Business is blooming

Section B
Business
& knoxvillebiz.com
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Phone: 865-342-6394 | email: [email protected] Tuesday, June 16, 2015
Dolly acquires Lumberjack Feud
■■Entertainer
plans theater
renovations
By Carly Harrington
[email protected]
865-342-6317
Country music superstar Dolly Parton has expanded her entertainment
portfolio with the acquisition of Lumberjack Feud
Dinner Show in Pigeon
Forge.
Terms of the deal were
not disclosed.
Major renovations to the
34,000-square-foot facility at 2713 Parkway, and
significant changes to the
show are planned for the
2016 season, according to
Pete Owens, spokesman
for World Choice Investments, the parent company of dinner attraction
venues Dixie Stampede
and Pirates Voyage.
“In principle, the show
fits our formula of family
entertainment very well,”
Owens said. “There is a
fun, action-packed show
element and a meal that
is part of the experience
and the entertainment is
targeted to families. As
we move forward, it will
be more so.”
Next door to the The Island, the Lumberjack Feud
theater opened in August
2011 to showcase the logging heritage in the Great
Smoky Mountains and
celebrating lumberjack
athletes.
Founded by professional
lumberjack Rob Scheer,
the show, performed in an
850-seat lumberjack sporting arena, tells the story of
two logging families who
compete for timber rights
before the establishment
of the national park in
the early 1930s. The cast
includes many who are
world champions at their
sport.
A representative of the
show reassured fans on
Facebook that the decision
was the right one.
“We want to assure you
that Dolly has the best
interests of the show in
mind. This move was the
best for our show and for
our staff, and will allow us
to do the same great show
with all the same action,
but with the strength to
make it even better,” the
post stated.
Said Parton in a news
release, “This will be a
fun, creative project for
all of us as we continue to
develop Pigeon Forge into
a world-class family destination.”
Business is blooming
■■Oakes farm,
family branch
out in Corryton
First Horizon passes
federal stress test
PHOTOS BY MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL
Ken and Stewart Oakes of Oakes Daylilies in Corryton on June 10.
Business picked up in the
1980s when they started offering daylilies via mail order with a black and white
catalog.
Talking his father into
hiring additional help after that was “a little bit of
a stretch,” said Stewart
Oakes. “Kenny was working with us while he was
still in college. There’s an
enormous amount of just
physical work in this business and so we finally said
‘we literally can’t get it done
on our own,’ ” he recalls.
The Oakeses now have
about six full-time employees and 20 seasonal
DAYLILY
BLOOM
FESTIVAL
Lake Norman Sunset daylily at the show garden of
Ken and Stewart Oakes of Oakes Daylilies.
Photo Gallery: Historical photographs from
the Oakes Farm
See DAYLILY, 3B
What: Hayrides
through the growing
fields, walk among the
display beds, music
and kids’ activities.
Refreshments
available.
When: June 26-27,
9 a.m. - 3 p.m. rain or
shine
Where: Oakes Farm
8153 Monday Road,
Corryton, TN 37721
Contact: www.
oakesdaylilies.com/
CVS Health to own, operate Target’s pharmacies
AP business writer
Target will sell its pharmacy and clinic businesses
to the drugstore chain CVS
Health for about $1.9 billion
in a deal that combines the
resources of two retailers seeking to polish their
health care reputations.
The acquisition allows
CVS Health to reach more
patients and expand its instore MinuteClinic brand,
which it has been growing
The Oak Ridge National
Laboratory will open its
doors July 14-15 for its “Explore ORNL” conference,
which is designed to introduce the business community to the lab’s R&D facilities and expertise.
Representatives from
companies including
Boeing, Cummins, Local
Motors, Ten-Tec, Dresser-Rand, and Eagle Bend
Manufacturing will speak
about their experiences in
working with ORNL staff,
who will also share information about their areas of
expertise.
Tours of the Oak Ridge
Leadership Computing Facility, Spallation Neutron
Source and Manufacturing Demonstration Facility
will also be available.
For more information,
visit https://public.ornl.
gov/conferences/explore
ornl2015/.
Two Knoxville firms
have been selected to participate in Tech 2020’s
automotive business accelerator.
CBA, a data analytics
startup by Josh McMillan,
and OptoLogistics, a software development firm led
by Mustafa Varzaneh, are
two of nine selected for the
program, which was open
to participants from across
the globe. One participant
is from Mexico, another
from Italy.
AutoXLR8R was held
for three years in Middle
Tennessee, before its management was shifted to
Tech 2020 in Oak Ridge.
