UPSTATE
MARCH 1, 2013
BUSINESS J
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A TALE OF
TWO DOWNTOWNS THE APARTMENT MARKETS IN GREENVILLE AND SPARTANBURG TELL VERY DIFFERENT DEVELOPMENT STORIES PAGE 18
A VIEW FROM THE TOP AT THE COMMERCE CLUB
HELPING EXPAT EMPLOYEES NAVIGATE THE UPSTATE
MAIN STREET CAFE STAYS IN FOR THE LONG HAUL
VARIGENCE GOES FROM MICROSOFT TO STARTUP
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UBJ
Table of Contents
A view of North Main Street from the Commerce Club.
PRESIDENT/PUBLISHER Mark B. Johnston mjohnston@communityjournals.com SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT Alan P. Martin amartin@communityjournals.com UBJ ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Ryan L. Johnston rjohnston@communityjournals.com EXECUTIVE EDITOR Susan Clary Simmons ssimmons@communityjournals.com MANAGING EDITOR Jerry Salley jsalley@communityjournals.com STAFF WRITERS Cindy Landrum, April A. Morris, Charles Sowell SENIOR BUSINESS WRITER Dick Hughes CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Jenny Munro, Jennifer Oladipo, Jeanne Putnam, Leigh Savage EDITORIAL INTERNS Shelby Livingston, Casey Dargan
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Photo by Greg Beckner
F E AT U R E S
COLUMNS
DEPA RTMEN T S
Entrepreneur 10 Jump Start: Data Cruncher
Digital Maven 6 And in Tech News This Week...
Cover Story 18 Looking for Living Room in the City
Statehouse Report 7 Time for Legislature to Do Something Courageous
Create. Innovate. Celebrate. 21 Charlie Houser’s Serial Entrepreneurship
Nonprofit Matters 8 Aligning Your Business’s Philanthropy
4 Worth Repeating 4 TBA 14 Square Feet 21 The Takeaway 23 The Fine Print 24 On the Move 26 Planner 28 Quarterlies 29 New to the Street 30 Social 31 Snapshot
ART & PRODUCTION ART DIRECTOR Richie Swann PHOTOGRAPHER Greg Beckner CONTRIBUTING PHOTO EDITOR Gerry Pate PRODUCTION Holly Hardin MARKETING & ADVERTISING MARKETING REPRESENTATIVES Lori Burney, Mary Beth Culbertson, Kristi Jennings, Donna Johnston, Pam Putman MARKETING Katherine Elrod MARKETING & EVENTS Kate Banner BILLING Shannon Rochester CLIENT SERVICES MANAGERS Anita Harley, Jane Rogers ADVERTISING DESIGN Kristy Adair, Michael Allen, Whitney Fincannon, Caroline Reinhardt IDEAS, FEEDBACK, OPINIONS opinions@upstatebusinessjournal.com HOW TO REACH US 148 River Street., Suite 120 Greenville, SC 29601 864-679-1200
Copyright @2013 BY COMMUNITY JOURNALS LLC. All rights reserved. Upstate Business Journal (Vol. 2, No. 8) is published weekly by Community Journals LLC. 148 River Street, Suite 120, Greenville, South Carolina, 29601. Upstate Business Journal is a free publication. Annual subscriptions (52 issues) can be purchased for $65. Visit www. UpstateBusinessJournal.com. Postmaster: Send address changes to Upstate Business, 148 River St., Ste 120, Greenville, SC 29601. Printed in the USA.
2 UPSTATE BUSINESS JOURNAL March 1, 2013
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UBJ
Worth Repeating | TBA
“We pass on information when it’s positive or negative, as long as it’s emotional. Articles that make people angry or anxious are more likely to be shared than articles that make people sad.” Viral marketing expert Jonah Berger
“Our ability to make sense out of all
this data hasn’t grown as fast as our ability to collect the data.”
Scott Currie, founder of Varigence, makers of data management software
A Program of The International Center
A MONTHLONG CELEBRATION OF CULTURES
MARCH 1 - 31
UpstateInternational.org
“Right now, downtown is at 100 percent of capacity so far as apartments are concerned. What we need is more businesses to draw people to the area and give them the incentives they need to live in downtown.” Will Rothschild, spokesman for the City of Spartanburg
“Actually, they’ve come a long way over in Spartanburg. They have a bright future ahead of them if they stay the course on downtown development.” Greenville Mayor Knox White
TBA
Word is that Target Corp. is looking at a spot near downtown Greenville... Greenville-based Selah Genomics Inc. has started a Clinical Genomics Center at the University of South Carolina’s Innovista research campus in Columbia… Expect to hear soon about the impending merger announcement between a leading Upstate
4 Upstate business journal March 1, 2013
accounting firm and a statewide accounting firm with a Greenville office. Reports are that the marriage would combine the firms’ Greenville offices into a single location and position the combined firm to more effectively serve emerging and middle-market organizations and municipalities across the Upstate… Reports are that Greenville Zoo will soon be getting a new red panda…
UBJ
News
New iPad App Lets You ‘Solve the Outbreak’
early 1950s and include physicians, scientists, veterinarians and health professionals who do public health research and surveillance. In addition,
when a mysterious outbreak or public health crisis happens, they fly at a moment’s notice to the scene to investigate. Solve the Outbreak is available free
through the iTunes store at itunes. apple.com/US/app/id592485067. For more information on the CDC, visit cdc.gov.
Inland Port Breaks Ground This Week the south carolina ports Authority announced last week that the groundbreaking for the inland port in Greer will take place Friday, March 1. Images for the campus plan will also be unveiled that day. Ports Authority spokesperson Allison Skipper said the timeline is still firm for opening the $23.5 million
inland port on September 1. It will sit on 30 acres at the intersection of Highways 101 and 290 and the J. Verne Smith Parkway. About 250 more acres are available for related development, and BMW will be the port’s anchor user, shipping some 25,000 containers per year through the port.
Speaking at the event will be Ports Authority CEO Jim Newsome; Mike McClellan, Norfolk Southern’s vice president of automotive and intermodal marketing; Governor Nikki Haley; and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood. The groundbreaking ceremony is scheduled for 1 p.m. March 1 at 1120 E. Poinsett St., Greer.
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every business seems to have its own app, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is no exception. The public health agency recently released Solve the Outbreak for the iPad, a game which allows users to be a disease outbreak investigator. Scenarios like “Birthday Party Gone Bad” offer opportunities to gather clues, review data and make decisions to determine the cause of the outbreak and ultimately advance through the ranks of the agency’s Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS). Facebook and Twitter options also allow players to post their results and challenge other players. Game participants learn definitions, health tips and information about epidemiology along the way. “This is a great learning tool for science teachers, teens, young adults, public health enthusiasts and mystery lovers,” said Carol Crawford, branch chief of the CDC’s Electronic Media Branch. “The three introductory scenarios are based on actual events EIS officers have solved. We also plan to add new outbreak cases.” The real EIS officers date back to the
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UBJ
Digital Maven
By LAURA HAIGHT
And in Tech News This Week... if you aren’t the kind of person who voraciously devours Wired, Gizmodo and other tech media, you are missing some really important developments. Here’s a look at recent tech news you need to know. Or not.
MacBook? Hmm... Well, says one Google hardware designer quoted by All Things Digital, we are “tuning the force function of the mechanical keys to be more responsive.” Well, the geeks will love that!
Apple. There is an entire cottage industry developed around getting to the core of what Apple is up to these days. The least little glimmer, and a breathless post appears on Today’s iPhone, iMore, Macrumors, Cult of Mac and more. Here are a few juicy bits that the Apple press is salivating over this week. Apparently, there is a new iPad case in design. This has been leaked from an Apple accessory provider. Why does this matter? Because it gives us a glimpse into the dimensions and possible ports that could be seen on the next-gen iPad. Says Cult of Mac: We will be looking at a narrower bezel and slimmer profile. And, as if that’s not exciting enough, the microphone may move to the rear shell. On the app front, according to MacRumors, Apple is hiring something called a “Maps Ground Truth Data Specialist” in Australia. This person will collect information “on the ground” to better calibrate the Map app results in Australia. I guess that’s pretty important: One wrong turn in the Outback and you are on a long walkabout.
Space, the final frontier. So much of our time is spent looking at small things – smartphones, tablets, TV (no matter how big the set). This week, Wired looked up at the big picture: What if the big one – a giant Earth-killing asteroid – is in fact on its way here, right now? What can we do? (Read the full article here: goo.gl/QD6SQ.) As scary as it may seem, several initiatives are underway. Something called ATLAS will start building an early-warning system for impending hits by city-destroying or potentially devastating asteroids. It’s supposed to be online in 2015 and will give us a week’s notice. Hmmm. Not sure how that helps, except it’s enough time to go to Hawaii, rent a house on a bluff overlooking the ocean and join Kapalua Country Club! Another effort is the B612 Foundation, which is planning to launch a telescope by 2017 to put eyes in orbit near Venus. Of course, the biggest unanswered question is: Once we see it, what do we do about it – even if we have enough time to act? B612 recommends firing something big into the asteroid to push it off course. I think we saw this in 1998’s “Armageddon” where Bruce Willis saves the world – again! I say we put Apple on it. Maybe the Map app can be used to help us get to safety if the big one is coming to a town near us. Well, at least as long as we aren’t in Australia.
Yahoo. Last week, this column talked about the ability and advantages in working remotely. I guess that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer wasn’t reading. Yahoo notified employees last week that anyone working remotely needed to relocate to the company facilities. “Speed and quality,” she said in an internal memo published by The Wall Street Journal, “are often sacrificed when we work from home.” She added: “We need to be one Yahoo!” The change, which begins in June, is not being well received. Highly
placed sources say there’s not a lot of wiggle room in the new rule: Come in from the cold, or quit. Anticipating some defections, other tech companies are sweetening the pot and trolling the waters with a lifeboat for former Yahoos. Microsoft. Microsoft announced that it had been the subject of a cyberattack. I was shocked to read this – perhaps they missed one of last week’s extensive portfolio of security updates to fix all the newly exploited holes in their products. Welcome to the world of the rest of us! Google. Are you familiar with the Chromebook? It’s an interesting product that the company is highly touting in certain industries like education. No software required, the Chromebook is a totally browserdriven operating system. It starts
6 UPSTATE BUSINESS JOURNAL March 1, 2013
nearly instantly and, since no software is installed, users really can’t mess it up, so they can be used in environments without much IT support. Most Chromebooks are inexpensive – as low as $199. But last week, Google launched itself into the high-end market with a $1299 touch-screen version called Pixel. It is beautiful with extensive attention to detail in its design and manufacture. The big question is, “Why?” Google’s Chrome senior VP says they are providing the best device possible for “power users living in the cloud.” A lot of the tech press is headscratching. A $1299 laptop that won’t run any software and isn’t a
Laura Haight is the president of Portfolio (www.portfoliosc.com), a communications company based in Greenville that focuses on harnessing the power of today’s technology to reach new customers, turn customers into loyal clients and loyal clients into advocates. She is a former IT executive, journalist and newspaper editor.
