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FRIENDSHIP, ME – Though he’s been running the show at Friendship Trap Co. for a good five years, Mike Wadsworth now has a title that reflects his crucial role within the company – chief executive officer.

Company founder Pike Bartlett, who made the announcement in early April, added that Wadsworth also is taking on partial ownership of the company.

“This is more of a title than a responsibility or functional change,” Bartlett said. “But we want people to know that Mike’s now part owner of the company. It makes people look at him in a different light.”

Friendship Trap Co. was founded in 1977, making 2007 the company’s 30th anniversary year. Wadsworth has been with the company for about half that time. He started with Friendship in the early 1980s and then set out on his own to form Mike’s Wire Traps in his hometown of Union.

“Most people in the industry know me from Mike’s Wire Traps,” he said.

But that’s not all he did. He also owned and ran Krystal’s, a three-meals-a-day café in Union, dabbled in the real estate business, and got his private pilot’s license during that period of his life.

“I’m the type of guy who needs to be challenged,” Wadsworth confessed.

Then in 1997, he had a talk with Bartlett, who was devoting more of his time to his other company, Bartlett Bench & Wire, a Howland, ME-based venture that manufactures products for the agricultural greenhouse industry.

Bartlett needed someone he could trust to run the trap business and, together, they decided it made sense for Wadsworth to return to Friendship.

Wadsworth, who jokes that he’s had “every title that there is” at Friendship, is clearly at ease in the driver’s seat.

These days, the company employs 48-60 people, depending on the season, between its Downeast manufacturing and retail facility in Columbia Falls and its main plant in Friendship.

Expanding on its slogan – “The specialists from buoy to trap” – both facilities now offer a full line of products lobstermen need, including foul weather gear and paint. And between the two operations, the company builds some 50,000-60,000 traps a year.

That’s down somewhat from 10 years ago, which is a reflection of the changes the lobster industry has been going through, according to Wadsworth.

“There are a lot of challenges facing the industry,” he said, referring to shifting seasons, whale protection rules, market issues, and more. “We share those challenges because we’re tied right to the lobstermen.”

But mainly, the biggest problem facing the industry is the rising cost of doing business, Wadsworth said.

“The guys are trying to fish a better trap, to get the best bang for their dollar, and we’re trying to build a more efficient, maintenance-free trap,” he said.

After an exhaustive search for a quality product, Friendship has struck a deal to work with an overseas wire supplier to enable it to continue offering its traps to lobstermen at competitive prices.

About a third of Friendship’s business is its Rockbottom line of inshore and offshore wire traps with built-in, specially formulated concrete ballast runners.

And the company continues to invent and craft new products, such as its recently introduced four-pound and six-pound Sea Master Ballasts, which are clip-on vinyl-coated ballast blocks designed by Wadsworth to be lighter on deck than they are in the water.

A couple of additional new products will be coming online soon, Wadsworth said, though he wasn’t quite ready to reveal the details.

As for the future, Wadsworth is confident.

“This industry’s not going away,” he said. “So we’ll keep doing what we do.”

Lorelei Stevens