The unemployment rate in Idaho fell to 7.1 percent in September, the lowest rate since May 2009 and down from 7.4 percent in August. But the state also has seen its labor force shrink four straight months, including the first August-September decline since the 1986…
View Larger Map A little extra information for you, related to Thursday's news story about the Pearson Packaging acquisition of LA-based Moen Industries. While the terms of the purchase are not disclosed, the overall sales figures for Pearson and Moen are worth noting. In 2011…
It was a challenge putting together today's news story, on page A1, about the incentives offered to businesses or homeowners installing solar energy panels. A challenge because there's a good deal of variety and complexity among the federal and state incentives. One very helpful website…
The first Spokane Total Wine & More retail store will open Nov. 2, the Maryland-based company announced. The business will move into the 25,000-square foot building at 9980 N. Newport Highway last used by Borders Books, which closed in 2010. Since state voters approved an…
We received the following release about film crews coming to North Idaho's Silverwood Theme Park to shoot footage for a 2013 Halloween special: North of Coeur d'Alene, ID – The Travel Channel will be filming portions of Scarywood throughout Silverwood Theme Park on Wednesday, Oct.…
This should be, if all goes well, our final post related to Mean Hamster Software, and its recent demise. We wrote about it three weeks ago, highlighting the issues that forced the tech company's CEO, John Swiderski, to shut it down. Last week we posted…
Rosa Pizza owner Brad Barsness said he plans to open his first Spokane pizza place in four to six weeks. Barsness has operated two pizza take-out-or-deliver places in Cheney and in Airway Heights. The first Spokane Rosa Pizza is going into 1,300 square feet at…
John Swiderski, the Deer Park business man who started and recently had to shut down Mean Hamster Software, has taken a job in Seattle with an online gaming company. We wrote about Swiderski and the Mean Hamster demise last month. In a world of apps,…
Those folks who battled to save the old and historic Jensen Byrd Building had their main victory last month when Campus Advantage decided to fold up and dropped plans to tear the building down. The company had signed an agreement in late 2010 with WSU…
Earlier this week Seattle-based Tully's Coffee announced it's going to file bankruptcy and reorganize to cut operating expenses. Spokane has three area Tully's coffee shops: Browne's Addition, South Hill (on 29th) and on 104 S. Freya. Heidi Happonen, a spokeswoman, said the reorganization will not…
Ready for a little more Walmart? Wal-Mart Stores will open its second Spokane Valley location on Oct. 17. That's next Wednesday. The new store, on East Sprague, is east west of the Costco store on Sprague. It plans to have roughly 350 full- and part-time…
Verizon Wireless has announced its expanding its 4G LTE network in Spokane. An announcement noted that the Spokane market is part of 37 cities who will now have even-wider coverage of high-speed LTE (long term evolution) connectivity. It also announced it's introducing 4G LTE service…