UBJ
Statehouse Report
By ANDY BRACK
Time for Legislature to Do Something Courageous legislators often don’t have the courage to do something really big for the state in one fell swoop. There’s always some kind of excuse: We don’t want to raise taxes. It costs too much. There are too many other needs. Now, the state Board of Economic Advisors has a cup of courage: a $163 million surplus this year brought on by higher-than-projected corporate and individual income tax collections.
million there for a new road. In other words, the solution often is political only, not strategic. But in a state with a long list of big needs, state lawmakers should direct money into making a big impact. Our suggestion: Spend it all on education to implement a statewide, voluntary pre-kindergarten for 4-year-olds. Business people roundly agree this is the best investment in our
The state Board of Economic Advisors has a cup of courage: a $163 million surplus this year brought on by higher-than-projected tax collections. Now, what to do with it? The good news about the surplus is that it can be considered recurring dollars – money that will continue to flow into state coffers every year, barring some huge recession. Over a decade, that means the state can expect $1.6 billion in extra revenues. So, what to do with it? Typically, such huge pots are divvied up to pay for lots of comparatively small initiatives to assuage individual politicians and boost their pet projects – a few million here for a pilot project, a few
future because it will add taxpayers to the workforce, cut crime and cut dependency. The cost to add around 20,000 kids to the 40,000 who already get some kind of pre-K? About $90 million a year. The rest of the money – more than $75 million – could be used to boost huge legislative underfunding of per-pupil funding for public education across the board. For the last four years during the recession, state legislators wrote a special exception to allow a huge cut to mandated per-pupil funding levels. In the current school budget, for example, the law required $2,790 in funds spent on average per K-12 child. But the General Assembly appropriated $2,012 per child. In the budget that lawmakers are now working on for next year, the projected
shortfall to legally required funding for public education is $600 million. Many people we asked suggested that the $163 million be steered to education. Historian Jack Bass, for example, suggested $100 million to restore funding cuts, with the rest to restore cuts to higher education and reduce tuition, which would boost the number of students eligible for lottery scholarships. The Rev. Joe Darby of Charleston suggested the money should be directed to equalize staffing, equipment, curriculum offerings and support programs at all public schools so that parents had real choices about schools. “We should increase support for programs with proven effectiveness in the areas of early childhood education, teen pregnancy prevention, dropout prevention, child abuse prevention, etc.,” said Forrest Alton, CEO of the S.C. Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. “The success of our young people should be a political priority.” Others, like S.C. Trucking Association CEO Rick Todd, said the money should be directed to the state’s ailing transportation infrastructure, which needs $29 billion in maintenance over the next two decades. “In this no-tax-increase political environment, I can’t think of a better use of monies than a capital program like road infrastructure.” Other ideas: Health care: Expand Medicaid coverage to cover thousands more people without health insurance, said the AARP’s Patrick Cobb. Helping people: “We should remove some of the perverse incentives that make it difficult for those getting state assistance to get back
Go Figure
$163 MILLION SURPLUS THIS YEAR
$1.6 BILLION
EXTRA REVENUES OVER A DECADE
$90 MILLION
COST OF PRE-K FOR 20,000 KIDS
on their own two feet,” said George Stevens, president of the Coastal Community Foundation. “Earning a little bit of money sometimes triggers forfeiture of an entire assistance package. A little creative thinking and cash would correct these unintended consequences.” Laptops for students: Spend $140 million to provide a laptop or digital learning device to every public school first-grader, said Phil Noble of Charleston. There are other good ideas – a high-speed rail line between Charleston and Greenville; restoring $210 million in cuts to local governments; and addressing longtime cuts to mental health programs. But the point is, regardless of what is done with the new money, the Legislature needs to do something that will make a palpable difference.
Andy Brack, publisher of Statehouse Report, offers weekly commentary. Reach him directly at brack@statehousereport.com.
March 1, 2013 UPSTATE BUSINESS JOURNAL 7
UBJ
Nonprofit Matters
By DEBBIE NELSON
Aligning Your Business’s Philanthropy this month, i have decided to tackle a topic near and dear to my heart: philanthropy. According to Merriam Webster, philanthropy is a voluntary, organized effort intended for socially useful purposes. I particularly appreciate the use of the word “organized” in this definition. My passion for philanthropy began the summer after I graduated from college. At that time, I was fortunate to secure an internship with The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation in Menlo Park, Calif. During my tenure with the foundation, I learned about their many grantees and assisted in writing program briefs for their annual report. This was my first exposure to the philosophy behind charitable giving. As you might imagine, this prestigious foundation received countless applications for funding, so the selection process was extremely competitive. As stewards of the Kaiser family’s wishes, program officers followed clearly defined goals and criteria to make their selections. Many years later as a business owner, I integrated many of these principles into DNA’s corporate giving program, Live Here Give Here. I am often asked questions about the attributes of our annual program. Recently over coffee, a business associate asked me: My business has a long history of giving small financial contributions to a wide variety of local causes. Would you recommend that we implement a more strategic approach for our philanthropy? JIM Jim, your current giving efforts are based on what I would define as “checkbook charity.” Many businesses select this easy-to-implement method
with your strategic business goals. With an established focus, you can then determine the elements of your philanthropy: dollars, volunteer hours and/or in-kind supplies or services. Like any other area of your operations, you must establish an annual budget that includes the costs associated with each of these approaches. I am a huge proponent of including volunteer hours as a part of your charitable plan. The benefits can be numerous. By offering time and talent, you can leverage your financial contributions to the organization. In addition, many companies find that
By establishing and executing a targeted plan, your philanthropy will have a much greater impact on your appreciative recipients as well as your business. to touch as many groups as possible and to respond to a wide variety of employee interests. At some point during the year, the “checkbook” runs out and the giving stops. I, on the other hand, prefer and recommend aligning charitable efforts with your company’s mission and values. By establishing and executing a targeted plan, your philanthropy will have a much greater impact on your appreciative recipients as well as your business. To build a plan, start by defining your passions and how they overlay
a solid volunteerism program is an important employee recruitment and retention tool. Company-sponsored volunteer activities offer an opportunity for employees to get to know each other outside of the workplace, thus fostering team spirit while supporting a good cause. Here are a few other considerations: Identify a company champion who is empowered to manage your business’ philanthropy. In addition, I like to engage other interested employees to evaluate and select recipients that
align well with the established plan. Promote your funding priorities and proposal guidelines. And be ready to say “no.” Saying “no” is never easy, but handle it with grace and offer feedback when possible. I often make a personal call, though I recognize this is not always possible. Do your homework and keep a finger on the pulse of the community. Align with healthy and sustainable organizations that serve an established community need. And don’t be afraid to request financial statements and documentation of how donations are spent. Don’t be shy about sharing your community involvement efforts. Sharing your efforts publicly will help to build awareness about the causes you support as well as inspire others to get involved. And clients and customers like to associate with businesses that support worthy causes. In closing, Jim, I encourage you to implement a strategic approach for your philanthropy. You will be rewarded with an enhanced reputation for your business, increased brand awareness, improved customer loyalty, and greater employee satisfaction and retention, not to mention that it offers you an opportunity to truly make a difference in our community. Until next time, DEBBIE Debbie@dnacc.com
Debbie Nelson is the president and founder of DNA Creative Communications, a public relations firm that partners with nonprofit and government organizations in the education, human services and sustainability sectors. Each year DNA offers its Live Here Give Here pro bono program and Shine the Light on Your Nonprofit workshop series.
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UBJ
Downtown
Created for Commerce Reinvented Commerce Club aims to meet changing needs By Leigh Savage | contributor
arnold burrell was a charter member of the Commerce Club in 1984, when he was district manager for BellSouth. A lot has changed in the past 30 years, including his retirement in 2001, but he still enjoys heading to the club, perched at the top of the One Liberty Square building in downtown Greenville, for a meal or social event. “There are a lot of young people there now, but there is still a sprinkle of gray hairs around,” he said. “There is something for everyone.” That’s just the environment general manager Dylan Petrick and his staff hoped to create as they set out to “reinvent” the Commerce Club throughout 2012. Owner ClubCorp, based in Dallas, spent about $1 million to renovate the bar area and lounge. “We wanted to freshen the club and make it more user-friendly as a place to connect and build relationships,” said Petrick, who has been with ClubCorp for three years and at Commerce Club for a year and a half. Two Touchdown Rooms – small spaces where members can work, take private phone calls or host business meetings – have been popular additions. “That’s where the deals are done,” Petrick said. “They are constantly used. You might have a Clemson MBA student in there doing homework or an older executive prepping to give a speech at the club.” With 1,038 members, the club gained 22 net members in 2012, which Petrick said is excellent growth after a membership dip between 2008 and 2011. Membership peaked in 2008 with 1,300, “and we are still working our way back up there,” he said. The club was immediately popular when it was founded, Burrell said. “Back in those years, there were wait-
ClubCorp spent about $1 million to renovate the Commerce Club’s bar area and lounge. Photo by Greg Beckner
“The Commerce Club was the first business club to recognize and promote women and to give women a place to find their voice.” Ingrid Erwin
ing lists at private clubs, and the time had come for there to be another club.” ClubCorp was well known, but they were focusing on larger markets like Chicago and Atlanta, he said. “To come to a town our size, they were impressed with what was beginning to happen here, and fortunately we have continued to do well.”
Diverse group Another plus for many members has been the openness toward diversity. The Commerce Club was the first in the area to allow women, according to Ingrid Erwin, an attorney who joined in the early 1990s. “Not just as a spouse, but women on their own could be members here,” she said. “It was the first busi-
Contact Leigh Savage at lsavage@communityjournals.com.
ness club to recognize and promote women and to give women a place to find their voice.” Petrick said that historically, clubs in Greenville had catered to white men 55 and up, “and we have that demographic. But we have 200 young executives, or 20 percent, which is unheard of.” Though Petrick did not have a number or percentage of female members, he said there has been a lot of interest in women-specific events at the club and that the events are well attended. When a member joins, the club creates a profile of interests and uses analytics to see what events and outings would best suit his or her needs. Female members expressed an interest in speakers and networking, so
the club created “Women, Wine and Wisdom,” where women can learn from a speaker and then network among peers. “Wine is a huge thing for our membership, so we have two wine tastings a month,” he said. The Brewmasters group hosts about 80 people per month for beer tastings. A benefit of being part of ClubCorp, which owns 150 clubs in 23 states and two foreign countries, is that members can use the other facilities as they travel. The company owns Capital City Club in Columbia; Woodside Plantation, a golf club in Aiken; and several Atlanta clubs. “We’re pushing these reciprocal relationships,” said Petrick, who is working on a deal with Grove Park Inn for the Greenville membership.
