COYOTE'S SCOPE WIDENS.

Byline: Sherri Buri McDonald The Register-Guard

Eugene-based jewelry maker Jody Coyote is growing fast and shows no signs of stopping.

The company, which was founded in the 1970s as a booth at Eugene's Saturday Market, now has 320 employees in Eugene and sells to more than 10,000 stores in the United States and Canada, including Macy's, Gottschalks and Hiron's Drug Stores.

Jody Coyote has outgrown its main facility on Oak Patch Road in west Eugene and will start moving today to new quarters in the former Rosen Products LLC building at Greenhill Technology Park, also in west Eugene. It will begin operations there on Dec. 28.

Chris Cunning and Peter Day, the young entrepreneurs who bought Jody Coyote three years ago, had ambitious plans to strengthen the brand and widen its distribution. They've done that by adding bracelets, necklaces, handbags and scarves to Jody Coyote's mainstay of earrings. They also launched Arabella, a new brand of fashion jewelry. And, in June, they acquired Laid Back Enterprises, an Oklahoma City-based maker of humorous novelty gifts, such as the "Over the Hill" and "Camp Grandma" lines, which will be sold through the same distribution network as Jody Coyote products.

This is just the beginning of what Cunning and Day hope will be a streak of acquisitions.

The plan is to buy one or two additional businesses in 2007 and two to three more in 2008, Day said.

"I don't see any reason why we couldn't double or triple the size of this business in the next couple years," he said.

The U.S. gift products industry, with sales of $40 billion to $55 billion a year, is large enough to support that level of growth, Day said.

Also in 2007, the corporate name will change to Oak Patch Gifts - parent of Jody Coyote, Laid Back Enterprises and other brands.

The privately held company doesn't disclose detailed financial information

The growth-through-acquisition strategy should lead to continued growth in Eugene, Day said.

"Most of the companies we're looking at have manufacturing abroad, so the jobs we're looking at adding in Eugene are in shipping, administration, finance, warehousing, light manufacturing and assembly and customer service," he said.

In the case of Laid Back Enterprises, for example, only product development will stay in Oklahoma City. The rest of the business will move to Eugene by Jan. 1, creating 15 to 20 local jobs immediately, and up to 30 jobs by the end of the year, Day said.

It was anticipation of rapid growth that led the company to Greenhill Technology Park, where it will settle into about 60,000 square feet, or two-thirds of the former Rosen Products building, said Spence Simmons, Jody Coyote's operations manager.

Rosen Products, a subsidiary of The Berwind Group, closed the 225-worker operation in September 2002.

Two former Rosen Products executives later founded Rosen Aviation, which makes flat-panel display screens and related aircraft equipment.

Rosen Aviation will stay in the other third of the building.