Hell Creek Music & More, the Makoshika Dinosaur Museum and E-Tana
Glendive, MT
Most businesses can sum up their core focus in a sentence or two. For the creative Bury family in Glendive, Montana, you better pull up a chair and sit a spell. Originally from Seattle, Christie and Steve Bury, along with their teenage daughters Chantell and Cortney, enthusiastically jumped into life in their new hometown base in sparsely populated eastern Montana, starting a portfolio of ventures including Hell Creek Music & More, the Makoshika Dinosaur Museum and E-Tana, resulting in renewed business vibrancy and a tourism draw to the downtown area.
Distinct from traditional start-ups that focus on practical market analysis and research, Christie and Steve launched their businesses based around the family’s passions and interests. Starting back in Seattle, Steve’s career path early on took serendipitous direction thanks to his daughter’s interests. Chantell showed an early interest in music so she started taking piano lessons at age four. Chantell’s music teacher owned a large music store in the Seattle area. “Steve had no background in music, but thanks to meeting Chantell’s teacher he eventually was hired to run their music store, learning as he went and growing it from a one million to a seven million dollar business,” explains Christie.
But their daughter’s dinosaur passion eventually drew them to running their businesses in Glendive, with Chantell declaring at age four that she wanted to be a paleontologist. The family started coming to the Glendive area on vacation, given it’s rich dinosaur history and abundant fossil hunting opportunities. With Montana’s vast open spaces, the Burys quickly felt they were wasting too much of their week’s vacation driving in the car versus fossil hunting, so in 2001 they invested in a three-plex in Glendive, using rent to pay the mortgage and staying in the basement when they came on vacation, finding Glendive a strategic base for dinosaur day trips.
Soon disenchanted with the Seattle urban scene and desiring a safer community in which to raise their children, Christie and Steve made the leap to move full-time to Glendive in 2003. “Each time we came to visit, we fell in love with this town and made friends and connections,” explains Christie. “The safe quality of life here, combined with affordable real estate and new business opportunities, added up to us taking the leap.”
Purchasing the long vacant JC Penny’s building in the heart of the main street business district, the Bury’s first entrepreneurial start-up and still the core of their business income today is Hell Creek Music & More, capitalizing on Steve’s experience at running a music store. The only music store with the largest collection of electric and acoustic guitars in a 200 mile radius, Hell Creek Music & More draws music lovers from the surrounding area and contributes to a lively music scene in Glendive with thirteen organized local bands. “The ‘More’ part of the business came from us realizing that we needed to diversify sales from something other than just music,” explains Christie. From art supplies, games, trading cards, comics and toys, folks have multiple reasons to return to Hell Creek, particularly younger people.
Games proved to be not only a revenue source, but also a means of building community. When a sales rep suggested they order a new chess-like strategy game involving superhero characters called “HeroClix,” the Burys didn’t just stock it on the shelves, they learned the game and taught the youth coming into their store how to play. This led to on-going weekly Saturday afternoon tournaments at the store with young and old playing side by side, providing needed social outlets for a community looking for things to do.
Soon after opening Hell Creek Music & More, the Burys focused on another idea they had been pondering: opening the Makoshika Dinosaur Museum, named after the nearby Makoshika State Park, renowned for dinosaur fossils and the scenic beauty of the badlands. “Opening the museum was motivated by our surprise that there wasn’t already one in the area,” explains Christie. “When we were first vacationing, knowing Glendive’s location as the hub of dinosaur history, we went on-line and were surprised that there wasn’t more related tourism businesses to draw folks to the area.”
With limited space, the Burys purchased another vacant retail building across the street and moved Hell Creek Music next door, leaving their first building open for the museum. Soon after opening the Makoshika Dinosaur Museum in 2005 as a private effort, Steve and Christie realized the opportunity to have the museum listed on the Montana Dinosaur Trail, a large-scale marketing effort led by the Montana Tourism Department. “Only non-profit organizations could be listed on the Dinosaur Trail, so that’s what we became,” says Christie with a laugh as she recounts how they stumbled through the non-profit paperwork, learning as they went. “If we had a concrete master plan, we’d miss a lot of opportunities along the way. We’ve learned to be watchful.”
Now officially listed on the Montana Dinosaur Trail, the Makoshika Dinosaur Museum’s visitation shot up 100 percent, from 30 people a month to over 300. The Makoshika Dinosaur Museum serves as a tourism draw for Glendive, encouraging paleontologist hopefuls to stop by and linger. With this rebirth downtown, Steve and Christie try to foster other entrepreneurial upstarts. The building housing Hell Creek Music & More lays out in a “mini-mall” design, enabling the Burys to rent affordable retail space to four additional new business, including a gourmet food shop, used book store, T-shirt shop and a Japanese animation specialty shop, the first business venture by its young twenty-year old owner. “We keep the rent reasonable and as low as $100 a month, just so we can cover our utilities and expenses and keep things affordable for people starting new businesses,” explains Steve. The museum proves to be strong marketing assistance and a draw for the new business up-starts in the Burys building. “People coming to the museum ask me, ‘what else can we do,’ and we just point them across the street,” smiles Christie.
Daughters Chantell and Cortney, now 15 and 14, have always been an integral part of this family business. “I think all kids want to help and feel like they’re an asset to what their family is doing,” comments Christie. While still passionate about fossils and music, like their parents, these two teens continue to see new opportunities, resulting in a new teen store, specializing in hip clothes, skateboards, accessories and pop culture accessories not available in the area. The girls named this new store, also located in the mini-mall, “E-Tana” for “Eastern Montana” and went to trade shows to pick out merchandise. “They picked the styles, Mom and Dad decided the quantity,” Christie grins. Officially opening in May, 2006, Chantell and Cortney also help with retail sales and managing the cash register.
Wearing multiple hats and working together toward a common goal come naturally to the Bury family. Originally working in education and fashion retail in Seattle, Christie knew she needed to help the family income stream during the early upstart Montana years and held part-time jobs in Glendive ranging from working the register at the grocery store to leading state park tours. “We’ve learned to say yes to opportunities and then simply sit down and figure out a plan to make then happen,” explains Christie. The couple’s latest business idea, The Inferno, will retail wood and other forms of stoves and heaters, also located in the mini-mall. “When we couldn’t buy a corn stove locally ourselves, we started thinking others may have this same problem, which led us to the business,” Christie explains.
“Amazing things can happen when our family is all working together,” comments Steve. A complimentary skill balance, Steve drums up the big picture business vision while Christie focuses on the nuts and bolts of bringing it to reality. Rooted in a commitment to community, the Burys actively volunteer on various committees aimed at beautifying and promoting Glendive and Steve earned a spot on the Glendive City Council. “Sure we could have just said no to all these ideas and stayed in our dead-end jobs in Seattle, but we’d be missing all this fun,” Christie sums up with a grin.