Capital at Play March 2019

Jason & Alyssa Moore Elite HRV p.14

Local Industry

Event Planners in Western North Carolina p.35

Western North Carolina's Free Spirit of Enterprise

l e i s u r e & l i b at i o n

Bidding WARS p.57

Auctions in Western North Carolina

Nathan Masters is Seeking

Play, Fun, & Joy at SimpleShot in Woodfin

p.74

Volume IX - Edition III complimentary edition

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March 2019

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T

he expression, “Laws are like sausages; it’s better not to see them being made,” often credited (possibly erroneously) to Germany’s Otto von Bismarck, is typically used when a person wants to connote something negative. With regards to our elected lawmakers, there is indeed something distinctly unappealing and even unsavory taking place at times. And I’m certain that everyone could cite some process or activity which they would prefer to know less about instead of more; I personally have no desire, for example, to find out how the veterinarian coaxes a “specimen” from our dog, Sammy, when we take him in for a check-up.

But just as the rise of the Food Network has made it chic to find out precisely how sausage is made (and once people find out, they want to go make some themselves), so, too, does a publication like Capital at Play specialize in pulling the curtain back on sundry business matters. Our theory is that the more folks learn about what makes the gears of industry turn, the more likely they will be to appreciate the individuals who are behind the businesses, and the diligence and hard work that goes into making those businesses successful.

They might even be inspired to go out and start one themselves.

That is essentially the prime directive of our magazine: understanding, appreciation, and inspiration. Ergo, in this issue we take a look at event planners, those individuals whose mandate is to ensure that your gathering, whether it be as relatively straightforward as a wedding or birthday party, or as logistically complex as a multi-day festival or business conference, runs smoothly. So smoothly, in fact, that you never really even stop to think about what’s going on behind the scenes to keep everyone happy, comfortable, and entertained.

Trust me, though: There are a lot of moving pieces that an event planner is responsible for, and if everything doesn’t fall into place properly, it becomes apparent to the hosts and attendees that somebody has dropped the ball. It takes a lot of creativity (and caffeine) to keep those balls in the air.

This issue also has a report on auctions in our region. In similar fashion to event planning, a lot goes into holding a successful—and profitable—auction, from the acquisition and pricing of artifacts, some of which may be borderline impossible to determine worth; to the enticing of the general public to attend, and hopefully with wallets open; to the ongoing support and guidance of the owners of the items being auctioned in order to guarantee that, just as the bidders go home feeling that they came away with something of genuine value, those erstwhile owners also feel that they were treated fairly and honestly, and that their situation is better than it was prior to the auction.

Even our Featured Capitalist profiles are intended to give our readers a glimpse of what makes our local entrepreneurs tick, because if you can understand how they have navigated their careers thus far—including mistakes they made along the way and what they learned in the process—then perhaps you will be motivated to pursue that dream you’ve always had and be armed with some valuable insights that will help you achieve it.

Got all that? Good. Meet me at the Waffle House Saturday. I’ll treat you to a big plate of sausage, eggs, and hash browns.

Sincerely,

Fred Mills

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March 2019 | capitalatplay.com

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contributing writers & photogr aphers

Jennifer Fitzgerald, Anthony Harden, John Kerr, Bill Kopp, Jim Murphy, Gillie Roberts, Arthur Treff art director

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briefs and events editor

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copy editors

Dasha O. Morgan, Brenda Murphy

Information & Inquiries Capital at Play is Western North Carolina’s business lifestyle magazine. It embodies the idea that capitalism thrives with creativity—that work requires an element of play. Exploring everything from local industry to the great outdoors, Capital at Play is inspiration for the modern entrepreneur.

In every edition we profile those who take the risk, those who share that risk, and those who support them—telling the untold story of how capitalists are driven by their ideas and passions.

We cater to those who see the world with curiosity, wonderment, and a thirst for knowledge.

We present information and entertainment that capitalists want, all in one location. We are the free spirit of enterprise.

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Editorial content is selected and produced because of its interest to our readership. Editorial content is not for sale and cannot be bought. Capital at Play is financially sustained by advertisers who find value in exposure alongside our unique content and to the readers who follow it.

This magazine is printed with soy based ink on recycled paper. Please recycle.

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Capital at Play is a trademark of Capital At Play, Inc. Published by Capital At Play, Inc. PO Box 5615, Asheville, NC. 28813

Capital at Play is protec ted through Tr ademar k Regis tr ation in the United States. The content found within this publication does not necessar ily ref lec t the views of Capital At Play, Inc. and its companies. Capital At Play, Inc. and its employees are not liable for any adver tising or editor ial content found in Capital at Play. The ar ticles, photogr aphy, and illus tr ations found in Capital at Play may not be reproduced or used in any fashion without express wr it ten consent by Capital At Play, Inc.

