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The Happy Horologist
By:  James MacPherson, Associated Press Writer, Associated Press
Published:  April 7, 2006

Ken Muggli can do without co-workers and workplace chatter. He only wants to hear the sound of a clock.

"I'm not interested in a chatty environment," Muggli said. "The tick-tock - I can't think of a more comforting, soothing sound. I think it goes back to the womb, listening to mother's heartbeat."

There was a time Muggli thought he could never return to his hometown to make a living repairing clocks. So he went to Seattle, where he inspected thousands of precision airplane parts.

Now, thanks to the Internet and dependable delivery services, Muggli, 58, is able to practice horology - the science or art of measuring time or making timepieces - in a tidy shop in the basement of his home on this city's Main Street.

People from across the country send their clocks to Muggli's Dakota Clock Repair, and only a percentage of the work comes from North Dakota. He also sells clock parts.

"Essentially, I'm as big as I want to be," said Muggli, a large, bespectacled man who favors colorful suspenders.

Glen Ullin has had two other clock repairmen in the last century, one of whom was Muggli's late uncle, who gave him the clock bug. He says his Swiss ancestry probably has something to do with his love of clocks.

"I've always had an interest in clocks," Muggli said. "I've always liked fine, precision things that work well."

Muggli left Glen Ullin in the 1960s for Seattle, where he landed a job as a quality assurance engineer at the Boeing Co. His job there complemented his passion for clocks.

"I investigated the cause of production problems, and what could be done to resolve them," Muggli said. "The work was very detailed and investigative in nature."

Four years ago, he retired from Boeing and moved back to the Morton County town of about 860.

"I came back because I wanted a slower pace of life and, of course, I found it here," Muggli said.

His wife, Kathy, who's originally from Glendive, Mont., also was eager to move from the Seattle area, where she was fed up with the traffic and the rain. "Too many people," Kathy Muggli said of Seattle. "And we get sunshine here."
Nearly every town in North Dakota and elsewhere once had a horologist, Muggli said. Electric clocks that were more accurate, cheaper, and less finicky made the mechanical clock near obsolete.

"These old clocks require participation by the owner," Muggli said of mechanical wind-up clocks. "You just don't put a battery in them and come back in a year."

Mechanical clocks are making a comeback, said Jim Bland, a spokesman for the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors in Columbia, Pa. A growing interest in antiques and the online auction site eBay Inc. has resurrected the mechanical clock, he said.

"They are not the buggy whip," he said. "They are machines, and like all machines, if they are properly lubricated and properly cared for, they will work almost indefinitely."

Bland said his organization has 25,000 watch and clock collectors. The organization also has a horology school, which has graduated about 600 horologists in the past decade.

"People with the skills are dying off, and other factors have created a demand," Bland said.

Horology is a dying art, Muggli said, and it's not for everyone. "It takes good eyes, steady hands, and the ability to be content to work by your self," he said.

Muggli mostly works on grandfather clocks, wall clocks, and mantle clocks. He will only perform a complete clock overhaul, which can cost several hundred dollars, depending on the clock.

Most clocks take at least a day to take apart, clean, oil, replace parts and reassemble, using tiny clock-specific tools.

Muggli said he's been able to fix every clock that has come into his shop.

"Every clock is a whole little bundle of challenges," Muggli said. "Very few are the same." A clock overhaul should be good for at least 25 years, he said.

"My goal is to never see that customer again, unless they bring me another clock," Muggli said.

He said he works a full eight-hour day, but the shift can be spread out throughout the day.

"When my neck gets stiff, I quit working," Muggli said. "And my neck gets stiff quite often."

He will not work on watches or cuckoo clocks. "I can't make any money on cuckoo clocks," Muggli said. "The work it takes is more than the value of the clock."

Many of Muggli's customers are more than 75 years old, looking to pass clocks on to other family members after they die, he said. "They're setting things in order," Muggli said. "They see it as a valuable heirloom, maybe not in dollars, but sentimentally."

Those who receive the clocks "see it as an embodiment of a loved one," he said.

Muggli's skill as a horologist is evident with his own collection of clocks positioned throughout his home. Those dozen or so clocks - some more than a century old - are synchronized to the second. Each sounds off with different chimes exactly on the hour.

"We always know what time it is," Kathy Muggli said.

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Time is on his side
By:  Karel Sovak, Prairie Business Magazine
Published:  August, 2006

Horologist Ken Muggli can't predict the future, but he can help with telling time.

