Marilyn Laughlin Queen Of Seed Does Brisk Business Connecting Buyers, Sellers

Marilyn Laughlin can’t believe her ears - the U.S. State Department wants to buy 5,000 tons of wheat seed for Armenia, north of Iran.

“Oh my god, you don’t know what you’re saying!” the Spokane trader of cereal and forage seed shrieks into the telephone receiver. “Where is Armenia, anyway?”

The deal is on, and Laughlin - the Inland Northwest’s undisputed queen of seed - is determined to win it.

She’s got Connell, Wash., seed man Dana Herron working on State Department officials, while employee Mike Miles whips through a list of Pacific Northwest companies to see if Laughlin Trading Inc. can get its hands on the 200,000 bushels needed to fill the Armenian order. It’s a long shot, but Laughlin has built her business on just such challenges.

“I’m not very young, and I’m rather authoritarian, but I try to listen to my customers and give them the best seed I can find,” says the witty widow, taking a break from her daily dealmaking among 500 customers.

Although Laughlin’s influence stretches across the West Coast, she is nearly invisible outside the seed industry. Lodged on the fifth floor of the Northtown Office Building, Laughlin transacts all her business by telephone and fax.

But nearly every Northwest seed and grain elevator company depends at some time on Laughlin to help farmers get the seed they need for spring or fall planting. When a farmer demands a particular seed variety from a local elevator, the company jumps to find someone who has it. That’s when they call Laughlin.

“She’s very important in our business,” says Victor Rae, president of General Feed & Grain Co. in Bonners Ferry. “She puts buyer and seller together.”

Laughlin doesn’t keep track of how much money she handles, but estimates she sells 1 million bushels of seed each year. That’s enough to plant nearly every wheat, barley and hay field in the Pacific Northwest.

In one deal last year, Laughlin sold the Forest Service 40,000 bushels of seed to help restore fire-damaged hills near Wenatchee. A tenacious competitor, the deal still bugs Laughlin because she only won three out of five bids for the seed.

“We got to do this today,” she says, wooing another customer. “If I could spend one concentrated hour on this, I could come back with an answer.”

What Laughlin really sells is information. Armed with knowledge of 250 common and proprietary seed varieties - and a computer program that tells her daily who has which varieties - Laughlin acts as a central clearinghouse between buyer and seller. She acquires the seed, arranges for it to be shipped, and quickly sells it to the ultimate user.

Raised on an Oregon farm, Laughlin has a good understanding of agriculture. But it was 21 years spent in advertising and promotions that equipped her for tackling a tough deal.

“I have this creative side that needs to be vented, so I vent it through the business,” says Laughlin, who hopped between eight cities and Puerto Rico promoting shopping malls and department stores.

Laughlin moved to Spokane in 1983, buying Central Marketing Inc. and changing its name to Laughlin Trading. She employs two workers at the business, which she says needs $120,000 in annual commissions to break even. She always hits the mark.

Laughlin doesn’t set the price of seed, but she knows better than most what it’s worth. She’s hopes her experience pays off this year when she and partner Herron contract with Columbia Basin farmers to raise 20 irrigated circles of seed. Herron is overseeing production; it’s up to Laughlin to sell it.

“Would you give me two loads of irrigated if the dryland goes to hell?” she asks another customer, with a grin that betrays her bluff. “No? I knew that wasn’t going to work.”

Usually upbeat, Laughlin concedes that trading seed wears her down. She logs 50 hours a week and panicky elevator managers sometimes call her in the middle of the night when a frost or harvest rain threatens to ruin the seed crop.

To maintain her sanity, Laughlin employs Spokane hypnotherapist Jayne Helle as her “business counselor,” and collects Southwestern art at her Browne’s Addition home.

“I work under the premise of positive paranoia,” says Laughlin, who stuffs her bookcase with bags of seed samples.

On this day, paranoia is roaring down the track when the State Department calls back to say its buying the seed for Armenia from Russia. But Laughlin derails the bad news with another crack.

“So there’s a whole day’s work lost,” Laughlin sighs. “Hey! What’s the State Department doing getting its seed from the Russians, anyway? Maybe I ought to call them on this.”