Tech tune-up Growing demand led to enhanced technology, with an upgraded wireless system to speed connections and Club Hub, a touch-screen television that showcases what’s going on in Greenville and at clubs in other cities. A new wine app allows members to browse the available selection, and another new app will share information about speakers and events. An 84-inch television added to the bar is ideal for sports or other viewing. After unveiling the new bar area and other updates in December, next up is a $200,000 renovation to the Paris Ballroom. Burrell, who is the second chairman of the Board of Governors after the late C. Dan Joyner held the post for 21 years, will hand over the reins in 2014, with Erwin taking his place. Burrell expects the Commerce Club to continue making its mark on the business community. “Over the years it was used greatly for economic development prospects. It’s a good place to host out-of-towners and prospective employers,” he said. “The club has improved the business climate and quality of life in Greenville.”
March 1, 2013 Upstate business journal 9
UBJ
Downtown
In It for the Long Haul Camille’s Sidewalk Cafe has weathered neighboring construction projects and flagging economy By April A. Morris | staff
Scott and Loretta Stephens
10 UPSTATE BUSINESS JOURNAL March 1, 2013
as the breakfast rush subsides, Scott Stephens wipes the construction dust from a table in Camille’s Sidewalk Cafe, which is tucked at the back of the Piazza Bergamo and has a chain-link fence blocking the view from Main Street in Greenville. Scott and Loretta Stephens will celebrate five years operating at the location in March, having moved from a spot in the Asheville Mall. In those five years, the two said they have had about 18 months total of unimpeded access to their location between construction projects. The couple sat down to talk about how their business venture has succeeded despite departing tenants in nearby office buildings and a flagging economy, not to mention sidewalkblocking heavy equipment and a multi-year construction site. In 2008, they started strong. “Right out the gate, in the first few months we were doing 30 percent above what we had done at the Asheville store,” Loretta Stephens said. Her husband said the trend changed quickly, however: “It was the perfect storm of progress in the piazza and a poor economy.” Scott Stephens credits Camille’s survival partially to a core group of customers who frequent the spot that serves sandwiches, salads, wraps, smoothies, coffee and other fresh fare. “The local businesses have been huge customers and helped us out a lot,” he said. Several nearby merchants also refer their customers to Camille’s, his wife said. Though the core has been loyal, the Stephenses admit moving forward has been a struggle. Sales “dropped off again in the last year,” said Loretta Stephens. When some of the small businesses downtown closed, Camille’s would lose a customer here and a customer there. “Those ones add up to many when they’re not coming regularly,” she said. While at one time they both worked in the restaurant, in 2010 Scott Stephens had the chance to pursue a job with Harvest Hope Food Bank, and Loretta Stephens took over day-
Construction work in front of Camille’s Sidewalk Cafe Photos by Greg Beckner
“That’s one of the things that I think is so unique about the Greenville area … we’re not in the best situation right now, but we’ve got a lot of folks behind us.” Scott Stephens
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The Stephenses are proud of the food they offer and of their friendly staff, which is expected to double soon. Scott Stephens said that the fare helps to keep their customers coming back. “We make it to order and it’s never sitting around. I think that is a draw.” When the piazza is open, Camille’s will probably expand its hours to accommodate those who visit, he said. “Now with this being a destination, this is going to be a great place for us to have people congregate and to be able to serve them.” Loretta Stephens said that she had made many friends through the business. “It’s more than serving food. Some people come in and need to talk. One of my dearest friends I met working in the cafe.” “We love being downtown and love serving the people here,” said Scott Stephens, who added that tenants of the ONE building have already been in to eat. And when the piazza work is complete, Scott Stephens envisions his customers at outdoor seating near the planned water feature. “Yeah, it’s been a rough road, but I’m excited about what’s going to happen. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel.” Contact April Morris at amorris@community journals.com.
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to-day operations. She took to the challenge, he said, and has become a shrewd business owner. He had worked in the nonprofit sector before purchasing the restaurant, serving as executive director of Calvary Home for Children in Anderson. He’s now development director with Piedmont Women’s Center. In addition to Scott Stephens working outside the restaurant, Camille’s opted to launch a catering service, which was a success. “We realized early that if people can’t come out to us, we need to get out to the people,” Scott Stephens said. The city, the Chamber of Commerce and even the developers understood the situation and helped out as much as possible, he said. “They’ve been there to support us. That’s one of the things that I think is so unique about the Greenville area … we’re not in the best situation right now, but we’ve got a lot of folks behind us and supported us rather than saying we were on our own.” The couple also credits a higher power for pulling through the tough times. “We have a lot of praying customers,” said Loretta Stephens. Her husband gestured to the back of the space and added, “We’ve had customers stand in that corner and pray for us and for our business.”
2/11/13 2:13 PM
UBJ
International
Culture Crash Course Wetzel helps expat employees navigate the Upstate By Leigh Savage | contributor
contract, and business blossomed. The company still works with BMW and many suppliers, such as Plastic Omnium and Drexel Meyer, as well as Fluor and Bosch. There are six fluent German speakers on staff, as well as French and Chinese speakers, and the company offers courses in Italian and Spanish. The expansion he didn’t see coming was in the area of real estate. “I never expected to have a real estate brokerage, but the three divisions makes sense, providing a full range of services for a company that just wants to hand this over and we help them all the way to the end.” Relocation was added to the mix in 2001 and the real estate brokerage in 2004. In the past two summers, his
can help make a one-month period.” Monika Schoffel arrived with her husband from Germany in August 2012, and said Wetzel “took us by the hand and helped us with many things that needed to be done on a relocation,” including finding a home, setting up a bank account, working with utility companies and conducting intercultural training to understand differences. Wetzel said clients frequently seek answers to cultural questions, asking about the large number of churches or local attitudes toward alcohol. They often stop by the Wetzel office for coffee or meet at the Bavarian Pretzel Factory for social events. Schoffel has already begun to feel at home in Greenville and credits Wetzel’s services for easing the transition. “They were always helpful with every question, and for us, it was easier to feel like we were at home in Greenville very soon,” she said.
“We advocate for them all the way through. What might be a sixmonth process we can help make a one-month period.” Paul Wetzel, president of Wetzel Services
Paul Wetzel
Photo Provided
paul wetzel started a business to provide language training 18 years ago, but quickly found that when executives from overseas arrive in the United States, their needs go far beyond bridging the language barrier. “The main hurdles are schools and housing,” said Wetzel, president of Wetzel Services. “Schools for children is just a huge concern for a family that comes here for a couple of years. And then housing, everything from signing contracts to paying security deposits and setting up electricity. We advocate for them all the way through.” The ability to recognize and fill a growing need – supporting international companies bringing in expats for long-term stints – has allowed Wetzel Services to expand from six employees to 10 over the past few years and helped the company achieve record growth during tough economic times. “We were very lucky,” Wetzel said. “Right when everyone else was slowing down, that was when there was an expansion out at BMW, so we stayed strong.” He also credits the diversity of having three divisions – international relocation, language and intercultural training, and realty services – with the steady growth. “Most language schools were hurt, so it helped that we are not just a language school.” That’s what Wetzel set out to create in 1996. He had taught middle school in Greenville County for a decade and had a master’s in education from Clemson, where he researched methods of teaching English as a second language. He created Wetzel Services, won a BMW
real estate division found housing for 90 families, which he said was challenging due to a limited number of homes available for rent. There are large relocation companies through the U.S., but Wetzel has found that many expats appreciate having a local company that doesn’t just speak the language but understands local customs and culture. While the company employee is at work, the spouse and children are often the ones who need assistance transitioning to longer school days, English that is different from the British English they learned in school, making sure credits transfer back to their home country, and logistics such as updating legal documents and setting up Internet connections. “We become an extension of human resources,” Wetzel said. “Then we advocate for them all the way through. What might be a six-month process we
12 Upstate business journal March 1, 2013
Contact Leigh Savage at lsavage@communityjournals.com.
UBJ
Fluor CEO David Seaton delivers the keynote address at the Greenville Chamber’s 124th annual meeting.
News
Photos by Rose Photography & Design
Fluor CEO Headlines Chamber Celebration By Jennifer Oladipo | contributor
the greenville chamber celebrated its 124th annual meeting last week at the TD Convention Center, opening the evening with a look back at the chamber’s one-and-a-quarter centuries in the Greenville. The most recent membership drive added 135 members to the roster, cementing a rebound after a loss of members during the recession. Keynote speaker David Seaton, chairman and CEO of Fluor, praised the chamber’s efforts during a press briefing before the event. “I think the chamber should really be proud of what they’ve done for this part of South Carolina,” Seaton said after reminiscing about the days before downtown Greenville became a lively attraction. Seaton joined Fluor Daniel in 1984, working with textile firms including Milliken & Co. Today, Fluor employs just over 2,100 people in Greenville. Fluor, formerly Fluor Daniel, has been located in Greenville since 1982. The international engineering, procurement and construction company now has three operations in Greenville: Fluor Enterprises, Fluor Constructors International and American Equipment Company. Fluor’s South Carolina operations are mostly involved in military contracts in support of efforts in Afghanistan, such as the building and maintenance of Bagram Air Field. Seaton said such mission-critical contracts shielded the company from the potential effects of defense spend-
ing cuts that may come as a result of the federal budget sequester. Fluor also manages the Savannah River Site nuclear plant for the Department of Energy, one of just a handful of national labs. Seaton said South Carolina understands the importance of a businessfriendly environment, but still is not properly positioned to take advantage of growth in the procurement sector. “This state is one of the few that I see that really has an economic development mindset,” he said, adding that a focus on math and science Mark Basanda (left), owner of Utility Audit Solutions, was recognized by Greenville Chamber CEO Ben Haskew as Ambassador of the Year.
Contact Jennifer Oladipo at joladipo@communityjournals.com.
education is crucial, and while the state is making improvements, they are not fast enough. Seaton said the U.S. is on the cusp of growth if the regulatory environment changes to reduce restrictions on business. He said some $35 billion in projects were backlogged because of government regulations. “The U.S. is just one good budget deal and one good energy bill away from regaining its prominence,” Seaton said. Despite the lagging U.S. economy, Fluor has seen growth from investors abroad, especially in South America and Australia. Ground transportation was one “bright spot” in the United States economy, Seaton said. Growth
in the U.S. has been in the Gulf Coast in development of shale gas, petrochemicals and gas to liquids, which was a major contributor to the $27.6 billion in revenue for 2012 Fluor had reported the previous day, up 18 percent from the previous year. Fluor itself had reported an unexpected fourth-quarter loss of $4 million, which it attributed to an adverse ruling in a lawsuit over an offshore wind farm project in Britain. Seaton presented the chamber’s Leadership Greenville Distinguished Alumni award to Russell Stall. Other awards included Minority Business of the Year, Small Business of the Year, Young Professional of the Year and others (see sidebar).