6

| March 2019

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2019 | capitalatplay.com IvesterJacksonBlackstream.com | 18 S. Pack Square, Asheville |March 828.367.9001

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Capital at Play has partnered with Bclip Productions to bring the pages of each edition to life, just for you. Featured at Capitalatplay.com and our Facebook page, we give you exclusive interviews and insider info on the people, places, and faces of Capital at Play has partnered with Bclip Productions to bring the pages of each edition to life, just for you. Featuring a new enterprise throughout Western North Carolina. Visit us on social media or at our website to see the latest 60 Seconds at Play.

second video every two weeks, we give you exclusive interviews and insider info on the people, places, and faces of enterp throughout Western North Carolina. Visit us on social media or at capitalatplay.com to see the latest 60 Seconds at Play NOVEMBER VIDEO

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www.bclip.com MARKETING AND TRAINING VIDEOS FOR BUSINESS 8

| March 2019

At Bclip we do more than tell your story. Our business-first mentality and c creativity set us apart from other video production companies. It’s our mis help our customers sell their products, train their staff, and entertain custo video. We strive to eat, sleep, and think like the wonderful companies we w

on the cover :

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thi s page :

HRV GR APHS FROM Elite HRV's App. photos by Anthony Harden

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F E AT U R E D vol. ix

14

HEART & SOUL JASON & ALYSSA MOORE

ed. iii

74

DIRECT HIT NATHAN MASTERS

March 2019 | capitalatplay.com

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C ON T E N T S m a r c h 2 019

photo courtesy Broken Arch Auction

35

lo c a l i n d u s t r y

The Main Event

Event Planners in Western North Carolina

insight

57

l e i s u r e & l i b at i o n

Bidding Wars

Auctions in Western North Carolina

colu m n

12 C anyon Kitchen Written by Bill Kopp

48 The Wine Column: Drink Old School Written by John Kerr

p e o p l e at p l ay

8 8 21st Annual Blowing Rock WinterFest

10

| March 2019

70 A rticles of Innovation: Sustainability 101 Written by Gillie Roberts

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11

nsight

CHEF KEN NARON

Here Come the Sun(chokes) Tucked away in Sapphire is a hidden gem of a dining experience, Canyon Kitchen. written by bill kopp

A

look at the four-course, prix fixe menu at Sapphire, North Carolina, restaurant Canyon Kitchen reveals some fancy entrees. And the descriptions sound tantalizingly mouthwatering. But Chef Ken Naron plainly states his approach to food. “I don’t do too much to it,” he says. His guiding philosophy: Start with fresh ingredients and combine them in ways that make sense. “If you do that well,” he explains, “you don’t need to do a whole lot to the food.”

Situated near the base of a towering rock face on the edge of the Lonesome Valley community, Canyon Kitchen opened in 2009. The restaurant (capacity approximately 125 diners) is a hub for residents of Lonesome Valley—they get first crack at reservations—but draws people from all over. “When we open the [reservation] books to the public, it fills up pretty quickly,” says Naron.

Canyon Kitchen’s menu is the source of that popularity.

It changes often, thanks in part to Naron’s creative restlessness. “I get bored,” he says with a hearty laugh.

“It’s a weird thing. If I create a dish and people are loving it, and they’re loving it for two or three weeks, I’m like, ‘Okay, you’re loving it? I’m done.’”

Naron’s two-plus decades as a chef have placed him in some celebrated kitchens. His impressive résumé 12

| March 2019

includes study at the California Culinary Academy, work at San Francisco’s Gary Danko and Restaurant Jardiniere, a Château du Sureau property, and other high-profile work.

In 2010 Naron and his wife moved to North Carolina. A few years later, he was asked to help out as line cook when

“It’s a weird thing. If I create a dish and people are loving it, and they’re loving it for two or three weeks, I’m like, ‘Okay, you’re loving it? I’m done.’” the Canyon Kitchen found itself temporarily short-staffed.

“They loved me,” he admits, “and I had a great time doing it.” When the Canyon Kitchen staff worked a function at New York City’s prestigious James Beard House, they insisted that Naron come along. “You’re part of the team,” they told him. He joined Canyon Kitchen full-time, initially as sous chef, in 2017. Today, he heads the team.

photos cour tesy Canyon Kitchen

THE ORANGE PEEL APRIL 26 6PM Typical of a highly talented and experienced chef, Naron builds his menu based on what ingredients are at their best in a given season. Even if something is popular, he’ll pull it off the menu if his access to a top-quality component is in doubt. “I look forward to see what’s coming down the pike.

I get ready for that, and get that on the menu, as opposed to trying to hold onto a season that’s fading.”

