Here Comes the Sun

Green technology companies are as common these days as clear skies in New Mexico, so it might come as a surprise to learn how four-year-old Cedar Mountain Solar Systems has distinguished itself with fivefold growth and two business awards.

Unlike most residential solar-heating systems—which assemble collectors, a hot water tank, radiant flooring, and/or pool heating into an improvised network that is hard to use and complicated to repair—Cedar Mountain’s integrated systems work at the touch of a thermostat.

Boaz Soifer had thought for years about this lack of integration—a concern he shared with Bristol Stickney, an engineer Soifer had met in the renewable energy field. Together they launched the business with $3,500 cash, riding a wave of built-in clients who had struggled with finding qualified installation experts for an integrated system such as Stickney’s.

Although theirs is sometimes called the Cadillac of solar systems, “we want to be clear—you’re not getting bells and whistles,” Soifer says of the company’s custom-designed networks. The quality lies instead, he says, in certain business practices, such as employing designers and a project manager on every job to ensure a professionally designed, rational system that is built for the long term.

Named the 2007 Small Business of the Year by the City of Santa Fe, the company has gone from three full-time employees at its start in 2004 to 17, with revenues increasing from $350,000 in the first year to $1.7 million in 2007. And Cedar Mountain just won a system showcase award for a demonstration project in Galisteo, a luxury home that is solar-heated completely off the grid.

Soifer, who says he embraces a progressive management style, maintains that it is not just the inherent appeal of renewable energy that accounts for Cedar Mountain’s popularity: “It’s the capability to do it reliably. That’s the reason we are successful.”

1285-J Clark Road, 505-474-5445, cedarmountainsolar.com

Of Fetishes and Other Obsessions

Keshi was a tiny shop tucked into a downtown Santa Fe pedestrian mall when Robin Dunlap took over a craft cooperative that she and other teachers had helped set up at Zuni Pueblo. It was 1981, and the shop sold jewelry, plus a few carved fetishes.

With the surge of fascination in Native America in the late 1980s, demand for the talismans swelled to the point that Keshi moved into a much larger space—formerly occupied by a restaurant—in 2002. Sales jumped from there. Now run by Dunlap’s daughter Bronwyn Fox-Bern, the store carries the work of 600 artists who fill its glass cases with a mind-boggling menagerie of exquisite creatures.

Competitors also have mushroomed over the years, but Keshi’s strong commitment to Zuni fetishes has earned it a reputation for expertise that its owners trace to close relationships with the artists’ families. Fox-Bern went to grade school on the pueblo and recently celebrated her marriage there; she emphasizes that the store is subtitled “the Zuni Connection” because its business is about the affinity people feel for a particular animal carving, as well as those special ties her family has to the pueblo.

She and Dunlap have found they must constantly fight the proliferation of fakes through education and advocacy. “If people come in and get a little better perspective, even if they buy nothing, I’m perfectly happy,” Fox-Bern says of her mission to safeguard value for Zuni artisans and her seven-employee business.

Inherently collect-ible, fetishes are evolving rapidly in subject matter and materials, Fox-Bern says, drawing new generations to the store and its Web site to feed their addiction. “We always reiterate, it’s just a tool; it’s you who have the power,” she tells shoppers, showing a thorough understanding of the magnetism of her vast inventory. “When you honor the animal spirit in the fetish, you honor it in yourself.”

227 Don Gaspar Avenue, 505-989-8728, keshi.com

An Eye for an Eye

Art photography books have never enjoyed a huge audience. Even today, as prices skyrocket for collectible editions, Amazon.com and its rivals have so cannibalized independent bookstores that niche sellers folded up their tents long before they could cash in on the trend.

Not Photo-eye. In 1997, Rixon Reed moved his business online, becoming one of the first independents to jump on the e-tailing juggernaut. And instead of continuing to mail his book catalog, he turned it into an upscale magazine and charged for subscriptions. In August, the publication morphed again, becoming a free, Web-only marketing tool to draw people to his online bookstore.

In the tough markets for specialty books and art, Photo-eye has always managed to stay a step ahead of the crowd, thanks to Reed’s constant experimentation with new ventures. When he moved the business from Austin, Texas, 17 years ago, Photo-eye was simply a bookstore-gallery in downtown Santa Fe. Today the bulk of the business is online, comprising not only the magazine, virtual bookstore, and gallery, but also a directory, newsletter, and public auction site. Plus, Photo-eye is a server host to individual artists’ Web sites. A closet programmer, Reed is a master of this complex online universe, where everything works together to drive traffic to the Photo-eye site and sell books.

“I feel like I’m a survivor,” says Reed, a former film student who discovered his creative calling in business. “I want to make something work.” Former rival Amazon now partners with Photo-eye to fulfill orders for most of its 30,000 titles, freeing Reed to focus on rare and limited-edition books, where he says the real action is.

His staff of 12 still occupies a physical gallery, bookstore, and warehouse in Santa Fe. But the virtual walls of the business appear as unlimited as Reed’s ideas. “I love what I do, so I work all the time,” he says. “And I’m always looking for a better way of doing things.”

370 Garcia Street, 505-988-5152, photoeye.com •

Democratizing Culture • In Guad We Trust • Desert Edge: SF Design Weekend 08
The Design Road: SF Design Weekend 08 • Back to the Future
Living Green—and Yellow and Blue and Red • Experience Design—the Jewelry of Hollie Ambrose
Experience Fashion—the Music of Michael Stearns • Business Profiles • Living Urban • Contributors