Agave Denim: Ridgefield’s fashion star

It may not scream “land of high fashion” to you. After all, with its lush green meadows and colorful autumn trees, Ridgefield has more farms within its city limits than it does clothing boutiques.

Despite the lack of five-star restaurants and fashion runways, designer apparel company Agave Denim happily calls Ridgefield home. The company moved to north Clark County after a two-year stint in Vancouver. Before that, it was in Santa Monica, California, where the company was founded in 2002.

“We love it here,” says founder Jeff Shafer. “It’s a great juxtaposition to the Los Angeles life.”

Shafer calls it a juxtaposition because Agave didn’t cut all of its ties to Southern California. The company is headquartered in Ridgefield and does its design work here, but manufacturing is done out of a Los Angeles production facility.

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Collaring the market

Animal lovers Dennis Ungureanu and Matthew Jiganie wanted to fulfill the dream of owning their own business while promoting the benefits of all-natural pet food. They made that dream a reality when Family Pet Supplies opened approximately one year ago along East Fourth Plain Boulevard in Vancouver.

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Cream and Sugar Café: Serving up success

Turning a failing eatery around is a task famously left to the likes of Gordon Ramsey. WSU Vancouver students Joseph Nutting and Joél Nehm accomplished this without the help of a celebrity chef – and they did it in the middle of a recession, while attending college.

These roadblocks didn’t seem to deter the partners from “jumping in head first,” according to Nutting, and Cream and Sugar Café is the product of that courage.

Nutting purchased the 300-square-foot space in the Vancouver Center in August 2008. The café’s name appears to be the only remnant of the business it used to be.

“It wasn’t a very busy space,” Nutting recalled. “Two or three months into it, we had already tripled what the previous owner was doing on a daily basis. It didn’t take much. It was just product quality and customer service.”

Despite the name, Cream and Sugar is now known for its sandwiches. These are hand-made by the partners, who create new specials every week.

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Big Al’s: Going strong, growing fast, giving back

Bowling, big-screen TVs, dining, an arcade – all good, clean family fun. That’s the focus of Big Al’s, which in August opened their third location in the Pacific Northwest. The first location opened here in Vancouver in 2006. In 2010, a second location opened in the Beaverton area. This August, a third Big Al’s opened in Meridian, Idaho, between Boise and Nampa.

“We’ve been going pretty strong over the last six years,” said Todd Moore, chief operating officer for Kirkwood and Kirkwood, the holding company that owns Big Al’s. Currently, the company employs about 125 people in Vancouver, 150 in Beaverton, and about 200 in Meridian.

The Beaverton location, said Moore, had “an incredible honeymoon year, and a really strong year two,” and they have high expectations for the Meridian location.

“Meridian is one of the fastest growing cities in the West and is rated in the top 100 cities to raise a family,” said Moore.

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