Muggli, owner of Dakota Clock Works, comes from a long line of clockmakers, tracing his ancestry back to William of Trimms in 1529. Horology is the practice of clock repair and Dakota Clock Works is a success story in the rural town of Glen Ullin (ND), bent on the philosophy of high-quality service.

Muggli actually has three businesses, each with their own specialty.
Dakota Clock Repair specializes in the highest quality repair of antique, modern, and vintage mechanical clocks including Herschede Hall clocks. Muggli also services and repairs timepieces in homes, churches, and offices. His work can be seen on his Web site at www.dakotaclock.com. Muggli is proud to state that there are no partial repairs of clocks with his company. All clocks are completely dismantled, inspected, repaired, and reassembled with about an eight-week turnaround time.

Dakota Clock Works (www.dakotaclockworks.com) is more along the do-it-yourself line that many consumers are looking for these days. Muggli boasts that Dakota Clock Works carries the largest and most in-depth inventory of specialized clock movements, replacement parts, and accessories in the world.

"What I don't have or I can't find, I make it myself,” Muggli asserts. His newest venture is Dakota Clock Sales (www.dakotaclocksales.com), which carries anything from the traditional hourglass to Tower clocks, for those wishing a more 'bold' statement. The business offers unique treasures, including glass thermometers and glass weather forecasters along with traditional clocks and radio-controlled clocks.

Muggli uses a strategy that combines skillful advertising, modern communications, and delivery of goods (read: the Internet), combined with high-quality products and strong, ethical business practices.

"When I first returned from Seattle (he worked for Boeing), I found that I wasn't very employable, despite having all this business experience." Muggli recalls. "I mean, we don't make a lot of planes around here and I wanted to return to my hometown. I could find menial employment, but not a meaningful position. So I created it."

It was Muggli's personal experience with his own clock that presented the idea to him to create a niche business in this rural town.

"I had a clock that needed repair," he notes. "After months without it, and no receipt for the clock, then having it returned and finding that it 'still was not working properly and paying for it on top of it all, I saw an opening for a person with a professional shop. I saw an opportunity to make a business.'"

Muggli also realized that the region offered a low population base with a limited number of clocks, and he would have to look elsewhere for customers. That elsewhere was the Internet.

"This is really the second revolution," Muggli observes. "We know what the Industrial Revolution did for the rest of the world, and we are now learning what the Internet can do to help market products or services far and wide. Just opening your doors isn't enough anymore, you have to get your business recognized in so many different ways. I've drawn in business from all over the nation. Your Web site has to sell to the search engines, and that's what mine does. A small Internet-based company can easily find their niche, and in turn, success."

The self-taught entrepreneur also has a 'circle of peers' from which he draws expertise all across the country, some who are "leagues above me" Muggli admits. He belongs to professional organizations that provide excellent technical materials, such as books, CD's, and DVD's. He also attends seminars, which are held throughout the United States.

"I have backup beyond my means," Muggli confesses.

Trust plays a large role in such a business, which can see clocks with values in the multiple thousands of dollars being shipped from customers coast to coast. He adds that his site sells appeal and exhibits confidence to each customer, convincing them that he can do the job right the first time.

"There are no shortcuts; that is the message I sell," Muggli asserts. "I don't want the customer to return, unless it is to repair a different clock or to buy another product. That is my goal with each one of the clocks I repair. If there is a hiccup, I want to know about it before I put it back in its case. The marketplace is big enough for all kinds of service - from the bottom feeders to the highest quality. I fall into that latter category. I also make an effort to educate my customers on how to handle their clocks. They appreciate that."

Amid the ticking of the clocks and their chimes, Muggli says he finds a sense of 'self- satisfaction'. He admits that it is not all about the money, citing how rewarding it is to see a smile on the face of an owner, or a letter of testimony to the quality of his work.

"I do bring a lot to the community," he feels. "I bring revenue into the community, and I don't pollute, plus I uphold the quality of life here. I conduct myself as a professional and I enjoy growing my business."

This rural North Dakota clockmaker says he hopes to one day bring his daughter into the business, so he can explore other attractive activities. Only time will tell.

(Karel Sovak is an assistant professor at the University of Mary in Bismarck and a freelance writer. He can be reached at karelsovak@yahoo.com.).

                                  

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Bismarck Tribune Business Watch
By:  Gwen Bristol
Published:  February, 2007

Horologist Ken Muggli is another Glen Ullin native who returned to his roots. He moved back to Glen Ullin after retiring from Boeing in Seattle. Now he runs three niche- market businesses - Dakota Clockworks, Dakota Clock Repair and Dakota Clock Sales - from his home.