Greenville Chamber 2012 award winners Arts Leadership Award Certus Bank
ATHENA Leadership Award Jo Hackl, Xanthene Norris and Nancy Whitworth
Max Heller Neighborhood Improvement Award The Salvation Army Ray & Joan Kroc Corps Community Center
Buck Mickel Leadership Award U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint
Minority Business of the Year Award Flat Fee Recruiting LLC
Special Chairman’s Award David Lominack
Small Business of the Year Award Rush Wilson Ltd.
Leadership Greenville Distinguished Alumni Award Russell Stall
Ambassador of the Year Award Mark Basanda
Young Professional of the Year Award Nick Graham
Chairman’s Award S.C. Rep. Bruce Bannister
March 1, 2013 Upstate business journal 13
UBJ
Square Feet
Trinity Commerce Center, Simpsonville
Photo Provided
Benton Park Subdivision Sold
Pacolet Milliken Breaks Ground in NYC
On behalf of GAP Development LLC, CBRE | The Furman Co. recently announced the sale of Benton Park, an 80-lot residential subdivision on 16.2 acres on Circle Road, Easley. Benton Park is located in the Powdersville area, eight minutes from downtown Greenville and five minutes from Easley. The subdivision’s close proximity to many major retailers and employers makes it an attractive location for moderately priced single-family detached housing, and helps accommodate the recruitment of businesses and their workforces in the Upstate. CBRE | The Furman Co.’s senior associate, Justin Hirsch, represented the seller. Shaun Murphy, with Southern Realtor Associates, represented the buyer.
On Feb. 25, Spartanburg-based Pacolet Milliken Enterprises, along with joint venture partner Hines and equity partner J.P. Morgan As-
set Management, broke ground on their new office tower at 7 Bryant Park in New York City. Among the prominent local and state officials attending the event was New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who said, “With its exceptional
development team and outstanding design, the property will undoubtedly join the ranks of midtown Manhattan’s iconic landmarks.” The 28-story, 470,000-squarefoot steel and glass tower will offer views of Bryant Park as well as the
Officials from Pacolet Milliken and other dignitaries prepare to break ground at 7 Bryant Park in New York City.
A rendering of the planned 28-story 7 Bryant Park tower.
14 Upstate business journal March 1, 2013
Photos Provided
Aerial map showing the location of the Benton Park Subdivision.
Dealmakers Spectrum Commercial Properties announced: Rob Brissie recently represented Riddle Properties LLC in several leases at The Historic Rialto Building at 302 Trade St., Greer, which has been renovated and transformed into executive office suites for small businesses and entrepreneurs:
Courtesy of CBRE | The Furman Co.
New York Public Library and other midtown skyline landmarks. First occupancy is currently planned for the fourth quarter of 2014. “Our company and its ownership families are excited to be part of this extraordinary project, which will further enhance the Bryant Park community and contribute beautifully to the New York City skyline,” said Pacolet Milliken President Richard C. Webel. “We are especially pleased to know that this development aligns with Roger Milliken’s legacy of environmental sustainability, as the building is pre-registered for LEED Gold certification.” The site was purchased by Milliken & Company in the 1950s, shortly after which a 190,000-square-foot building was erected on the site. The building served as worldwide headquarters for the company’s marketing
division until those operations were moved to Spartanburg in the late 1990s. Sunland Purchases Trinity Commerce Center Sunland Distribution Inc. recently announced their purchase of the Trinity Commerce Center in Simpsonville. Located off of I-85 and I-385 on 1312 Old Stage Road, the multi-tenant industrial facility spans a total of 607,400 square feet of warehouse space on the ground floor and an additional 120,000 square feet on the second floor. The 32-acre property along with the building was purchased from Trinity Capital Advisors LLC. NAI Earle Furman brokered the sale, the details of which were not made public. Built in phases from 1968 to 1993, the facility was once an integral distribution center for
Pillowtex Corporation’s manufacturing and distribution network. The facility will continue to be an operating base for Sunland’s Scotts Miracle-Gro account and is now the home for Sunland Distribution’s new corporate headquarters. Sunland was Trinity’s largest tenant, said Gary Chesson, partner at Trinity Capital Advisors. “We have owned that building for five and a half years, and we have enjoyed being an owner in the Greenville market,” he said. “We are looking for more in the Greenville market to acquire and develop more office and industrial buildings in the Greenville/Spartanburg area.” New Real Estate Gallery in Easley Coldwell Banker Caine recently
A lease to a seasoned restaurant operator from the Lowcountry. The restaurant will feature a classic American Casual menu. Two leases for executive office suites. The new tenants include Ingrid H. Rudolph PC, a bankruptcy and family law attorney, and M2I Group LLC, a full-service business advisory services and video/animation technologies firm. A lease of two executive office suites to Crown Resources LLC.
announced the location of its fourth Real Estate Gallery to open in downtown Easley in late April. The Easley Real Estate Gallery will be 2,000 square feet of office space located at 118 South Pendleton St. in the Plaza at Old Market Square.
March 1, 2013 Upstate business journal 15
Members of the Varigence team, from left: Jon Carl, Steven Currie, Paul Waters, Scott Currie and Zach Halleck.
Photo by Greg Beckner
-Former Microsoft employee Scott Currie finds success on his own with Varigence -by dick hughes senior business writer 16
Upstate business journal
Solving what seemed to be an intractable problem for Microsoft brought Scott Currie back home to Greenville to form his own company with breakthrough software to deal with tons of data. Five years after taking the software with Microsoft’s blessing, Currie’s company, Varigence, is receiving international notice – and orders – from companies needing to manage and mine large amounts of data. “Just in the last three months, we are at a place we don’t have to do hand-holding to get people to be successful with the software,” Currie said. “We now have people coming to us worldwide at a faster rate than we can handle.” The morning Currie was interviewed by UBJ, an order came in from Reykjavik, Iceland. “Our clients are all over the place, both geographically and in terms of industry,” he said. “Basically, anybody who has a lot of numbers they need to process is interested in our software.” What’s more, he noted, with the speed and capacity of computing doubling every 18-24 months, the problem of managing data will only get worse. “Our ability to make sense out of all this data hasn’t grown as fast as our ability to collect the data. (That) fundamentally is the problem we are trying to solve.”
March 1, 2013
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Connecting Multi - D ata Becomes ‘Nightmare’
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all the software that is available for it; and if you’ve got developers saying, ‘You know what, I am not so thrilled with your developer tools,’ that’s a threat.” Millions were at risk if software developers started taking their work to “other platforms, making those other platforms more valuable.”
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Microsof t’s High -Tech In cub ator for Cre ators Varigence is an offspring of Microsoft’s support of “employees doing interesting things whether it is inside the company or, if necessary, outside the company,” Currie said. “Also because they have generated so much wealth, they give people the option to go and start their own business. You can be a startup without being a 20-something bachelor living in a closet.” Currie, who joined Microsoft after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, was such a “20-something” called on by Microsoft to solve a perplexing problem in its internal business platform. He did, and Microsoft let him take the software, refine it for commercialization and sell it to other companies and institutions struggling to make intelligent use of large amounts of data. This service is a subset in the business intelligence sector of computing, which “has been the largest sector of IT spending in the past three years and the fastest-growing sector in the last four years,” said Steven Currie, Scott’s brother and operations director.
Marke t Potential in High Millions “In terms of our piece of the market, there is no reason why our ceiling is not in the hundreds of millions or even into the low billions,” he said. “There’s a lot of work to get to those kind of numbers, but there is no hard limit on what we can do.” Scott Currie was working as a senior specialist in developing tools at Microsoft when a high-level executive asked him to “figure out why customer satisfaction with developer tools at Microsoft was trending downward. For a platform company, that’s a really big problem. “If you are selling an operating system, a big part of the value of that operating system, Windows, is
March 1, 2013
Microsoft had tons of multi-informational data and what was then state-of-the-art consumer-support software, but it was unable to sort through it to identify why developer satisfaction was falling. “If I was looking at survey data, where we asked developers what they thought about us, we could do a reasonable job. But as soon as we started asking questions where we had to bring multi-data sources together, it became a nightmare.” Currie found a typical corporate silo problem: There had been no cross-pollination. Working independent of software developers, business intelligence data teams “hadn’t really solved a lot of the problems that already were well-solved in the software development space.” Currie’s solution was to take “all the lessons we learned about how to develop software better over the past four decades and apply these lessons to doing better data intelligence projects.” Working with Microsoft product teams, Currie came up with a fix that was “wildly successful within Microsoft.” The approach “was able to take over the entire business intelligence workload for the customer support business,” roughly a $2 billion cost center.
Independents C an Ad apt Much Faster While Microsoft was enthused, he said, it was reluctant to put it into its own product line because “some of these ideas are so revolutionary” there would be resistance from those used to doing databased development the old way.
“Microsoft would much rather have a company like mine go figure out the innovative stuff where we can move much more quickly. We don’t have to make a commitment on decisions made 20 years ago.” Scott Currie, founder of Varigence
Upstate business journal
Contact Dick Hughes at dhughes@communityjournals.com. Also, Microsoft has to be “very, very deliberate about what stuff goes in, because if they put something in a product they have to support it for 20 years.” It would take seven years to have the confidence to ship it out. “They would much rather have a company like mine go figure out the innovative stuff where we can move much more quickly,” Currie said. “We don’t have to make a commitment on decisions made 20 years ago.” Varigence is not yet “back with Microsoft to figure out how to roll back into the core offerings, but that’s probably going to come at some point in the future,” he added. In the meantime, Microsoft is its single largest customer. When Scott Currie started the company in 2008, he was the only employee in Greenville but was working with a network of five or six programmers elsewhere, primarily in the Northwest. Currie “borrowed” all the good ideas developed at Microsoft but “started over on the software and built it up so it was production-ready and could handle large workloads.”
High Economic Stakes Require High Stand ard To develop the software without “spending a ridiculous amount of money,” Varigence worked with partners willing to use it and “take a little risk on the product side.” “In effect, we created a situation where we could be using and learning with our early software with what was working and what wasn’t so we could feed that into the next cycle of the software.” It took five years. Building enterprise software requires a longer ramp than for consumer software, Currie said, because business intelligence software has to work flawlessly on day one. “When Facebook is down for a day, nobody loses a whole lot of money, nobody dies. There are some annoyed people, but the economic damage is minimal. If Microsoft CSS (consumer service and support) goes down for a day, millions of dollars are lost. That’s why we have this much higher standard.” From the startup with Scott Currie and a half dozen contributors from around the country, primarily from Microsoft’s base in the Northwest, Varigence today has two part-time programmers and eight full-time employees, including one in Seattle. Steven, an MBA graduate in accounting, joined his brother a year ago after seven years as a forensic accounting investigator with U.S Treasury. If they cared about such things, Scott, 32, would be considered chief executive officer and chief technical officer and Steven, 35, chief operations officer.