The event kicks off July
7 and culminates in August with road shows in
Greenville, S.C., Birmingham, Ala.; and Oak Ridge.
[email protected]
865-342-6343
By Tom Murphy
Companies invited
to ‘Explore ORNL’
Knox firms selected
for autoXLR8R
By Shelley Kimel
Row after row of mostly
green leafy plants fill Oakes
Daylilies’ gardens in Corryton, but here and there
a blooming burst of color
hints at the display that will
draw thousands of visitors
from across the country to
the nursery’s Bloom Festival
June 26-27.
Visitors will see more
than 1,000 flower varieties, but what’s now one of
the largest daylily growers
in the country started as a
hobby in the 1960s when Bill
Oakes bought 16 flowers for
$1 apiece and planted them
at his farm, which over the
years has also produced tobacco, dairy cattle and then
beef cattle.
Bill Oakes passed away
in 1998, but his hobby lives
on as a full-time plant nursery in the hands of his son,
Stewart Oakes, and grandson Ken Oakes, who is now
owner of the business. The
two have nurtured the
flower sales from one plot
in rural Corryton to 70 acres
spread across three sites
supplying thousands of retail and wholesale customers by mail.
Each generation has
added to and improved the
family business, from persuading Bill Oakes to accept credit card payments
when they were first gaining widespread acceptance
to hiring the first nonfamily
employees, but the introduction of a color catalog in
the early 1990s was the real
“catalyst for growth” for
the business, the younger
Oakes said.
“I’m not sure how I talked
Dad into it, but I guess the
first year we printed catalogs, well, we spent more
on the catalogs than we
grossed the previous year,”
Ken Oakes said.
Bill and Stewart Oakes
sold plants directly from
the farm, which was also
their home. It was open
to the public seven days a
week, and Sundays after
church were always a busy
time, said Stewart Oakes.
Customers paid in cash
and plants were dug on the
spot by family members.
Briefs
aggressively for the past
several years. It also gives
the nation’s second-largest
drugstore chain a retail
presence in new markets
like Seattle, Denver and Salt
Lake City.
Target customers, in
turn, will gain access to
CVS Health Corp.’s pharmacy care programs that
help them manage their
prescriptions, find lowcost generic drugs and buy
specialty medications, a
rapidly growing slice of
the pharmaceutical market.
Drugstore chains, grocers and big retailers like
Target and Walmart have
all pushed deeper into
customer health in recent
years, in part to serve the
aging baby boom generation and the millions of
uninsured people who are
expected to gain coverage
under the federal health
care overhaul. They’ve added walk-in clinics to their
stores and, in some cases,
expanded the care those
clinics provide to include
monitoring chronic conditions like diabetes.
Retailers also are putting
more health care products
on their shelves.
Drugstores have long
since slowed their push
to grow by building new
stores and shifted to expanding what their existing stores offer. That includes groceries and other
non-pharmacy items, aside
from health care products, as they try to attract
customers who are looking
to buy more in a single stop.
CVS Health gained national attention last year
when it announced it would
pull tobacco from its store
shelves as part of a push
to improve its reputation
as a health care provider.
The drugstore chain also
changed its name to CVS
Health from CVS Caremark last year as part of its
increased focus on health.
See CVS, 4B
MEMPHIS — The 2015 DoddFrank Act stress test shows
First Horizon National
Corp., parent company
of First Tennessee bank,
would remain capitalized
at levels significantly better than “adequate” even in
severely adverse economic
and financial conditions,
the financial services company said Monday.
The annual test are required of national banks
and federal savings associations with assets of at
least $10 billion.
The tests measure
capital levels in the face
of hypothetical events
including a greater than
50-percent drop in the
U.S. stock market, a greater than 25-percent drop
in U.S. real estate values,
a significant contraction
of the U.S. economy and a
spike in oil prices.
First Tennessee holds
the No. 1 market share in
the Knoxville area based
on local deposits of more
than $2.8 billion.
Gap closing 175
namesake stores
NEW YORK — Gap is closing
175 of its namesake U.S.
stores and eliminating 250
corporate jobs as it tries to
revive the brand.
Gap will close about 140
Gap U.S. stores in the fiscal
year that ends Jan. 31 and
the remainder afterward.
The company did not
disclose which locations
would be closed. Knoxville’s only Gap store is at
West Town Mall.
The closures don’t include Gap Factory or Gap
Outlet locations. And Gap
doesn’t expect big changes
at its Old Navy and Banana
Republic stores.
Gap said the cuts at its
headquarters are intended
to make it faster and more
decisive.
From staff and wire reports