Muggli said technology has flattened the world, making it easier to do global business from small towns like Glen Ullin. The Internet allows him to sell quality new clocks (at www.dakotaclocksales.com) and clock services (through www.dakotaclock.com and www.dakotaclockworks.com) in an innovative way.

"I have created a new industry," Muggli said. "I saw a lot of do- it-yourself stores, and I thought, 'Why can't I sell people clock movements that they can install themselves?' So I started Dakota Clockworks."

Dakota Clock Repair, his in-home repair business, keeps him busy with repairs from all over the nation. As soon as he finishes one clock, there's another at his door. He averages 750 hits a week on his Website, www.dakotaclockrepair.com. Because it's a niche market, almost all of the hits are from potential clients, and he can be choosy about the jobs he does.

Muggli does most of his work from his neat-as-a-pin, shiny-as-clockwork basement shop. He can hole up there all winter and still bring in sales.

Ken Muggli, owner of Dakota Clockworks in Glen Ullin, has repaired clocks from all around the world.                       

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Ken Muggli, on returning to North Dakota
By:  Gwen Bristol, “Beyond North Dakota, North Dakota People”
Published:  September 14, 2007

My friend Ken Muggli in Glen Ullin is a horologist–he spends his days fixing clocks, selling clocks, and selling movements for clocks through the internet. It’s amazing what technology has done to boost the economy of rural North Dakota.

Like many native North Dakotans, Ken moved out of state for a while. He worked for Boeing in Washington state, but he came back. I got a letter from him today explaining why. Let me share some of it with you:

Being born and raised on a farm in North Dakota was the foundation for the rest of my life; a good foundation, for a good life based on responsibility, hard work, and much pleasure. I think of myself as being extremely lucky to have been associated with farm life in rural North Dakota as a boy.

After the Vietnam War I ended up on the left coast, where I spent over 30 years. Although I lived and worked in the city, I was still a farm boy at heart. I didn’t fit in the city; my heart ached for the open prairie of North Dakota. I longed to eat chokecherries, wild strawberries, wild plums and search for the nests of ground-nesting birds like the Meadow Lark (the state bird of North Dakota). I missed the adventure of searching for game, big and small, deer and antelope, fox and coyotes. Ah, the good times…

I flushed a grouse only to see a falcon capture it in fight: the grouse exploded in a cloud of feathers. I saw a golden eagle capture a jackrabbit. The rabbit was so heavy the eagle would gain a little altitude with each down-stroke of its wings but then lose virtually all of the altitude it just gained, almost dragging the rabbit across the field. I watched the eagle struggle off for a quarter of a mile before it landed to dine in private.

While I was away, I missed the creeks (cricks) with their ash trees, buck brush, bull-berry bushes and scoria hills. All of these experiences and many more memories are the sum total of my childhood. They were recalled with pleasure, retold at family gatherings, occasionally shared with others.

I always had fun telling the city folks about how the snow banks in North Dakota were black when I was a boy. They would look at me like I had three heads. Black snow! Nonsense, they would say! But farming practices were much different then. Half the land was maintained in what was called summer fallow. After the harvest the stubble was tilled under, leaving the surface highly susceptible to being picked up b the winter winds and deposited on the snow banks–thus the black snow.

Some farm work was pure drudgery and not much fun for a young buckaroo. On the other hand, breaking and riding my own horse, moving cattle from one pasture to another, operating farm equipment–these were some of the experiences that bring back many pleasant memories. Childhood was a mixture of responsibility, adventure and great freedom.

My parents allowed my brother and me a great deal of latitude to explore the world around us: time to be boys. We trapped mink, weasels, fox and coyote in the winter. I had the pleasure of catching poly-wogs, frogs and garter snakes, small turtles, thirteen-stripe ground squirrels and fishing in the creek for bullheads.

In the summer I especially liked mowing hay; watching the hay fall over the sickle bar was mesmerizing to me.

I loved exploring, looking for anything that was different. I loved the clay buttes with their myriad of interesting things like semi-petrified wood, mica, strange concretions and traces of coal. My brother and I found a human skeleton halfway up the side of a very steep clay butte. This person was on a ledge, complete with a well-rusted pocket knife and a pipe for smoking tobacco. Oh! The stories that person could tell about life on the prairie of North Dakota.

I truly appreciate the experiences I had growing up in North Dakota. So, why did I come back? For the memories…

Tempus Fugit,

Ken Muggli

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