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Photo by Gerry Pate
L O O K I N G F O R L I V I N G R O O M I N T H E C I T Y
APARTMENT CONSTRUCTION TELLS THE STORY OF DOWNTOWN DEVELOPMENT IN GREENVILLE AND SPARTANBURG By CHARLES SOWELL | staff COVER STORY UPSTATE BUSINESS JOURNAL March 1, 2013
18
I
IT IS A TALE OF TWO DOWNTOWNS
and of one man’s vision that separates them economically. Greenville had a Max Heller and Spartanburg didn’t. The difference perhaps can be measured today by apartment construction in the two downtowns. Greenville has more than 600 units on the books to be completed this year. Spartanburg has fewer than 50 and, with virtually 100 percent occupancy and more than 5,000 students attending college in the area, desperately needs more. Colleges are thick in downtown Spartanburg and more are on the way. Spartanburg Community College’s new downtown campus will eventually bring 5,000 students.
cover story Upstate business journal March 1, 2013 But students are not jobs, and Greenville’s booming apartment business is a reflection of available jobs in the downtown area – plus the amenities the city offers to those who choose to live in the heart of town and pay the rents that kind of attraction can demand, said Kay Hall, a multifamily housing specialist with NIA Earle Furman. There is plenty of room for new business in downtown Spartanburg, said Will Rothschild, spokesman for the city. “We’ve renovated five class-A office buildings in the downtown area in the past few years,” he said. The jobs will eventually come. More than 30 years ago, then-Greenville Mayor Heller foresaw the thriving downtown that Greenville enjoys today. Spartanburg went with a status quo approach that has placed the city decades behind its neighbor. Greenville is often recognized in national press as an enviable example of just how far a city can go. Spartanburg’s downtown is a long line of empty storefronts that stand out like missing teeth along Main Street, despite the city’s best efforts to lure business (see sidebar). Take heart: The Hub City is rapidly catching up, albeit with a considerable growth curve ahead, said Mayor Junie White. Greenville’s Mayor Knox White agrees. “Actually, they’ve come a long way over in Spartanburg,” White said. “They have a bright future ahead of them if they stay the course on downtown development.” White should know. In the late 1970s and early ’80s, downtown Greenville looked like a war zone, with retail business abandoning choice spots along Main Street for the higher traffic volumes available in places like Haywood Road and the malls. South Main, now home to the Greenville Drive and Fluor Field, was a line of seedy bars where gunfire was a regular feature on the weekend. Spartanburg suffered much the same fate on retail flight
and has cleaned up nicely over the years. Crime is low and parking is more than ample, with multi-story parking located strategically around the downtown area. What has not come is the business and attractions that draw the sort of crowds Greenville’s downtown enjoys. Spartanburg has been forced to take action to patch up the garages with sagging tax revenues, affecting the city’s ability to do maintenance work. In Greenville, parking is an issue with apartment developers, Hall said. Developers are scrambling to find parcels big enough for housing and parking. “A prime spot downtown is located on what is now two lots that once were the site of Greenville Memorial Auditorium,” Hall said. Unfortunately, there is not enough room for both apartments and parking, she said. The old auditorium has been replaced by the BI-LO Center, with acres of parking that remains largely unused except when major events are happening, Hall said. “There has been lots of talk about that parcel going to apartments, but unless they find a fix for parking it remains just talk,” she said. Ben Graves, chief of the multifamily housing division at Johnson Development, said the company has built several projects around the edge of Spartanburg, but nothing in the city’s center. “The major roadblock to development there is that downtown is not very walkable, and the current tax code cuts big breaks to single-family home owners and taxes commercial properties at a much higher rate,” Graves said. There is a fine line in profitability with apartments, which always dictates whether a project is started – or not, he said.
They’ve come a long way over in Spartanburg. They have a bright future ahead of them if they stay the course on downtown development. Greenville Mayor Knox White
(continued on page 20)
Photos by Greg Beckner
An open tract of land at North Main Street and Stone Avenue within sight of downtown Greenville, suitable for an apartment building or complex.
cover story Upstate business journal March 1, 2013
Then there’s the old chicken and egg question of what comes first in downtown development: attractions or business opportunities? Greenville went with central anchors, which were virtually guaranteed to draw people to the area, and coupled it with sidewalk restaurants that are full on a daily basis now. Weekends in downtown Greenville draw the equivalent of a small city to enjoy the nightlife. Spartanburg has definitely had successes. The city landed the new George Dean School of Business and the Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine – both major developments – but they don’t support that many jobs or provide much in the way of taxes. Those bonuses only come with business development. “Spartanburg can’t support the kinds of rents that Greenville or Charlotte get,” Graves said, mostly because downtown walking traffic is simply not there. Greenville’s rents are on par with Charlotte, said White. The city built its downtown a block at the time, starting with the agreement that brought the Hyatt Regency to the north end of Main Street and expanding south at a steady rate, pulled along by new major public and private projects – the Peace Center and Fluor Field being the prime examples, he said. Financials drive the current apartment boom, White said. “There is financing available for apartment building; on the retail and commercial side, not so much so.” The boom is a nationwide trend in places like Charlotte and Atlanta, he said. “Spartanburg will eventually catch up on that side of things, too.”
One major roadblock to development in downtown Spartanburg is “the current tax code which cuts big breaks to single-family home owners and taxes commercial properties at a much higher rate,
Photo by Gerry Pate
(continued from page 19)
Spartanburg’s Challenge to Fill Empty Storefronts By
Charles Sowell
> Spartanburg city officials plan to name three winners in the Main Street Challenge by May of this year as part of a program to fill empty storefronts downtown. City spokesman Will Rothschild said the impact of the challenge will be far greater than just three businesses, which for the next year will each receive $1,000 a month from the city to put toward rent, plus such in-kind services as accounting, architectural services, payroll, signage, telephone/internet, website design, office supplies and advertising. The city’s goal is to put at least three viable businesses into storefronts, Rothschild said, “but the contest will do more than that. We have gained 58 potential recruits for our downtown area through entries.” The hope is that some of the entrants will go ahead and locate downtown, filling in gaps between
staff
existing businesses and helping the area develop. “Right now downtown is at 100 percent of capacity so far as apartments are concerned,” he said. “What we need is more business to draw people to the area and give them the incentives they need to live in downtown.” Currently, the only new apartments planned for this year downtown are 27 new units planned at the Magnolia Street Lofts, located near the old city train station. “That will be a help,” Rothschild said. “But it doesn’t begin to cover the need now and in the future.” The city currently has five buildings of Class A office space ready for occupancy in the downtown area, Rothschild said. City officials are confident those spaces will be filled eventually. There is a substantial business
presence downtown now by larger companies like Denny’s and Advance America, Rothschild said. “In the next five to 10 years we hope to have the available office space downtown occupied.” A large population of schools and institutions downtown lend prestige to the area, but do little to help the city’s tax base, he said. “What we need downtown is more commercial development; things that will encourage people to live downtown.” Regional and area development plans don’t really help the city all that much, Rothschild said. “We’ve seen major industrial development all along the border with Greenville County,” he said. “Invariably, the upper echelons and workers tend to move to Greenville or the new suburbs near Greer. That does nothing for us or our tax base.”
according to Ben Graves of Johnson Development.
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Contact Charles Sowell at csowell@communityjournals.com.
UBJ CREATE. INNOVATE. CELEBRATE.
CHARLIE HOUSER’S SERIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP
BY JOHN WARNER
A WHOLE STRING OF HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENEURIAL COMPANIES in Greenville over 30 years have somebody in common: Charlie Houser. ¶ After living in Greenville for many years, Charlie moved to Magnolia Springs, Ala. When the town was incorporated in 2006, he became its first mayor. Startups are just what he does. Though he still lives in Alabama, one of the hottest startups in Greenville today, Green Cloud Technologies, has Charlie’s fingerprints all over it.
SouthernNet Inc. for $100 million. With some of his newfound wealth, Charlie and two Tel/Man buddies started a small venture capital fund, Consilium Group. They dabbled in a few small investments outside telecommunications that didn’t turn out so hot, In the early 1980s, Charlie was an executive with Builder Marts of America, telling Charlie that he ought to stick with the business model he knew worked well. a company which bought stuff in bulk, broke it into smaller quantities, packWith a Tel/Man teammate, Leighton Cubbage, Charlie started and became aged it with great customer service, and sold it to a base of small-business CEO of a new company, Corporate Telemanagement Group, in 1989. CTG wasn’t a brand-new startup as much as it was a reincorporation of many of the Tel/Man customers all across the United States. In 1982, an earthquake occurred. It’s hard to imagine now, but once AT&T team members executing the same business model. Charlie made another pop in owned the U.S. long-distance telephone market as a regulated monopoly. Fed- 1995 when CTG was acquired by LCI International Inc. for $160 million. Then it just got crazy in the go-go years of the late 1990s technology boom. eral Judge Harold Greene rattled the world by approving a consent decree that spun off AT&T’s seven Regional Bell Operating Companies and freed AT&T to Charlie, Leighton and others formed a bigger venture capital fund, Serrus Venenter the computer industry. AT&T agreed to break up its golden monopoly in tures, and this time stuck to their knitting by specializing in telecommunications companies. A supernova explosion part for the opportunity to get into the of companies occurred in Greenville computer industry? Yep. with Serrus’s backing, including State Richard Ingram, another Builder CHARLIE HOUSER’S Communications, TriVergent, New Marts manager, saw an opportunity in South and Nuvox. Over time, most of the breakup of AT&T. A guy that sells these companies got cobbled together stuff to lumber yards sees opportunity 1983-1986 into what is now Windstream. in the break-up of the phone company? Tel/Man Inc. Charlie’s son, Shay, was involved Yep. Richard’s nose for opportunity IPO and sold for $100 million in this string of telecommunications turned out to be a lot better than AT&T’s. 1989-1995 companies and is carrying on the legAT&T’s consent decree required Corporate acy. Shay started and is CEO of Green AT&T to sell long-distance phone Telemanagement Group Cloud Technologies in Greenville, service at or above a certain price. The Sold for $160 million and Charlie is the sage chairman. point was to entice guys like Richard 1997-2010 Green Cloud says they help small to enter the long-distance business to NuVox (Trivergent) and medium-sized businesses take customers away from AT&T so Sold for $650 million increase productivity, improve perthey would no longer be a monopoly. formance and manage technology Richard realized that he could buy 2003-2008 costs by delivering managed IT and long-distance service wholesale from UCI Communications Sold for undisclosed price telecom services through the Internet AT&T, sell it retail to small-business cloud. Said more simply, Green Cloud customers below AT&T’s price, and still Photo Provided make a lot of money. That’s the same buys something in bulk, breaks it basic business that Builder Marts was into smaller quantities, combines it in. Buy something in bulk, break it into with great service, and sells it to small smaller quantities, combine it with great companies. And they do it with a team service, and sell it to small companies. of industry veterans who have worked In 1983, Richard started a new together now in a series of companies. Charlie is executing the same successcompany to get into the long-distance ful business model with some of the same business, Tel/Man Inc., and Charlie people he has worked with over 30 years. became the CEO. Charlie made a pop That’s what serial entrepreneurs do. when Tel/Man was sold in 1986 to
STARTUPS
Charlie Houser’s formula: Buy something in bulk, break it into smaller quantities, combine it with great service, and sell it to small companies.
