Ermine Grand Opening and Ribbon Cutting

My name is Daniel Volland. I serve on the Anchorage Assembly. I represent downtown District 1.

Also happen to be a really good buddy of this guy, Paxton Welber, owner of Ermin Skate, the first Nordic ice skate company in North America. So pretty exciting. I myself have been able to experience the joy of wild ice skating. I know many of you in the room have. If you haven't, it is the most incredible thing to be out on frozen lakes and marshes surrounded by mountains.

So I'm just personally thankful for the opportunity to have experienced that. And as someone who is involved in local government, I'm really proud of what Paxson has created here, him and his team. This is the kind of energy that Anchorage needs more of, and we need to do everything we can as a community to support local entrepreneurs and to catalyze young-ish people who want to, who want to do business here in our city. And so, yeah, I'm thankful that we have— I actually think folks at every level of government who want to be supportive of those efforts. And on that note, I'm going to turn it over to, for a very special surprise Paxton doesn't know about, to Representative Hong Daniel Volland.

He's a lot taller than me, so I'll give him the microphone, but I don't even know if he needs the step stool.

Thanks. Good evening, and if Representative Gray and Senator Dunbar want to join me up front on this. One of the tools that the legislature has is the development of legislative Citations. We use this as a way in the legislature to recognize exemplary work and accomplishments in our community. These citations are ones that go through the legislative process.

They've been voted on and passed by the House of Representatives and by the Senate. And this one has been signed by both the President and the Speaker of the House, as well as Senator Giesel, Representative Fields, myself, and I think I've got most of it there. And so it's just our honor today to be able to recognize Paxson and the work that he's done. And if you want to hold on to that for a second, I've got a couple notes here. Give it to Paxson here pretty quickly.

So, you know, I wanted to mainly touch on 3 things here. One is the innovation entrepreneurship that Erman Skates has brought to this and Paxson's work on this. More importantly though has been building the wild ice skating industry and the club and the engagement in the community. But most important has been Paxson's work to provide access and awareness to outdoors and to recreation opportunities. And this statement down here I love here.

If I can just see this for a second. I love this statement down here. It says, "Few individuals have done more to democratize access to wild spaces in Alaska." And— So we just— we want to acknowledge Taksen, his work, his leadership, the different ways he communicates about outdoor issues, the way he makes this accessible to so many people, but also the way he has created an example of Alaska innovation, creating the first in the nation, you know, Nordic manufactured here in Alaska skating and now exporting them to North America and I believe even internationally now at this point. And this is the kind of work that can be done in Alaska, is being done in Alaska, and we want to celebrate seeing more of it done in Alaska. Both, you know, our outdoors, but also the ways in which we experience outdoors.

So thank you, Paxson, for all of your work. I appreciate every bit of it. We from the legislature are just honored to be able to recognize your work and celebrate what you're doing and hope to see more of it in the future. So thank you. And thank you, Paxson.

Get a picture here to make it official. With a ladder.

Ladder to success.

Okay, I'm not going to climb back up on the step stool. We are honored to also have another special guest with us in the room, Mayor Suzanne LaFrance.

Thank you so much, Vice Chair Volland, and hello everyone. So wonderful to be here with you tonight to celebrate Paxton, your wonderful accomplishments. And I want to note that we are also joined by member Baldwin Day, Erin Baldwin Day, and also— there she is— and Assemblymember Sydney Scout.

So it's very exciting to be here, and congratulations, Paxton. On your success and for making us all even more excited about winter. Because we need that. It's awesome here, but it's really wonderful to see local success. And I agree with you, Vice Chair Vohland, we need more of that here.

And as local government officials, we want to do everything we can to promote the kind of business that you have succeeded at, Paxson. And also, we're working at the same time to promote our winter tourism. We want people to come and enjoy our wonderful place year-round, every season. And so it's really great to be able to send folks here to you to get set up. And I'm really grateful to you for all that you've done.

And I know it's not easy to be a business owner, a small business owner. And again, we want to do everything we can to support you. Also, we're looking for ways to use some of our lakes here for more outdoor skating, and I know we've got that on our list, huh, Travis? Travis Morrison from my team is here. So, um, and also support the park bonds, right?

I know we still have a few months and other things before then. But anyway, thank you. Congratulations. And it's really a wonderful opportunity to be here with all of you tonight. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Mayor. And next, I'm going to turn it over to the man himself, the myth, the legend, Paxton Overeem. So I didn't know any of that stuff was happening. I thought you guys were just here for the nerd clusters and the chips and stuff.

It actually feels like it was just yesterday that we started this thing in a little garage in East Anchorage, and here we are, you know, 6 seasons later in a little, very garage-like structure in Midtown Anchorage. We're still a really small company, but I'm really, really proud of what we've done. And yeah, really grateful for, you know, the customers who, you know, trust us with money, but also just with our product, helping them have a really great time on their, you know, one day off a week when the ice is in and they want to get outside. And our really incredible retailer network. We've been like so supported by AMH and Hoarding Marmot and like all of our other retailers.

And the manufacturing partners that we've had here too. It's been really great, yeah, working with other companies in Alaska and trying to make it work. I was up last night at like 1 in the morning. My girlfriend and I were painting this table. I know a couple people have mentioned it smells like paint in here.

And she asked me, what are you wearing tomorrow? And I thought it was like the funniest question, I just started laughing. I was like, well, you know, it's like, were you asking me like, who am I wearing, like a designer? And I said, you know, I think I'm just gonna wear my paint pants because it's really true to the, um, to the moment and the experience of getting this all set up. So this is all very much a work in progress.

And, uh, yeah, I'm just really grateful for, um, all of you being here and, uh, being part of it. So thank you.

So now we have one more thing to do to do. That is our symbolic ribbon cutting. Can my ribbon holders please approach?

And then I think, um, Paxton, are you gonna do the honors with the special MagnaCut skate? You have to cut— I think you have to cut the ribbon. Yeah, um, I guess before I do this, I was going to give a rundown of some of the products and stuff we have coming this year. I'm actually not going to do that. We can talk about it later.

I'm happy to have that conversation with you guys. But I do want to shout out this one product that we're doing. This is, as far as I know, the world's first MagnaCut steel Nordic skate. This is not just the highest quality steel ever put on a Nordic skate. This is the best steel you can put on a Nordic skate.

It's rolled in the United States, it's cut in the US, it's hardened in the US, and it's processed and ground in the US. If you're wondering why nobody's done it before on a Nordic skate, it's because it's very, very difficult to work with. So we worked with a series of really high-end companies on the East Coast that were willing to take the time to work with us to process this extremely high-quality steel. The other reason people haven't done it before is it's really expensive. But this is a just a really, really exciting thing for us to put out this supremely high-quality product.

So I'm looking forward to launching it this year. I'm not going to say anything else about it. I think, I think that's enough. But hopefully, if it's not sharp enough to cut this ribbon, I feel like I've like really maybe set some We've had some bad expectations, so you might have to choke up on it a little bit. We did a test earlier and it was actually quite— we'll see how it goes.

Yeah,. Here goes. Nothing.

Woo! All right.

Well, thank you everyone again for coming. Snacks, some beverages in the cooler. Yeah, feel free to hang out until about 8 o'clock. So yeah, and make some new friends and maybe start your own business idea. All right, thank you.