BETHEL — Despite the still-struggling economy, business is booming for one Maine niche company this year.

Maine Balsam Fir Products, located at 16 Morse Hill in West Paris, is having its best year in a decade, owner Wendy Newmeyer said in her booth at Bethel’s Local Crafts and Wares Fair on Friday.

“Our business has more than doubled this year,” Newmeyer said. “Usually we use 100 pounds of balsam a day, and we’ve been using 250 pounds per day. This type of year hit us by surprise, but people are determined to find American-made products, and we can provide that.

“In a good year, we’ll use about 30 tons of raw product, and we will probably exceed that this year,” Newmeyer said. “I mean we were just so busy I couldn’t even keep up with my paperwork. I will do that when things slow down. So it just goes to show you can succeed even in a slow or soft market.”

And it’s not just their aromatic balsam pillows, neck rolls and draft stoppers that are selling big to customers across the country. Their organic catnip sales have virtually exploded.

“We grow our own catnip, and we try to limit ourselves to about a hundred plants and see what that will do for us,” Newmeyer said.

“This year, we’re actually going to sell out of our catnip before Christmas.”

Last year, she said they held onto some of their supply until about February. They’ve been growing and selling catnip in colorful little fabric bags for more than 20 years.

“It’s the craziest little sideline that I could have ever invented, because by now we’ve made a quarter of a million dollars just growing catnip and selling it in little bags,” Newmeyer said.

As of Friday, they’re down to their last gallon, and it is only going to make about 8 dozen more bags.

“I see a lot of other catnip on the market, but mine smells better, the cats tell us,” she said. “I think it was a better idea than even the balsam pillows, because even if people won’t buy themselves something, they’ll buy something for their cat that costs a couple of dollars.”

The East Brunswick, N.J., native said she got the idea to eventually grow and sell catnip in her teen years. She read a story in magazine Mother Earth News about a girl in California who wrote that she was growing catnip and selling it at concessions and making $3,000 to $5,000 annually.

“I was like, ‘That is a good idea. I’m going to do that someday just to prove a point,’” Newmeyer said. “And I did, because really, it only cost me about $3 to get that started. I mean, that’s just a couple of packets of seed and what else did I need? I needed soil and a plot of land, which I had.”

Newmeyer and her husband, Jack, bought 100 acres of land in West Paris in 1977 and moved to Maine from New Jersey two years later.

“I really thought I was going someplace like Asheville, North Carolina, but I didn’t like the vibe down there, and I needed to feel a vibe,” she said. “And as soon as I came into this area, it was about Hebron or maybe Minot or someplace around there, and I said, ‘Ah, we’re close. We are really close.’”

She said she just wanted to find her little place in the country and do something with her life.

“When I realized there was only one other company in the world making balsam pillows and that I could probably do it as good or better of a job, I just hit the floor running,” Newmeyer said. 

They launched their balsam fir products business in 1983.

“It was the pulp mill in Rumford, really, that allowed me to understand the scope of the business,” she said.

Her husband was cutting pulp in their woods and selling it to support themselves.

“And then a neighbor told us about this little incense factory in Lewiston that would buy the branches, and I started delivering (branches) to them,” Newmeyer said. “But it didn’t take me too long to realize that what they were doing was something that I could do. I didn’t want to make incense. I wanted to make the little pillow stuffers. My creative angle is sewing.”

They manufacture by hand many balsam fir-filled products for resale in thousands of gift shops around the country.

Making and selling balsam fir products “hits all of my ‘hot buttons,’” Newmeyer said.

“I love the fragrance. I love the creativity. I love the interaction with people. I love the fact that they’re therapeutic and they’re real and they’re very long lasting, and I think that’s kind of who I am, too. Just a very genuine person, and I still love what I do even when we’re struggling to keep our head above the waters.

“Some days we wish that we didn’t have orders and that we didn’t have email, but, you know, that’s what happens,” she said.”We’re very connected, and we’re more in demand than ever.

“Sometimes, running a company that looks like and smells like Santa’s workshop isn’t really always this stress-free environment that you might think of. But we’re really enjoying the opportunity.”

tkarkos@sunjournal.com

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