If You Need A Maze, Here's The Guy To Call

If You Need A Maze, Here's The Guy To Call FARM HOME Novelty Items 25-1-5 Brett Herbst makes his living from corn. But he's not a corn grower or marketer. The Salmon, Idaho, native designs corn mazes for a living. His business is called The MAIZE, LLC. You've probably seen or heard about some of the 102 mazes he's designed across North America. He got into the corn maze business more by happenstance than by plan. "Five years ago, I had just graduated and was working for a large farming and farm management company. I read about a corn maze in Pennsylvania and I thought it looked like fun. Just out of college, I could imagine that young people would pay to go through something like that, so I made the first corn maze west of the Mississippi River," he says. Not only was his maze successful financially, but he was contacted by others who wanted to do the same thing. Herbst gets a consulting fee for the initial plan plus a percentage of the admission fees paid. He encourages clients to sign a long-term contract with him. "That guarantees the client that I won't take on another client in their area who might compete with them," he says. Clients get more than just a design for their money. "We provide them with a custom-designed maze, web-site coverage, help them with budgeting, give them firsthand advice and recommendations, and help with marketing and media in order to publicize their maze. And every client receives a detailed Training Guide, which tells how to have a successful corn maze," he says. Herbst says the corn mazes he's designed take up from 4 acres to about 13 acres. "Some designs are simple. But if we have room to work, we can make them very intricate, with escape routes along the way. In smaller mazes, we may throw in some tricks to make them harder," he says. He says the most intricate design he's come up with was one near Lindon, Utah in 1999 called Lost in Space. "We had all the planets in our solar system in it," he says. "We got into the Guinness Book of World Records with that one." Another one he's proud of was called Udderly Corny and it was in the shape of a big dairy cow. In addition to designing and consulting, Herbst and his employees will also cut the maze for the owners - for a fee of course. Herbst is working on plans for 80 mazes right now, some of which will be near major metropolitan areas in New York and Florida. He figures he could do more, but says he needs to be contacted at least 30 days, and preferably 60 days, before the field where the intended maze is planted. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Brett Herbst, THE MAIZE LLC, PO Box 970086, Orem, Utah 84097-0086 (ph 801 489-1118; E-mail: ktmaize@aol.com; Web site: www.cornfieldmaze.com).

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