Feb. 21, 2024

This paid piece is sponsored by Sioux Metro Growth Alliance.

What began as a venture to bring basketball to communities like Brandon has evolved into a growing locally based business.

Ambush Apparel recently purchased and renovated a building at 719 N. Ninth Ave. in Brandon.

Its retail store, which does business as South Dakota Threads, offers a variety of South Dakota-themed items and locally branded apparel and accessories. The broader Ambush Apparel creates everything from corporate apparel to team uniforms, with countless options for customization.

“We do screen printing and embroidery and heat press and everything under the sun,” said Garrett Callahan, who co-founded the business in 2016 with Josh Mueller. “Pretty much anything you can put a logo on.”

The two played college basketball – Callahan at SDSU and Mueller at USD – and they’ve run Ambush Basketball Academy together since 2015, after Callahan formed a basketball academy four years prior in his home state of Illinois. They now offer camps and clinics in four states.

“We were going to do our own team uniforms, and along the way, we ended up developing a business, and it grew into where we are today,” Callahan said. “We had a storefront in Brandon and then a production building we had purchased the year before, so we were in two spots and wanted to combine into one, and it all worked out to go into this new space.”

The team includes five full-time employees and up to 10 part-time team members. Ambush Apparel specializes in offering online stores for teams and clubs.

“The community support in Brandon has been outstanding and is very much appreciated,” Callahan said. “They like to shop local, and the community is very sports-related, and it has a small-town feeling for a growing town.”

Brandon’s success in attracting new business activity resulted in it earning the 2023 Rural Initiative Award from Dakota Business Finance, awarded to the city with the most local businesses receiving an SBA 504 loan.

The $10,000 award, which has been presented since 2019, promotes the loan program and the use of Dakota Business Finance as the certified development company.

“Brandon has invested in land and infrastructure with several ‘shovel-ready’ sites for development, which puts the city in a strong position when an RFP for a new project develops,” said Lynne Keller Forbes, president and CEO of Dakota Business Finance.

“Amenities like its new hockey center and the fact that the Brandon Valley School District was recently rated No. 1 in the Sioux Falls area will continue to assist with Brandon being successful.”

In 2022, the city of Brandon hired Patrick Andrews, a former team member of Keller Forbes at SECOG, the South Eastern Council of Governments, to focus on economic development, planning and zoning.

“Having a full-time dedicated employee has really increased what I have seen in terms of everything from development to social media posts,” Keller Forbes said. “While $10,000 is not a huge award, it does provide recognition for Brandon investing in itself and the good things that have been accomplished so far.”

The private investments keep adding up.

One major project, the new headquarters for Engineered Truss Systems Inc., will relocate the operation, now owned by Lloyd Cos., from northeast Sioux Falls to the Rovang Industrial Park.

The business specializes in manufacturing roof and floor trusses and also offers laminated veneer lumber beams and headers. Lloyd plans to expand it to include wall panels and other building components.

The new 95,000-square-foot building will increase roof and floor truss production by an estimated 66 percent.

“The rail access was key as it allows us to bring in raw material like lumber,” said Jerry Fromm, Lloyd operations vice president. “Overall, the operation allows us to control our lead time on products for construction better using this approach.”

The site in Brandon also allows room to expand.

Construction is on track to wrap up at the end of March, with a target move-in for early April. The 22-person team is looking to ramp up to about 40 people at full production.

“Engineered Truss is a big deal for Brandon. They bought a massive lot from the Development Foundation, and they’re putting up a good-size business,” said Tim Jorgenson, chairman of the Brandon Development Foundation.

“We have two lots left – one right next to them, which is a rail lot of about 8 acres, and another that could be subdivided – but after that we’re kind of out of land, at least for our organization, so we’re trying to figure out what to do after that.”

Loans for both Ambush Apparel, done by Weston Hanson of The First National Bank in Sioux Falls, and Engineered Truss Systems, done by Adam Walsh of First International Bank & Trust, contributed to the award from Dakota Business Finance.

“The activity in Brandon continues to impress,” said Tyler Tordsen, CEO of Sioux Metro Growth Alliance. “All the ingredients for success are here: the investment in infrastructure, a forward-thinking community in both the public and private sectors and outstanding quality of life. There’s a big year ahead for Brandon, and we anticipate a lot of continued momentum there.”

For instance, three separate residential developments are set to attract more new residents to Brandon, who by extension will support additional business growth.

“Everything marched south of Sioux Falls for years, and now it’s sort of marching east,” Jorgenson said. “It seems like there’s more activity coming all the time. If all our residential developments were ready to go at the same time, there would be up to 1,000 home lots in Brandon.”

As for how the $10,000 award will be used, “we’re not 100 percent sure yet,” he said. “We’re talking about some options, but all we know is we want to use it in a way that invests back into our local business owners in a way that supports them.”