One example of the elaborate type of trade show booth built by Steelhead Productions in Poulsbo

Responding only to the brightest flies and the biggest of hooks, Steelheads are wily, strong and tenacious. A cold-water fish that seems to strategize when faced with a competitor, they’re known to give even the most experienced fisherman a run for their money in successfully reeling them all the way in.

The same might be said of Steelhead Productions, the Poulsbo-based exhibit booth design and construction company.

Founded in 1996 by president Jim Andersen, the twenty-five employee firm produces top-of-the- line, 3-D exhibit booths and collateral materials for some of the largest companies in the country. They’re also perfectly happy to decline prospective new business and have developed their own strategy to walk away from, well, bait and hook.

“We don’t want just any business that comes knocking...we won’t take it. At any given time we’re working with and maintaining thirty customers,” Andersen said, “and that’s a deliberate approach and number of customers for us.

“We’re what I like to call a beneficiary of the dot.com economy...nearly one-third of our client base is post-IPO or are high-tech businesses well funded with venture capital. We’re currently generating between $5 and $6 million dollars annually,” adds Andersen, “and we’re working with the optimum customers for our firm. That’s just the way we want it.”

In fact, says Andersen, any prospective customer has to pass a three-point qualification process before Steelhead Productions will consider taking on their trade show exhibit project.

According to Andersen, the prospect has to want something non-traditional in design and concept, be willing to work outside of the usual designs and want only the highest quality in construction and materials; consider Steelhead Productions their “turn-key” provider for everything from preliminary concept and construction to future shipping, storage, transportation and off-site assembly and be able to pay their bills.

“Frankly, we do incredible work,” said Andersen, “and we’re not cheap. We’re definitely on the high end, with some of our projects reaching as high as $600,000...we need to make sure that any prospective client is comfortable making a commitment to those kinds of dollars.”

Not, Andersen rushes in to add, that all of their projects run to those extreme dollars. The company has done simple, table-top designs for customers that cost as little as $150 but most of their clients are looking for trade show exhibits that are quite a bit more complex.

Companies, for example, like Quantum, the Milpitas, CA-based high-technology company that has used Steelhead for a number of projects, including a recent new 35’ by 50’ trade show booth that ran in excess of $300,000 for the completed project.

“The thing about Jim (Andersen) and Steelhead (Productions),” said Celey Gaskill, trade show and events manager for Quantum, “is that I threw tons at him....scraps of information, really, and he actually made sense out of it. He came back to us with a design that incorporated all of our thoughts and where we were headed and what we wanted to convey to our customers and potential customers at a trade show. He’s fabulous at branding.”

Even more important, says Gaskill, is Steelhead’s commitment to delivery. “If they say they’re going to deliver — on time, at a site, on budget — they do. End of story. They’re very, very customer service oriented. You know, a lot of vendors say that they want to be partners with a customer. Steelhead means it, really. They’re worth it, dollar-wise...they’re there to make us look good and they do.”

Besides Quantum, Steelhead employees are busy full-time in their 25,000 square foot facility working on projects for other big-name clients like Eddie Bauer, Napster and Exodus.

While the company contracts out certain manufacturing processes — mostly metalwork — all of the other exhibit design processes are performed in-house. All plastic work , cabinetry and laminating work is done in the Poulsbo facility; in fact, says Andersen, they have a full cutting, molding and vacu-form operation for their plastic work.

As an official Atlas Van Lines agent, Steelhead Productions can also store and transport client booths from facility to exhibit hall, anywhere in the country. The plus to that, says Andersen, is that not only can they keep an eye on the safety and integrity of the booth during transport, but a key Steelhead employee travels with the booth to make sure that it’s assembled with the proper union help once delivered into the exhibit hall.

“This is a pretty sophisticated shop and we’ve been able to attract and keep some of the Puget Sound’s top workers in each medium,” said Andersen. “For example, Scott Magraw, who’s now a partner in Steelhead Productions, is an expert cabinet guy. For the first couple of years we used him and his Bainbridge cabinet company as a contractor. Once it became apparent that we were able to keep his company busy full-time, we became co-tenants in a building and finally, just this past month, formalized a merger. He’s the best.”

Andersen, 47, actually credits the quality of skilled labor in Kitsap County as one of his key reasons for basing the company in Poulsbo. Well, that and his health.

And the proximity to some superior fishing holes.

“I came up to this area about fifteen years ago when I was still based in San Francisco and part of a similar company,” said Andersen. “While driving around in my rental car, I stumbled across Poulsbo and just fell in love with the beauty of the area. A few years later when my doctor told me that my (San Francisco) life was killing me — hyper-tension and major stress symptoms — I decided to retire and move to Poulsbo.”

Andersen did move to Poulsbo, built a house and retired. Within a year, he was consulting for other companies in the trade show exhibit industry and shortly after that decided to open Steelhead Productions.

Stress, he says, is no longer an issue. “This is such an incredibly beautiful area with great people...and there’s a lack of the kind of stress that seems to come with big-city lifestyles. The lifestyle is definitely a reason as to why we settled here.”

An avid angler — the company actually owns a 27’, hand-built salmon trawler named the Salmon Hawk — Andersen also admits that the company’s proximity to the San Juan Islands and Alaska doesn’t hurt, either.

“Fish?” laughs Andersen. “Yeah, you could say we fish a bit. I get out a fair amount, more than people realize.”

There’s a pause as something significant with regard to fishing dawns on Andersen. “Hey, isn’t this a Friday...?”.