ALTON, Iowa — A string of coincidences led to two Alton brother starting The Fine Twine Co., purveyors of “The World’s Finest Hay Products.”
Rick and Tony Kellen started The Fine Twine Co. in 2002, about a year after they purchased a round baler to start taking on custom-bailing jobs as an extra source of income. Both brothers also farm the family’s 800-acre operation three miles outside of Alton, a Sioux County community of about 1,200.
"We were buying twine and net wrap from the local Bomgaars or co-op or wherever, and we were just trying to find a higher-quality and cheaper source for it and we ended up coming across a guy out of Kansas that was selling the stuff," said Rick Kellen.
After about six months of buying materials from the Kansas vendor, Rick Kellen said their supplier asked them to start dealing for him.
People are also reading…
“It just kind of grew from there, and we started peddling it to other people we knew in the baling business and then it's just grown every year,” Rick Kellen said. “As we started bailing, we picked up more and more jobs and we needed more product and it all came together and went hand-in-hand.”
Not only do the Kellens think their company sells the best hay products, they also boast about the wide selection of items they offer.
“We sell the seed and all the products it takes to get it into the bale for feed,” Tony Kellen said.
Customers of the Alton-based business can order everything from hay knives to moisture meters, which are used to check how dry hay is before bailing. However, baler twine and net wrap remain the foundation of the nearly 15-year-old company.
“A portion of our business is to distributors that resell it and we sell it right to the end user,” said Tony Kellen. “We cover basically anywhere from North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota all the way down to Texas and kind of the central Midwest.”
Consistent growth is what allowed the Kellens to move The Fine Twine Co. from a machine shed on the family farmstead to a new 14,700-square-foot building in Alton’s industrial park late last year.
While it would have been cheaper for the brothers to build a new structure on their farm, they believed a move to town could help them expand their business even more. The new building has a storefront, office space and is visible from the west side of Highway 60.
“A lot of people in town didn’t even know we existed out in the country,” Tony Kellen said. “There’s a lot of people surprised we needed this big of a building for what we do — a lot of people thought we were a wholesale manufacturer, but we’re just a wholesale distributor of the products sold.”
One of the big factors that spurred the growth of the Fine Twine Co. was the advancement of the ethanol industry. More corn in the region went into production of the fuel additive, reducing the amount of grain for livestock feed.
"As the ethanol industry grew, so did the demand for corn stalks as an alternative forage supplement," Tony Kellen said.
"So you need more twine and net wrap to hold them together," Rick Kellen chimed in.
"So then there was more demand for baling and so all of a sudden our demand increased and that's how the business grew — everything just kind of escalated," Tony Kellen said.
