Northwest Arkansas makes a lot of things, but much of the making gets filed under other industries. Poultry processing is at the center of the region, Walmart's supplier base keeps consumer goods and packaging operations busy, and I-49 gives all of it a freight route north toward Kansas City and south through Fort Smith. This page holds one conversation so far, and the label is much narrower than the work going on here.
Burt Hanna founded Hanna's Candle Company in Fayetteville in the late 1980s and moved into candles in 1992. It grew into one of the larger consumer goods manufacturers in the region, with a workforce that has historically swung between about 140 and 200 people with the calendar, because home fragrance sells on a holiday cycle. His episode takes you from a broke college student with a secondhand stove to a working factory floor, and he gets specific about how it works: sourcing raw materials, sizing production runs to a retail season, and the distance between designing a product and making it at volume.
If you came here for manufacturing in general, a few other episodes belong on your list even though they're filed under other industries. Todd Simmons of Simmons Foods runs a processor with about 8,000 employees, and his conversation is on the food and drink page. Chris Chandler leads Chandler Capital Group in Springdale, a family manufacturer dating to 1978 that makes vehicle accessories and outdoor products. It announced a $14 million expansion in December 2025 and acquired Free Spirit Recreation in February 2026, and his episode is filed under retail and consumer. Ben Clark's B-Unlimited runs screen printing and custom apparel production in Fayetteville, also filed under retail.
One episode so far. Northwest Arkansas has plant managers, fabricators, food processors and packaging companies whose stories fit this show. Hanna's conversation is the one to hear on what it takes to build and run a factory in this part of the country. The whole list is below.
