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Our Story
Founding Ripple Marketing
Kitch Walker cofounded Ripple Marketing in 1998 upon graduating from Montana State University (MSU) Bozeman with Dr. Norm Millikin, a thirty year marketing professor at MSU Bozeman, and Anita Dewald, a fellow MSU graduate. The trio had collaborated together for almost two years prior to founding the firm, working together on various clients and projects throughout Montana.
Initally, the vision of the firm was simple, to create a full-service, strategic marketing firm that relied heavily on market research and strategic planning to inform and guide their client’s marketing efforts.
Anita and Dr. Millikin have since retired from the firm. Anita left the firm a year later after getting married and moving to Anchorage, Alaska. In late 2000, Dr. Millikin retired from Ripple Marketing and shortly thereafter also retired from MSU.
Palmquist Creative Merges with Ripple Marketing
Over time, Kitch Walker, Ripple Marketing's President and Sr. Marketing Consultant, realized that the firm tended to excel at providing strategic and analytical services including conducting market research and crafting strategic plans, but often struggled to build and sustain a creative team that could artfully execute the creative elements of plans for clients such as corporate identity, re-branding, advertising, websites and graphic design.
During an interesting lunch in 2002 between two peers, Kitch Walker and Kurt Palmquist, then Creative Director and co-owner of Palmquist Creative, a solution began to emerge.
At the time, Palmquist Creative was a nationally recognized, award winning creative firm that was cofounded by Kurt and Denise Palmquist in 1990. Their firm excelled at professional branding and creative services, but often struggled with helping their clients collect decision-making information and develop plans that would effectively guide their creative execution.
Needless to say, after hours of lively discussion, numerous sketches on napkins, a bet that beer would come out of someone’s nose, subsequent personality tests, and a multitude of spread sheets, Ripple Marketing and Palmquist Creative agreed to merge their two entities.
The merger of Palmquist Creative with Ripple Marketing in 2003 resulted in a more holistic, fully integrated marketing and branding firm that could more effectively help clients bring about postive and meaningful results for their organizations.
Ripple Marketing Expands Internationally
Through serendipitous events in the fall of the 2006, Ripple Marketing began expanding its operations internationally. The firm now offers professional U.S. market entry and/or expansion services to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs/SMBs) looking to discover new markets, build their brands and sell more products in the United States. In the spring of 2007, Ripple partners also set out to build, launch and manage a new, highly innovative U.S. import, wholesale and retail company, Flat Earth Imports®.
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