Every year since 1990, The Business Journal of Tri

E
very year since 1990, The Business
Journal of Tri-Cities, TN/VA has
dedicated space in the December or
January issue to celebrating the previous
year’s top performing businesses or
businesspeople in Northeast Tennessee
and Southwest Virginia. This celebration
has taken many forms over the years.
In the beginning there was the
Movers and Shakers list. Back in 1990
The Journal picked the “top newsmakers,” a list of 20 individuals whose work
had affected the business community in a
significant way in the previous 12 months.
A few years later The Business
Journal changed its approach to celebrate
a single individual. The Businessman of
the Year quickly gave way to The Businessperson of the Year.
Then, in late 2009, we were discussing plans to honor Jeff Byrd, then the
president and general manager of Bristol
Motor Speedway, as Businessperson of
the Year. Byrd said he would be glad to
accept the honor, earned by selling out
both Cup races in a year in which most
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The Business Journal of Tri-Cities TN/VA | January 2014
tracks around the country were experiencing huge drops in attendance. However,
Byrd added, he would only accept the
honor if it were presented to each and
every member of his team along with him.
It was the entire staff of Bristol Motor
Speedway, he said, that made BMS’
record-setting sellout streak possible.
Thus, in the January 2010 issue, we
celebrated, for the first time, our Business
of the Year. From 2010 through 2012, we
honored one business per year.
Last year, in discussing how to celebrate the most impressive achievements
in the business community, we came upon
another dilemma. Our leading candidate
was not a business. Nor was our leading
individual candidate for businessperson of
the year a businessperson per se. Added to
that was the fact that there was more than
one business that could make a persuasive
argument for recognition.
In the end, we went back to the
beginning, back to when we honored
several movers and shakers per year.
We created the Impact Awards and feted
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ETSU President Dr. Brian Noland, the
OnePartner HIE, Mullican Flooring and
Johnson Commercial Development.
In the coming pages you’ll find small
features on seven individuals and organizations that have affected the business
community in a significant way during
2013.
There’s Bell Helicopter, expanding
its operations in Piney Flats; Bristol
Compressors, taking a once-grand,
once-endangered factory and making
it work well again; Eastman Chemical,
committing to a long, successful future
in the region; Huf-North America,
reversing course on plans to leave
the country and expanding its Greene
County operations instead; IES (also
featured in long-form on Page 22),
growing a tech-based industry; NN Inc.,
remaking an already successful publicly-traded local company with positive
results for shareholders; and Summit
Leadership Foundation, which doesn’t
make products – it makes companies
better.
2014 IMPACT AWARDS
Huf-North America
W
hat a difference four years can make.
Huf-North America Automotive’s
Greeneville operation, where expansion plans announced in January 2013 have
magnified since then, offers a case in point.
The German auto parts maker said a year
ago it would invest nearly $20 million in its
Greeneville plant, creating 100 jobs with the
addition of a plastic injection molding and
paint segment. The announcement stood in
stark contrast to a mid-2009 announcement that
the company would relocate its Greeneville
operation to Mexico by 2012, putting more
than 200 people out of work.
Instead of another body blow being
delivered to a Greene County economy
staggered by the recession, the Huf situation
turned positive. The difference maker, Greene
County Partnership CEO Tom Ferguson said,
was the very people whose livelihoods were
threatened back in 2009, who among other
things entered into a renegotiated contract after
the 2009 announcement.
“At the groundbreaking (for the expansion) the president of the North American
division (said) it was the people that caused
them, one, to stay, and two, to expand,”
Ferguson said.
Huf, which designs and produces electronic and mechanical key systems, lock sets
and similar products for a variety of vehicle
makers, reversed itself in 2010, saying it would
stay in Greeneville. Employment ebbed some,
and sat around 150 when the expansion was
announced following an uptick in orders.
That wasn’t the end of the story, though.
Later in 2013 the company said it would create
an additional 60 new jobs, and relocate some
of its corporate functions (close to 30 jobs) to
Greeneville from Wisconsin.
The expansion will send ripples through
the local economy, Ferguson said.
“It’s a very large capital investment,
approaching $20 million so a lot of people
from the construction trades are working,
adding to the tax rolls in Greene County, and
that’s extremely important.”
So is the influx of white collar jobs,
Ferguson said.
“Those are high paying jobs and some
Michael Supa, President & CEO, Huf-North America
may be hired locally. If not, those that will
come down here will be buying houses and
becoming active members of our community.”
Huf should begin hiring early this year,
Ferguson said, though it may be a few years
before all the new jobs are in place.