John Warner is CEO of InnoVenture, whose global Web platform helps people with big ideas attract needed customers, capital, talent and technology. InnoVenture. com partners include major corporations, universities and entrepreneurial companies regionally and around the world.
March 1, 2013 UPSTATE BUSINESS JOURNAL 21
UBJ
The Takeaway
Making Ideas ‘Contagious’
Jonah Berger
ON JAN. 29, 100 KINDRED SPIRITS GATHERED FOR
the 2013 Fire Sessions at Genevieve’s at The Peace Center in Greenville. What started as a way to simply say “thank you” to their biggest fans, the sessions have become a highly anticipated event for Greenvillebased identity company Brains on Fire. With a full day of speakers, the program is designed to invigorate and leave attendees feeling excited and passionate about marketing movements. Author and professor Jonah Berger studies social epidemics, or how products, ideas and behaviors catch on and become popular. Most recently, Berger has examined why certain products get more word of mouth than others and why certain online content goes viral. Berger discussed word of mouth at the Fire Sessions: Word of mouth is the primary factor behind purchase decisions, but only 7 percent of word of mouth happens online in places like Facebook and Twitter. EVENT: Brains on Fire Fire Sessions 2013 WHO WAS THERE: Marketers, executive directors, communication professionals SPEAKER: Jonah Berger, professor of viral marketing at the Wharton School at UPenn; author of “Contagious: How to Make Products, Ideas and Behaviors Catch On” TOPIC: How to use word of mouth to catch on
We need to engineer content to make it more viral or talkable – we want to craft “contagious content” that will catch on. Above all, focus on the message, not the messenger. There are six reasons that people are likely to share information: 1. SOCIAL CURRENCY:
People like to talk about things that make them look good, funny, in the know. Make people feel like insiders through scarcity and exclusivity (think members-only sites like Rue La La and Gilt). Or find the inner remarkability – surprising, novel or exciting. 2. TRIGGERED:
Top of mind, tip of tongue – the more people think about something, the more likely they are to talk about it. When we use a product, we’re much more likely to talk about it because it’s top-of-mind. Consider the context: Are people going to remember to think about it later on? 3. EMOTION:
When we care, we share – we pass
on information when it’s positive or negative, as long as it’s emotional. Articles that make people angry and anxious are more likely to be shared than articles that make people sad. 4. PUBLIC:
Seeing lots of other people doing something encourages us to do something similar – but we must see it. If people can’t see it, they can’t imitate it. Design products that advertise themselves; make public symbols for otherwise private products. Examples like Christian Loubouton shoes with the red sole, the Microsoft startup sound.
When we care, we share – we pass on information when it’s positive or negative, as long as it’s emotional.
5. PRACTICAL VALUE:
Useful or helpful information – news you can use; good deals (Groupon); save time, effort – highlight incredible value. Know the rule of 100: If it costs less than $100, the percentage seems more than the dollar value; if it’s more than $100, a dollar amount seems like a bigger discount. Package your knowledge and expertise – “10 Ways,” “5 Tips,” “6 Secrets,” etc. 6. STORIES:
Stories are vessels that carry information hidden inside. People share really good stories that are interesting. Make sure the virality is valuable. Certain details are integral to stories and certain details are not. Make your brand an integral detail to that story. BOTTOM LINE:
Word of mouth increases sales. But to make it work for you, you need to understand what makes things viral and talkable. Taryn Scher is founder and president of TK PR.
Based in Greenville, Brains on Fire helps organizations build movements. Born out of the bond between word-of-mouth marketing and identity development, Brains on Fire is devoted to helping organizations discover and sustain excitement about who they are and why they exist. Best known for their success like the Fiskars Fiskateers movement, or helping the National Center for Family Literacy bring Wonderopolis to life, the company holds fast to the beliefs that great organizations are rooted in purpose, not just profit, relationships trump transactions, and organizations thrive through movements, not campaigns.
22 UPSTATE BUSINESS JOURNAL March 1, 2013
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The Fine Print
STAFFING UP FOR HOT DAYS Cross Country Home Services, a provider of home warranty and maintenance plans, intends to hire 90 more people for its customer service facility in Anderson, the company announced. “Most of the new positions will be dedicated to customer service and authorizations in anticipation of the heavy call volume experienced in the summer months,” the company said. President Sandra Finn said the company staffs up in the spring to be “well equipped to handle” emergencies such as a broken air conditioner that can be a disaster in hot weather. The company said record temperatures over a protracted
period in much of the country last summer produced record emergency calls. In one one-week period in June, the company said, call volume increased 54 percent. “Despite the heavy volume, the average call was answered in less than one minute and customers received same-day or next-day service through the company’s network of over 40,000” independent service providers, the company said. CCHS said in addition to the 90 jobs added in Anderson, it would add 40 in its Sunrise, Fla., headquarters. LOBBYING FOR ROAD MONEY The Greater Greer Chamber of Commerce and 10 other civic and business organizations have endorsed a plan to encourage Gov. Nikki Haley and the S.C. Legislature to spend more money on fixing roads and bridges.
The chamber’s board unanimously approved The Road Map to the Future that calls for addressing “critically important” widening interstates, fixing load-restricted and deficient bridges and resurfacing existing roadways. The S.C. Business Roundtable has urged the Legislature to dedicate 20 percent of new general-fund revenue, additional capital reserve funds and money from re-directing vehiclerelated revenue to fixing the transportation infrastructure. “The volume of traffic on our state’s roads continues to increase while maintenance and new construction declines,” said Donna O. Smith, vice-chair of the Greer chamber’s legislative affairs committee. “This isn’t sustainable and will hinder economic development.” According to the business roundtable, South Carolina
spends an average of $15,000 per mile on roads, while Georgia spends $35,000 per mile and North Carolina spends more than $150,000. HVAC FIRM ACQUIRED Redblue, a heating and air conditioning company in Charlotte, said it has acquired Willingham Heating and Air Conditioning in Spartanburg. Redblue said it brings new management and additional capabilities, including lighting,
solar and building automation, to what had been Willingham. Redblue specializes in commercial, medical and industrial markets. It is a family-owned business that has been in business more than 20 years.
LANDING CONTRACT WITH CAT Greenville-based GreenWood has been awarded a contract with Caterpillar to create safety-focused efficiencies in its operations. “Caterpillar is strengthening their manufacturing operations in North America, and GreenWood can provide a management team specifically aligned with their operations,” said Brad Wood, GreenWood president. GreenWood provides “integrated maintenance, operations and construction solutions designed to extend the life of critical assets, influence operational efficiencies and deliver improvements for manufacturing and process clients.”
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On the Move
HIRED
HIRED
HIRED
PROMOTED
MICHAEL J. GARA
DR. MATTEEL JONES
BREANA LIPSCOMB
DANA MORGAN
Named director of technology development for the Clemson University Biomedical Engineering Innovation Campus (CUBEInC). Located in Greenville, CUBEInC strives to develop high-impact medical technology and devices for disease management, then oversee the transfer of this technology from bench to bedside. Employed in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries for more than 30 years, Gara has worked for numerous pharmaceutical companies in the areas of research and development, manufacturing, product development and business development. In addition, he has managed translational research programs in biomedical engineering at major universities across the United States.
Joined Greenville Technical College as vice president for student services, having served for nearly six years as vice president for student affairs at the Technical College of the Lowcountry in Beaufort, S.C. Jones previously worked in the Upstate area for 10 years at Piedmont Technical College in Greenwood and has an extensive background in student affairs, including enrollment services, financial aid, student records, student counseling, support services, student conduct, grant programs, diversity education, campus life and more.
Joined The March of Dimes South Carolina Chapter as director of program services and government affairs. Lipscomb was formerly a program coordinator for the SC Department of Health and Environmental Control; prior to that, she held the position of assistant project coordinator at the UAB School of Public Health. She is currently a fellow in the Maternal Child Health Public Health Leadership Institute, a board member of the South Carolina Perinatal Association and of the Columbia Urban League Young Professionals, and president of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., Upsilon Omega Omega Chapter.
Promoted as DNA Creative Communications’ director of client services. Morgan will be responsible for expanding new business opportunities for DNA as well as increasing the depth of public relations and marketing services provided to current clientele. She is a double grad of Clemson University and has been a part of the DNA team for more than 10 years. Her portfolio includes a number of accomplishments and milestones reached for her clients, which include FAVOR Greenville, Clemson University’s College of HEHD, and SC Camps and Retreat Ministries.
ACCOUNTING: Scott and Company CPAs recently announced that Ryan LaBrooy has joined the staff as an associate accountant in the firm’s Tax and Advisory Services group. LaBrooy joins Scott and Company LLC from Lowrance Cooper and Company, a Columbia-based tax and accounting firm that combined with Scott and Company in late 2012. He has more than three years of experience dealing with the corporate and partnership taxation issues of auto dealerships, law firms, insurance agencies and nonprofit entities, as well as serving individual clients.
senior-level students. He also currently serves as associate vice chancellor for academic affairs and chief diversity officer, and will continue his new assignment through the remainder of the 2012-2013 academic year. Carson’s new duties are a result of the retirement of Dr. Judith S. Prince, who served as the vice chancellor of the Greenville campus from July 2004 to January 2013. Prince has been appointed director of academic engagement for the USC Upstate Greenville campus. She will work with business, industry, community leaders and University academic leadership to plan, develop and implement certificate and degree programs for employees either onsite or at the USC Upstate Greenville campus.
ties division leader and Richard Gee as business development manager. Karmel has more than 27 years of professional experience in global supply-chain consulting, specializing in physical distribution and control, material-handling systems and facilities planning. He comes to O’Neal from Prime Engineering Inc. in Atlanta, where he served as vice president of the facilities market segment. Gee has previous experience with Prime Engineering Inc., PKF Consulting and Facility Group. He has more than 30 years of experience in developing new business systems and targeting and establishing new clients.
divisions of both Greenville Technical College and Clemson University, and holds a B.S. degree in management from Clemson University.
