Businessman
In 1993, Tillman expanded his business into South America, becoming the exclusive agent for Bolivian suri alpacas exports to the United States the following year. Tillman's South American heards eventually totaled several thousand llamas and alpacas. In 1995, his animals won first, second, and third place in the suri alpaca category at the National Expo-Feria in La Paz, Bolivia. He also won first place in the black huacaya alpaca competition, second place in the white fleece alpaca category, and third place for brown huacaya alpacas. This was the first time a North American breeder had ever won a major South American national show.
In 1996, Tillman imported the first huacaya alpacas into the United States along with the largest herd of colored suri alpacas ever brought into the country, a total of 182 animals. Because the animals came from Bolivia, the United States Department of Agriculture required the herd to be quarantined for three months at the Harry S. Truman Animal Import Center in Key West, Florida. Nevertheless, it was a profitable venture for Tillman. The next year, he exported one hundred llamas and alpacas from his ranch in Bend to Canadian buyers.
In 2007, Tillman sold his show champion llamas and alpacas and most of his breeding stock at an international auction held at the Indiana State Fair ground in Indianapolis, Indiana. Still interested in science, in 2006, Tillman sponsored a study of llama and alpaca fiber at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington. The study used a scanning electron microscope to identify and analyze the unique surface structure of llama and suri alpaca fibers.
Today, Tillman is retired, retaining about forty animals on his ranch. He still writes about llama and alpaca husbandry, and is an editor for Purely Suri magazine.
Contrary to some speculation, Andy Tillman is no relation to the family of athlete and Army Ranger Pat Tillman.
Read more about this topic: Andy Tillman
Famous quotes containing the word businessman:
“The businessman who assumes that his life is everything, and the mystic who asserts that it is nothing, fail, on this side and on that, to hit the truth.... No; truth, being alive ... was only to be found by continuous excursions into either realm, and though proportion is the final secret, to espouse it at the outset is to ensure sterility.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“A good businessman never makes a contract unless he’s sure he can carry it through, yet every fool on earth is perfectly willing to sign a marriage contract without considering whether he can live up to it or not.”
—Dalton Trumbo (1905–1976)
“If when a businessman speaks of minority employment, or air pollution, or poverty, he speaks in the language of a certified public accountant analyzing a corporate balance sheet, who is to know that he understands the human problems behind the statistical ones? If the businessman would stop talking like a computer printout or a page from the corporate annual report, other people would stop thinking he had a cash register for a heart. It is as simple as that—but that isn’t simple.”
—Louis B. Lundborg (1906–1981)