First Tennessee Bank would like
to congratulate Larry Mullins and
his team at Industrial Electronics
Services, Inc. on receiving a 2013
Business Journal Impact Award.
We applaud your commitment
to provide clients with exceptional
service through innovative processes
and a pursuit of excellence.
First Tennessee Bank National Association • Member FDIC • www.firsttennessee.com
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The Business Journal of Tri-Cities TN/VA | January 2014
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2014 IMPACT AWARDS
Industrial Electronics Services
I
ndustrial Electronics Services ended 2013
with employee growth of 20 percent, and
founder Larry Mullins expects the Graybased company to have an even bigger impact
on the local economy in 2014.
A 2006 investment in three warehouses
and 12 acres of land near its original headquarters has paid off in steady growth since
then, Mullins says. The company (iesgray.
com) develops, manufactures, repairs and
distributes electronic products (primarily
circuit boards) for customers across the world
representing industries ranging from communications and defense to transportation and
medical.
IES finished 2013 with 125 employees,
and with its circuit boards and products
serving important functions in everything
from the Mars Land Rover “Curiosity” to
Siemens MRI machines.
More importantly, with a letter of intent
from a prospective customer that could lead
to IES’s work volumes grow by four times
within a couple of years, the company could
be on the verge of explosive growth.
“It’s a major project, and for the benefit,
I think, of the United States of America,”
Mullins says of the pending work.
IES Director of Operations Tim Coleman
says the project “will double our business size,
and within a matter of two or three years it will
quadruple it. That ramp up would start this
year, and the peak will probably be in 2015.”
Add a project with Oak Ridge National
Labs related to a new centrifuge there – which
could begin in the next couple years – and
it’s easy to see why Mullins and his team are
bullish on the future. Get him talking for any
length of time, though, and Mullins will always bring up the employees who operate the
machinery and even hand-place components
in IES’s sparkling clean facility. That pride
in his employees goes all the way back to the
company’s early days in the 1990s, after it got
its biggest early break with Maryland-based
Hughes Network Systems.
“One of the first times I was there
they were questioning our abilities and our
costing,” Mullins recalls. “I told them to give
me two days’ learning curve and after two
Larry Mullins
days if my people didn’t do three times more
work than their people they didn’t have to
pay me – and we’ve always been paid. By
doing that I’m bragging on the good ole east
Tennessee work ethic.
“We are customer oriented and that’s why
we’re successful even today.”
NN Inc.
I
f the impact NN Inc. had on investors in
2013 sustains itself or accelerates, the
local economy could get a major boost
from the biggest publicly traded corporation
headquartered in Johnson City.
NN’s stock price has more than doubled
since June, when Richard Holder replaced the
retiring Rock Baty as CEO. That additional
equity, and the company’s strong cash position
and healthy debt ratios, will fuel an aggressive
growth phase that Holder and his team plan to
pitch to investors in New York Jan. 30.
Holder recently outlined NN’s growth
plans for The Business Journal. He explained
how those plans might affect NN’s business
across the globe generally, and zeroed in on
anticipated local impacts. Founded in Erwin in
1980, NN produces precision bearing components, industrial plastic and rubber products
and precision metal components at nine
facilities across the U.S., Europe and Asia.
“We like the core business and it is
our intent to grow it,” Holder said of NN’s
legacy ball and roller products, “both the
local facilities as well as the corporate office,
because as the corporation grows, so will the
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The Business Journal of Tri-Cities TN/VA | January 2014
corporate office.”
Holder said corporate office growth
(from the current 12 people) would come from
bringing shared services such as accounting,
tech support and others to Johnson City.
“It is our desire to stay in the area, which
would mean our shared services functions
as a corporation we would bring to the area,
which would drive a substantial increase in
the number of people in the corporate office,”
he said. “I think it’s a great place to live… It’s
our expectation that we’re going to be able to
recruit people here kind of in the sweet spot,
30s, young families.”
Production-wise, Holder anticipates
growth at Erwin will come from what he
called adjacent markets to the current mix of
products “that we have created the capability
to play in, but we’re only now beginning to
penetrate.” The Erwin plant employs about
180, Mountain City nearly 100.
Overall corporate growth, Holder said,
will come from similar adjacent market
growth at NN’s other existing facilities, combined with acquisitions and organic growth in
existing markets.
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Richard Holder
Photo by Scott Robertson
All of these plans are contingent on
investors’ appetite for NN. Holder said NN
shed debt, grew its cash reserves and profits
and became very efficient coming out of the
recession. He hopes that makes NN attractive
to investors in 2014.