EDUCATION: The University of South Carolina Upstate recently announced that Dr. Warren Carson has assumed the duties of interim vice chancellor of the University of South Carolina Upstate’s Greenville campus. Carson will have day-to-day operational and strategic planning responsibility for the entire USC Upstate Greenville campus, which is located at the University Center of Greenville and enrolls approximately 1,000 commuting junior- and
ENGINEERING/CONSTRUCTION: O’Neal Inc., a Greenville-based integrated design and construction firm, is launching an Advanced Facilities division that will focus on automated manufacturing, logistics and distribution facilities in the food, retail, and industrial markets. The firm is adding Doug Karmel as Advanced Facili-
24 UPSTATE BUSINESS JOURNAL March 1, 2013
INSURANCE: Rosenfeld Einstein, a South Carolinabased insurance agency, brokerage and consulting firm that is part of the Marsh & McLennan Agency LLC family of companies, recently announced that Upstate human resources professional Zeke Lollis has joined the company as a shared services specialist in the firm’s employee benefits division. Lollis joins Rosenfeld Einstein after several years in the human resources
LEGAL: Haynsworth Sinkler Boyd P.A. recently announced that Michael A. “Mike” Tongour was selected as this year’s recipient of the University of South Carolina’s College of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Award for his outstanding service to the university. Tongour will receive the award at the college’s annual Recognition of Excellence Dinner on March 22 in Columbia. He serves on the College of Arts and Sciences Alumni Council, serves on the Department of Political Science National Advisory Board and has been actively involved in building the Arts and Sciences Washington alumni group. In addition, H. Sam Mabry III was recently recognized for his exemplary service to the South Carolina Chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA) with the Joel W. Collins Jr. Chapter Service Award. The award is given periodically to chapter members for outstanding representation to
APPOINTED STEVE A. MOORE
PROMOTED BEVERLY HAINES Officially named president of Greenville Hospital System’s Patewood Medical Campus, after serving as interim president. Haines, a member of the GHS leadership team for more than six years, had served in a dual capacity as Patewood’s interim president and director of its patient care services since March 2012. Before coming to GHS in October 2006, she held numerous leadership positions in hospital administration, including as the senior vice president of patient care services at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Health System (UPMC) Southside.
Appointed police chief of Simpsonville by Mayor Perry Eichor and the Simpsonville City Council. Moore began his police career in the Air Force from 1983-1989, where he received two Air Force Achievement Medals, the Good Conduct Medal and an Overseas Long Tour Ribbon. He went on to work at the Mauldin Police Department from 1989-2006 as a patrol officer, but was also a crime prevention officer, public information officer, and worked with the D.A.R.E. program. In addition, he served as interim police chief twice in Mauldin. In 2009, he came to the Simpsonville police department as a patrol officer and rose through the ranks.
the chapter and continued dedication to the profession of law. Mabry is the third recipient. He is a member of the organization’s national board of directors and a former president of the South Carolina chapter. MEDIA: Community Journals, publishers of the Upstate Business Journal, Greenville Journal, Spartanburg Journal and TOWN, has added Austin Hafer to its team. Originally from Greenville, Austin Hafer joins Community Journals after a copywriting/brand strategy role at RedHype Ad Agency. Returning to Greenville after a four-year stint in Columbia, Hafer, a graduate of the University of South Carolina, comes to Community Journals to facilitate the brand growth and conversion to digital and social media platforms. Aside from RedHype, Hafer has previously worked with Greenville’s Ferebee Lane advertising agency and WFBC-B93.7, an Entercom affiliate. PUBLIC RELATIONS/MARKETING: Erwin Penland, one of the nation’s leading advertising and marketing
firms, has promoted Kristin Adams to account executive, Giselle Bravo to assistant account executive, Wade Burrell to account executive, Ally Callahan to media planner, TJ Deluccia to account executive, Meighan Fraga to senior account executive, Matt Gaymon to senior account supervisor and Tony Lowe to associate creative director. Previously working as an assistant account executive, Adams will continue to serve on the Verizon Retail account team. Bravo had been a project management coordinator for the agency, but now moves to the Verizon Communications team in her new role. Continuing to serve the Verizon Wireless team, where he previously worked as a junior account executive, Burrell originally joined Erwin Penland from Ignite Social Media in Cary, N.C. A native of Memphis, Tenn., who previously served as a junior media planner,
Callahan will continue to research and recommend media strategies for a variety of Erwin Penland clients in her new role. Deluccia will continue to serve the Verizon team, where he had been a junior account executive. Fraga, who had previously worked as an account executive in the agency’s technology innovation group, will continue to oversee interactive projects for a variety of clients, including Michelin, Uniroyal and General Motors. Having joined Erwin Penland in 2003 as a junior account executive, Gaymon has since been promoted to account executive, senior account executive and account supervisor. Lowe joined Erwin Penland as a senior art director in 2005, then was promoted to creative supervisor before his most recent appointment. REAL ESTATE: CBRE | The Furman Co. recently announced that Brian Scurlock has joined the retail group as an associate in brokerage services. Prior to joining CBRE | The Furman Co., Scurlock worked six years with Coldwell Banker Commercial as a commercial broker focusing on sales and leasing of office and retail space. In addition, he served as an assistant golf professional for six years at Long Cove Golf Club in Hilton Head and Greenville Country Club’s Chanticleer course. NAI Earle Furman’s Property Management division recently announced that Brendan Gower and Nick Smith have received the Certified Property Manager designation. The CPM designation demonstrates expertise and integrity in real estate management. Certification is gained through the Institute of Real Estate Management. Gower graduated from Virginia Tech and has been a property manager at NAI Earle Furman since 2010. Smith, also a property manager at the firm, has been with the company since 2010. He is a graduate of Francis Marion University. Prudential C. Dan Joyner Co. Realtors recently announced that Susanna Moran Erickson has joined the company and serves as a sales associate at the Greer office. Erickson received her degree in history from University of South Carolina Upstate in Spartanburg. She worked in the Prudential C. Dan Joyner call center for six years. Allen Tate Realtors recently announced the top agents for Jan. 2013. In the Greenville office, Kathy Rogoff was top listing agent and Robby Brady was top
producer. In the Easley office, Missy Rick was top listing agent and top producer. Celia and Gary Murphy were the top listing and producing team for the Easley office. In the Greer office, Jerry Vassey was top listing agent and Anne Fuller was top producer. Paul and Marcia Hersey were the top listing and producing team for the Spartanburg office. The Marchant Company recently recognized several agents for their outstanding performance during the month of January. Valerie Miller was recognized as volume listing agent of the month; Kathy Slayter was recognized as unit listing and the sales unit listing agent of the month; Joey Beeson was recognized as sales volume agent of the month; and “March to SOLD” team, Anne Marchant, Jolene Wimberly and Brian Marchant were recognized as sales team of the month. TECHNOLOGY SYNNEX Corporation recently announced that Eddie Franklin, vice president, and Bob Stegner, senior vice president of marketing for North America, were recognized as two of UBM Tech Channel’s CRN 2013 Channel Chiefs. This prestigious list of the most influential and powerful leaders in the IT channel recognizes those executives directly responsible for driving channel sales and growth within their organization, while evangelizing and defending the importance of the channel throughout the entire IT Industry. This marks the second year Franklin has been honored as a CRN Channel Chief. For 2013, he was selected because of SYNNEX’s successful growth in health and public sector IT, and for augmenting public-sector marketing programs with vendor-focused public-sector services. Stegner has been honored as a Channel Chief for the fifth consecutive year. For 2013, he was selected because of the successful marketing launches of SYNNEX’s technology solutions initiatives DEMANDSolv and OneIT. He also enhanced the membership benefits of Varnex, SYNNEX’s peer-to-peer community of SMB resellers, based on input from the community to create deeper value and return. For over ten years, Channel Chiefs were selected by the CRN editorial team based on channel experience, program innovations, channel-driven revenue and public support for the importance of IT channel sales.
March 1, 2013 UPSTATE BUSINESS JOURNAL 25
Marchant Real Estate is proud to celebrate 20 years of
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Our team of Real Estate Professionals thank you for your continued trust and promise to continue providing the local, personal expertise you deserve.
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Planner
friday, March 1
saturday, March 2
The 52nd annual Spring Southern Home & Garden Show TD Convention Center, 1 Exposition Drive, Greenville
The 52nd annual Spring Southern Home & Garden Show TD Convention Center, 1 Exposition Drive, Greenville
Features hundreds of exhibits with merchandise for sale, product demonstrations, and workshops for adults and children. Special appearance: Southern Living contributing editor Rebecca Gordon. For more information, visit HBAofGreenville.com or call 864-254-0133.
Features hundreds of exhibits with merchandise for sale, product demonstrations, and workshops for adults and children. Special appearance: Southern Living contributing editor Rebecca Gordon. For more information, visit HBAofGreenville.com or call 864-254-0133.
First Friday Luncheon Greer City Hall, 301 E Poinsett St., Greer; 11 a.m.-1 p.m.
Sunday, March 3
Speaker: Erich Schneider, business owner and “Big Picture Guy.” Topic: “The Hubris of Success and the Success of Failure.” Open to the community with registrations at greerchamber.com required. Cost: $10 for Chamber members and $15 for non-members. Contact: The Greater Greer Chamber of Commerce at 864-877-3131. Friends of CCS Annual Luncheon Fountain Inn Activities Center, 610 Fairview St., Fountain Inn; noon to 1:15 p.m. Cost: $25 for an individual or $200 for a table of eight. Speaker: W. Burke Royster, the superintendent of Greenville County Schools. Contact: Wilma Whitlatch 864-688-2211 or wilmawhitlatch@centercs.com. First Friday Leadership Series presents Greg Smith Clemson at the Falls, 55 E. Camperdown Way, Greenville; 5-7 p.m. Speaker: Greg Smith, president, Blue Vista Ventures, LLC Topic: “Basement startup to Fortune 150 exit: What I learned along the way” Registration: Free, but space is limited. Reserve your spot at firstfridaygsmith.eventbrite.com Contact: Amy Burka at burka2@clemson.edu.
