When Doug Knippel goes to work, he gets dirty.
As owner of Camas-based Northwest Redworms, Knippel spends 20 hours to 40 hours a week breeding, selling and shipping worms. He’s not squeamish about the work, but he does wear gloves.
“One of the neatest things is to stick your hands in and feel just worms moving around,” Knippel said of his compost bins. “If you look at soil as being alive, these are some of the largest organisms in the soil.”
Northwest Redworms’ website has been on Birmingham, Mich.-based StartupNation’s Grungiest Web-based Business list for two years, at the top in 2007 and in sixth this year. The site offers redworms by the pound, biological displays, composting bins and the fertilizer they produce.
Knippel developed the website with free Microsoft tools for start-ups, and it got 60,000 hits within a month of winning the contest. Knippel went from filling 100 orders a week to more than 500.
Now he averages $2,500 a month in gross worm sales and expects more than $30,000 for the year.
Knippel started the worm farm on his 10-acre property in 2005 with no expenses other than time. He was skeptical due to the worm industry’s 1970s pyramid schemes, but forged ahead with a green business model, partly to see how well he could improve his own compost.
“It’s not so much about making mass amounts of money off people, it’s about getting other people to do green things,” he said.
But the money is coming in – $23 per pound of worms and up to $500 for a cedar compost bin.
Knippel begins each compost pile with food waste, cardboard boxes, leaves and horse manure, mostly donated.
“People consider it waste until they realize how valuable it is,” he said.
To fill orders that are too large for the Camas supply or too far away to ship affordably, Knippel relies on suppliers in Oregon, California, Oklahoma and Wisconsin. He gets about 25 percent of each sale handled by these suppliers that originates on his website.
Knippel sells a worm business start-up kit with consultations, and from spring to fall he holds workshops on worm cultivation and composting, charging $12 per person for two hours.
“I designed the class because I had customers that would buy worms and not ask enough questions and kill (the worms),” he said. “I offer it at a low price so I can get them in and hear about their success” later on.
Knippel also keeps busy as the owner of Woodgrains Cabinetry and In the Woods Cat Chalet feline boarding house, founded in 2006 and 2007, respectively.
Northwest Redworms
Doug Knippel, owner
802 N.E. 202nd Ave., Camas
360-513-7251
Charity Thompson can be reached at cthompson@vbjusa.com.
