sleepy eye

Berdan is the Sleepy Eye Branch President of SouthPoint Federal Credit Union, but she sums her job up a little more informally: “I’m supposed to get out into the community, build relationships, and find ways to fulfill needs and to drive businesses back to SPFCU.”

When Mark Beito decided to open his own funeral supply business—Mark Thomas Co.—in 1990, he had no idea it would spring to life as quickly as it did. In fact, by 1993, he had outgrown his rented quarters in the back of the local bank and needed to expand—fast.

Brian Mathiowetz is a gambler. Instead of dice, he rolls with the weather. At the time of his Connect Business Magazine interview this summer, Mathiowetz Construction Company was halfway through a three-month contract to build two roundabouts in Mankato, despite excessive rain in June.

Driving two-lane Highway 14 over slippery Sleepy Eye snow, across gravelly prairie hinterlands, and just a frozen spit or two north of eye-blink Cobden (pop. 36)—to the edges of the Earth—the wayward traveler spies an army of 6,000 evergreens surrounding the North Pole at the corner of Christmas Tree Lane and Evergreen Boulevard.

Despite declaring himself “shade blind,” Mike Mason, the 71-year-old founder and owner of Sleepy Eye Stained Glass, has spent the last 30 years working with architects, interior designers and individual customers on churches, commercial buildings and private homes.