26 Upstate business journal March 1, 2013
The 52nd annual Spring Southern Home & Garden Show TD Convention Center, 1 Exposition Drive, Greenville Features hundreds of exhibits with merchandise for sale, product demonstrations, and workshops for adults and children. Special appearance: Southern Living contributing editor Rebecca Gordon. For more information, visit HBAofGreenville.com or call 864-254-0133. monday, March 4 Upstate HealthCare SummitExpanding Medicaid in SC Community Center at Village @ Pelham, 250 Westmoreland Road, Greer; 9:30-11:30 a.m. Summit on Medicaid expansion and the Affordable Care Act in South Carolina. Speakers: Dr. Tony Keck, Director of SC Department of Health and Human Services, and Thornton Kirby, president and CEO of the SC Hospital Association. Contact: 864-239-3748. tuesday, March 5 Spartanburg Healthcare Network Spartanburg Area Chamber of Commerce, 105 North Pine St., Spartanburg; 10:30 a.m.-noon The mission of the Spartanburg Healthcare Network is to improve the health of Spartanburg County through support, outreach, networking, advocacy and education. Cost: Free, but please RSVP Contact: Meric Gambel at 864-
594-5030 or mgambel@ spartanburgchamber.com.
Contact: Don Johnson, email dfjj1141@yahoo.com.
iPhone 5 Workshop Verizon Wireless Store, 469 Congaree Road, Greenville; 6-7 p.m.
Manufacturers Roundtable Hartness Tour Hartness International, 1200 Garlington Road, Greenville; 12:15-1:30 p.m.
Free workshops to help individuals learn how to use their cell phones. Registration is required at: verizonwireless.com/workshops. iPhone 5 Workshop Verizon Wireless Store, 4 Market Point Drive, Greenville; 6-7 p.m. Free workshops to help individuals learn how to use their cell phones. Registration is required at: verizonwireless.com/workshops. Metro Toastmasters Club City Hall / third floor conference room, 206 S Main St., Greenville; 7-8 p.m. Open to all Contact: 864-350-0044. wednesday, March 6 Lunch and Learn Mauldin Chamber of Commerce, 101 E. Butler Road, Mauldin; 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. Elder Care II will feature a discussion on the basics of Medicare and Medicaid to help you to better understand these programs. Lunch will be served, and Mauldin Chamber members, guests and community residents are welcome. Cost: Free RSVP: 864-297-1323 or info2@ mauldinchamber.org by March 4. FemCity Greenville March Connection Luncheon Thornblade Country Club, 1275 Thornblade Blvd., Greenville; 11:45 a.m.-1:15 p.m. Speaker: Becky McCrary Topic: “Priorities! Piles! Purpose!” Cost: $30 for members and $45 for non-members. Register at: femfessionals.com/ FemCities/Greenville/Calendar/Events/ FEMCITY-GREENVILLE-%7C-MARCHCONNECTION-EVENT-1193.htm. Mauldin Chamber Leads Group Mauldin Chamber of Commerce, 101 East Butler Road, Mauldin; noon-1 p.m.
Event Description: Tour of Hartness International, one the region’s premier manufacturing facilities and lunch. Space is limited to 30 and attendees must be members of the Manufacturers Roundtable to attend. Guests of members will be allowed to attend if space is available. Hartness will provide safety glasses. Safety shoes not required; closed-toed shoes are preferred. Contact: Hank Hyatt at 864-239-3714. An Evening with Philip Ackerman-Leist Strom Thurmond Institute, Self Auditorium, 230 Kappa St., Clemson; 6:30 p.m. Speaker: Philip Ackerman-Leist, Author of “Rebuilding the Foodshed” and “Up Tunket Road,” and professor at Green Mountain College, Poultney, Vt. Topic: Rebuilding the Foodshed: Remapping Our Expectations for the Food We Share Cost: Free to attend. Contact: Kelly Gilkerson at 864-6565057 or kgilker@clemson.edu. thursday, March 7 Lunch and Learn Commerce Park, 102 Depot St., Fountain Inn; 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Speaker: Dr. Matt Cohen, Life Source Spine & Wellness Topic: Key strategies to increase performance and decrease stress at home and work Lunch will be served Contact: Yancey Epps at 864-770-5407 or yepps@fountaininnchamber.org. SYP First Thursday Zarza, 149 S. Daniel Morgan Ave. Suite 1, Spartanburg; 5:30 p.m.-7:00 p.m. Come socialize and network with your fellow young professionals. Cost: $3 house liquor, $5 flavored martinis, $5 house wine Contact: Meric Gambel at 864594-5030 or mgambel@ spartanburgchamber.com.
March 1, 2013 Upstate business journal 27
UBJ
Rick Davis, CPA Firm Managing Shareholder
We’ve helped businesses succeed through the Great Depression, the recent recession and every market in between.
For 88 years, Elliott Davis has advised businesses on how to run efficiently, grow wisely, be more profitable. provides everything from audit and tax solutions to highly specialized advisory services across the spectrum of industries.
200 East Broad Street • Greenville, SC 29601 • 864.242.3370 • www.elliottdavis.com
28 Upstate business journal March 1, 2013
© 2013 Elliott Davis LLC © 2013 Elliott Davis PLLC
Led by Firm Managing Shareholder Rick Davis, our team
Quarterlies
‘America’s Diner’ Reports Lower Income Denny’s reported a sharp drop in revenue and earnings in the fourth quarter and year 2012. The Spartanburg-based restaurant chain said fourth quarter net income of $6.5 million, or 7 cents per share, was down from $92 million, or 92 cents per share, in the same quarter a year ago. The difference was in large part caused by an impairment charge of $700,000 in the fourth quarter of last year while net in the quarter of 2011 benefited from an $89-million deferred tax benefit. Revenue for the quarter was $116 million compared to $130 million in the fourth quarter of 2011. For the year, net income was $22 million, or 23 cents per share, compared to $112 million, or $1.15 per share, in 2011. Denny’s had revenue of $432 million last year, $488 million in 2011. The company said same-store sales grew 1.5 percent in 2012 for franchised stores and 0.2 percent for store-owned ones. The company said it had reached its goal of having 90 percent of its restaurants franchise-owned. John Miller, president and CEO, said the improvement in same-store sales “is a testament to our positioning as America’s Diner, emphasizing everyday affordability” and limited-time special pricing. Mark Wolfinger, executive vice president and chief financial officer, said the company generated $49 million in free cash flow in 2012 and used $28 million to reduce its debt and $22 million to repurchase stock to reward shareholders. Europe Hurts Capacitor Sales AVX, the Greenville County-based maker of capacitors, reported fiscal third quarter net income of $20 mil-
lion, or 12 cents a share, down from $37 million, or 22 cents per share, in the comparable 2011 period. Net revenue was down $1 million at $341 “as a result of decreased volumes across most of the markets we serve,” the company said. For the nine months ended Dec. 31, AVX had a loss of $89 million compared to net income of $166 million in the prior period. The company incurred a charge of $266 million related to environmental issues at an old New Bedford Harbor, Mass., superfund site. “Geographically, compared to the same period last year, sales decreased in Europe and the Americas while increasing in Asia, tracking the overall macroeconomic conditions in these regions,” the company said.
Manufacturer Cuts Expenses KEMET Corp., the Simpsonville-based manufacturer of capacitors, reported a loss of $14 million on revenue of $206 million in the quarter ended Dec. 31. The loss was an improvement over the $28 million in red ink in the same quarter of 2011. Revenue in that period was $237 million. “Despite declining sales over the past three fiscal quarters, our efforts to reduce our fixed costs across the entire company have been successful,” the company said, citing an improvement in gross margin to 17.1 percent from 14.4 percent. KEMET said it expected its fiscal fourth quarter revenue to be consistent with third quarter results and that it expects expenses to decline between $300,000 and $500,000.
UBJ
New to the Street
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Dairy Queen ribbon-cutting in Mauldin; fresh baked goods available for dessert at Rick’s Deli and Market; Upstate Nutrition/Plate 108 in Greer; a selection of fine wines available at Rick’s Deli and Market.
Dairy Queen recently opened at 112 North Main St., Mauldin. Upstate Nutrition/Plate 108 allows patrons to attend cooking classes and visit a registered dietitian for nutrition information and advice. Plate 108 offers four types of classes: demonstration, eating demonstration, participation and combination. They are
located at 108 E. Poinsett St. in Greer. For more information, call 864915-2640, email info@ upstatenutrition.net, or visit upstatenutrition.net or facebook.com/plate108. Last week, Rick’s Deli and Market opened on the Riverwalk at 101 W. Camperdown Way in downtown Greenville. The upscale deli is a new
concept for Rick Erwin Dining Groups, which has two other restaurants downtown: Rick Erwin’s West End Grill and Rick Erwin’s Nantucket Seafood. The new deli and market targets downtown’s growing residential population with sandwiches, cheeses, pastries, wine and specialty beers as well as meals to go and off-site catering.
March 1, 2013 Upstate business journal 29
UBJ
Social
First Row: OYSTER ROAST First Federal presented the 9th Annual Cypress Internal Medicine Oyster Roast last week at The Warehouse in downtown Greer. A shrimp boil and pig pickin’ were added to this year’s festivities. Photos Provided Second Row: GREENVILLE CHAMBER ANNUAL MEETING FROM LEFT: Angela Webb (right), president of CertusBank, presented the ATHENA Leadership Award to (from left) Xanthene Norris, Jo Hackl and Nancy Whitworth at the Greenville Chamber’s 124th annual meeting; Luanne Runge, chairwoman of the Greenville Chamber board of directors; Jim Evers, left, presented the Greenville Chamber’s Buck Mickel Leadership Award to U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint; Luanne Runge, with Ava Smith of Flat Fee Recruiting, winner of the Minority Business of the Year Award. Photos by Rose Photography & Design Third Row: GREENVILLE CHAMBER ANNUAL MEETING Rolling Green Village in Greenville hosted the Greer Chamber of Commerce’s February networking event, “Handshakes and Hashbrowns.” Photo Provided
30 UPSTATE BUSINESS JOURNAL March 1, 2013
Photo Provided
Snapshot
Photo Provided
UBJ
From “Remembering Greenville: Photographs from the Coxe Collection”
Greenville’s first large-scale apartment complex, the Davenport Apartments, was built in the early 20th century on the corner of East Washington and Church streets. The three-story complex was built in 1915-1916 for G. D. Davenport by real estate developer Eugene A. Gilfillin. Designed by local architect J.L. Lawrence, the U-shaped structure has a central court with a Jacobean-style gable at the end. Refrigerators line the sidewalk waiting for installation.
Photo by Greg Beckner
Historic photos available from the Greenville Historic Association
Today, the Wharton Apartments are the 801 East North Condos. The third-floor patios now have awnings, as do the buildings entrances.
Photo by Greg Beckner
The Wharton Apartments at Lavinia Avenue and East North Street; a for-rent sign of the front of the building list the contact as a E.M. Wharton. The city directory from 1933 lists the property as the Maryland Apartments.
The Davenport Apartments at the intersection of East Washington and Church streets are today the Davenport Condos. The exterior still looks very much as it did when they were built in the early 20th century.
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