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Photo by Andy Atkinson Knute Klingerman, right, sells high-priced safes with the help of his nephew, Chris Anderson, left. Anderson can customize the interiors in his shop in north Medford. BUSINESS PROFILE This business is on safe ground But moving the merchandise can get a bit dicey By BILL VARBLE A year or so ago, Knute Klingerman decided to buy a gun safe. He looked long and hard before settling on a safe made by the manufacturer Liberty. It set him back a cool $2,600, but he figures it's the best. "I'm a slow shopper," the Medford man says. But not a slow thinker. With more than 20 years in the restaurant supply business, Klingerman, 44, figures he knows a hot product when he sees one. So he contacted Liberty, a Utah firm, to talk about a distributorship. That was last year. When they gave him the nod, he didn't waste time. "I saw my banker and built a warehouse and bought a truck," Klingerman says. Last month he and his wife, Marie, doing business in Medford as the Rogue Safe Co., sold almost 20 of the upscale safes in a territory that runs from north of Roseburg to California, and from Prineville in central Oregon over to the Oregon Coast. As Klingerman loads safes on his truck for a weekend gun show in Roseburg, he says he's already doing about the same annual volume in the safe business as he is in the restaurant supply business after all those years. The only catch is, the world doesn't beat a path to his door. "I don't get anybody stopping in," he says. "I have to go out and show them." He goes to home shows and sport shows, but most of his safe business comes from gun shows. "I see no reason for these kids getting hold of their dads' guns," he says. The safes come in lots of sizes and styles and run from less than $1,000 up to almost $5,000. Prices are driven by size, construction and fire safety. One top model, the Presidential, has a 1 1/4-inch body, insulated steel walls and is designed to keep valuables safe from 1,550-degree heat for a half hour. A clutch-driven handle operates 26 big bolts in the top, bottom and sides of the door. But don't you buy no ugly safe. Being built like a dozen tanks doesn't preclude some artsy touches. The Presidential comes with a velour interior and 24-karat plating on the dial and handle. Just the thing for the family jewels, and the family AK-47s. Rogue Safe employee Chris Anderson will finish the interior according to a customer's needs. How do you transport a large, expensive, handsomely finished piece of merchandise that can weigh nearly a ton? Very carefully. Klingerman and Anderson use a stair climber, a strong motorized dolly. Anderson says their toughest-ever delivery was to a mobile home high on a hill in Shady Cove. There was no way they could get in the front, and the path to the back ran through a sea of mud. After laying boards across the muck, the men found themselves with a heavy load on a big dolly trying to squeeze through a two-foot opening between a wooden deck and a 50-foot cliff. "If that thing would have gone ... " Anderson says. Then he just shakes his head. Klingerman keeps 70 to 100 safes in inventory. Today's Business Index Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA