People ask us where the story began and if we think they aren’t just curious but really want to know, we have to take them back to a conversation around the dining room table in 1991. Annie’s folks’ house. It’s Spring. Their home is in the country, surrounded by stately ponderosa pine trees and wildflower-laden meadows. But the topic of conversation is town.

Trinidad, Colorado. A former coal-mining boomtown, now long bust. With its prominent location on the Santa Fe Trail, they say it was once considered as a possible site for the state capital. But those days were long gone. The few local businesses that had survived the mine closings were wiped out by the invasion of Walmart in the ‘80s. Main Street sat empty. Nearly half the population found themselves on government aid of some kind.

Annie’s father, a local pastor, had indignation in his voice. He was sick and tired of watching lives slowly disintegrate under the oppression of economic depression. It starts to work a gloomy magic, he explained. It’s not just the individual stress of joblessness. Failure begins to transform the character of a region.

In spite of the beauty of the natural surroundings and the spectacular architecture of Main Street and the old turn-of-the-century neighborhoods, Trinidad saw itself as a “was”. A forgotten town, a has-been people. After a while, dark adjectives poison the air and water. And Pastor Ed was fed up with the destruction it had waged on the people he loved.

It was time, he said, to begin praying fervently that God would bring an economic turnaround to southern Colorado.

So we did. We prayed our hearts out that day for this town that we loved.

And a curious thing happened.

Annie and I walked quietly back home afterwards. Our squinty eyes and furrowed brows pointed to something churning inside.

“What are you thinking?”

“You first.”

“No, you.”

“I was thinking maybe we should be part of the solution.”

“Me, too.”

“Uh oh.”

And that’s how it started. The Call, in retrospect.

You have to understand that this wasn’t good news. Wasn’t a “Time for dessert!” call. We lived in a converted red barn where Annie had milked goats and gathered eggs as a child. I spent my days in a hand-crafted woodshop with views overlooking the wooded valley, building custom furniture for clients in California. Annie relished being full time Mom to 6-month-old Eric. Pretty charmed lifestyle. We didn’t know initially what it meant to help transform a depressed economy. But we had a hard time picturing “idyllic” and “economic depression” in the same sentence.

A Call like that, though, is not easily brushed aside. Within months it began to take root.

Annie was seeing picture frames – hand painted picture frames. I started building them. She started painting them. My brother Aaron meanwhile, clutching a freshly minted MBA, was on the hunt for “a company with meaning” far from corporate America. Our Vision met the criteria, so he signed on.

We gathered together a handful of Annie’s frames and set out to the only trade show we’d ever heard of. The three of us took turns peddling our wares and walking 6 week old Garrett around Chicago to try to keep him contented. With mixed results.

The contented baby, that is. The trade show results were not mixed at all. The frames were a home run. Over the wall.

The euphoria quickly gave way to panic. We had no plan for success. We’d never made picture frames on the scale that was required to satisfy these expectant customers. While Aaron went home and started packing his family up for the move to Trinidad (“Um, it looks like it’s working….”), the call went out to the extended family from around the state.

Mark settled into the workshop. Awkwardly at first, then with conviction, he began churning out frames nearly round the clock. Annie, with her mother and mother-in-law, artists three, sat at the dining table and painted. The living room morphed into a shipping department. Both our fathers scrounged through the Safeway parking lot for recycled cartons, then packed our newly created treasures in Pampers boxes and hauled them down 12 miles of dirt road to the UPS outlet in town. The toddlers teedled amongst piles of frames (“Don’t eat that!”) and great grandma made zucchini bread for coffee breaks and wondered aloud what all the fuss was about.

In spite of receiving their orders in toddler-drooled Pamper cartons, customers were happy. Reorders poured in. The hiring began.

Within two years, round the clock shifts in the old workshop weren’t keeping up with demand. The twelve miles of dirt road were taking a toll on vehicles, the wood stove backed up incessantly and various outhouse incidents were taking their toll on morale. Not a subject for polite company. Time to move the shop to town.

Within three years, we’d become the largest private employer in southern Colorado.

Within five, we’d established ourselves as a design leader in the industry. Companies fifty times our size prefaced their product introductions with “and this is our answer to Danielson”. It’s a continuous source of wonder and delight and awe. Whoddathunkit?

As the company grew, we looked for other ways of building the community. We were outspoken critics of a movement to bring gambling to town. When the dust settled and the initiative was voted down overwhelmingly, we decided to make a “money where your mouth is” investment and get involved in the transformation of downtown. We purchased an old five ‘n dime on Main Street and brought it back to life with a gratifying architectural renovation. Danielson Dry Goods emerged as a downtown landmark and a model of what this beautiful downtown could become.

And while “idyllic” may not be the first word we would use to describe this grand adventure, it has definitely been a source, not only of a livelihood, but also of life. And deep grace. We set out to try to craft the kind of company that we’d want to work for. And we found along the way that most of the crafting was being done on, not by us. Painful at times, to be honest. But the Best Things in life are always that way, haven’t you found?

And what else can you ask for? We work with a group of people that we care for and respect. We craft a product that we’re proud to hang in our own home. And we continue to watch the glorious transformation of our town from a has-been byway to a source of deep local pride and a destination for visitors and new residents from around the nation. Not idyllic. But profoundly satisfying. Even better.

As always, we’re hopeful that you’ll join us in the adventure. Grateful if you already have.

Soli Deo Gloria,

Annie and Mark Danielson

Trinidad, Colorado