TDI-Arms' partner in its Rapid City manufacturing plant, Lakota Industries of Xenia, Ohio, is setting up a bowhunting manufacturing operation in Timber Lake that will employ about 20 people.

Lakota Industries chief executive officer Dick Williamson said his connection to South Dakota goes back to his grandmother, an Oglala Lakota woman from Potato Creek on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. He visited Pine Ridge and brought supplies there in a humanitarian effort, but realized he could do more good for Native people by bringing jobs.

"If you hire 20 people, you're not just feeding 20 people, you're feeding families, a lot of families," he said.

So he set up a business incubator in his native Ohio, and now that the companies are off the ground, will be relocating much of the operations this month to Timber Lake, where he also has family ties, and where he could take advantage of a partnership with a company called OctoFlex, which already has a manufacturing facility open.

Lakota Industries has three companies: Lakota Archery bowhunting supplies, Covert Coatings military vehicle camouflage, and Decota Finishes camouflage application.

Because he is a Native American and a veteran, Williamson said his business has advantages in competing for government contracts.

He praised the South Dakota Governor's Office of Economic Development as cooperative and helpful, and said they treated him with as much respect as they might a firm bringing hundreds of jobs.

"The people of South Dakota really are very, very fortunate," said Williamson, who considers himself an ambassador for the state and who recruited TDI-Arms to come to Rapid City (see related story).

Lakota Archery will employ Native and non-Native people, avid hunters and people who have never held a bow but will be trained in the coming weeks.

Lakota hopes to gain market share in an industry that sells half a million bows annually, Williamson said.

"Somehow or another, sportsmen always have the discretionary funding to buy their toys," he said.

He hopes to be running at capacity soon in order to make bows to display at December and January trade shows.

"We're selling a culture, and who better to manufacture compound bows for the hunting industry than the Native Americans of South Dakota," Williamson said.

Contact Barbara Soderlin at 394-8417 or at barbara.soderlin@rapidcityjournal.com.