Last fall, for example, Canyon Kitchen’s menu allowed diners to choose from among a beef tartare with a quail egg yolk and dandelions, a roasted fall squash with smoked duck breast, beets with trout and roe, and a tuna tataki on a bed of charred eggplant and sunflower shoots. The main course choices included squab, osso bucco, and short ribs. And Naron even put the relatively exotic—yet locally-sourced—red sunchoke on the Canyon Kitchen’s menu. Even with his deep and extensive culinary background, until recently, Naron wasn’t very familiar with the red variety of tuber species also known as a Jerusalem artichoke or earth apple. “If I see something I’ve never used—or that I haven’t used in a long time—that excites me,” he says. The dish was adventurous yet simple, elegant and crafted in a way that brings the ingredients together without obscuring the qualities that make each component special.

“I’m serious about what we do,” Naron says. “But I’m not crazy serious. I like to put out good food. I like for everybody to be focused but relaxed at the same time. Because the happier that my team is, the better the food.”

Canyon Kitchen has been closed for the season but will reopen at the start of May (hours 5PM-9PM). To learn more, visit Lonesomevalley.com/cashiers-nc-restaurant

BRILLIANT FASHION. BRIGHTER FUTURES. The 5th Color Me Goodwill runway show features seven Asheville-area designers presenting color-inspired collections made from items found at Goodwill stores.

It’s a show of innovation and ingenuity like no other.

Celebrate the creativity of Asheville’s fashion designers and meet some of the people Goodwill has served.

SHOP. DONATE. MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

March 2019 | capitalatplay.com 100% Local | 100% Nonprofit | colormegoodwill.org

13

ALYSSA MOORE reviewing the details of the CorSense

14

| March 2019

Heart

& Soul

written by jennifer fitzger ald photos by anthony harden

The folks behind Asheville med-tech startup Elite HRV are tuned in to the daily changes in our nervous systems that affect overall stress levels and health.

March 2019 | capitalatplay.com

15

O

ur story begins with Average Joe.

We all know him—right? He is pretty normal. He works. He pays bills. He probably sits a little bit too much. Caffeine is definitely important to his life. He carries a little bit of extra weight. He struggles with his health. He lives in a world—which is our world— where life span has plateaued, health span is actually decreasing, and chronic disease is on the rise.

Average Joe spends about $2,500 a year on his health for non-medical related things like the gym, supplements, diet planning, and alternative healthcare. Employers of people like Average Joe spend about $9 billion a year on employee health, so clearly people are trying, but public health continues to decline. Why? The answer is because it’s really complicated.

That is how Jason Moore, co-founder and CEO of Elite HRV, began his recent pitch on Demo Day— the graduation from Venture Asheville’s Elevate Program. His task: to describe what his business is in eight minutes.

Jason says there are tons of factors that impact Average Joe. “It’s not just diet. It’s not just stress. It’s not just exercise. It’s all of these factors combined and more that affect the health of the average person.”

Jason and his wife, Alyssa Moore, who is co-founder and COO of Elite HRV, find themselves 16

| March 2019

in Asheville at the right time and place. What is it that their company does and what is HRV? We’ll get to that; but first, let’s take a look at the interesting journey that brought them here.

Alyssa grew up in Wyoming and moved quite a bit as her family was in the oil business. She went to Texas A&M University and finished with a petroleum engineering degree. After graduation she worked in the oil industry for five or six years in different parts of Texas. She met Jason through work, and they were married in 2014.

“I was getting pretty burnt out,” she says, “because of being a lead engineer in a startup out in the field.

I was working crazy hours and on call all the time. I was getting calls in the middle of the night, several nights a week. It was starting to feel like—I need a break. After we got married, we decided to quit those jobs and do a little road trip. We traveled for a couple of years. And that’s how we found Asheville.

“It was mostly out of necessity and insanity, but I felt like we grew a lot. We wanted different things— we didn’t want to go back into the corporate world.

We didn’t want to back to Houston. That just really didn’t fit our priorities.”

Jason, from Houston, Texas, comes from a big family. His Dad was a very entrepreneurial guy who owned a tech company in the ‘90s that went through a lot of ups and downs.

“I learned a lot when I was a kid going through that journey with them,” says Jason. “I learned a lot from a financial standpoint. I’ve had a lot of good influences on me growing up. I wasn’t a naturally super hard worker like Alyssa through

2 MINUTES EACH DAY is all it takes for Elite HRV to help you capture your data.

March 2019 | capitalatplay.com

17

school, but pretty gifted, and I had really good influences of hard workers, including the original partner of Elite HRV who was my college roommate.”

Jason went to Texas A&M as well, but he and Alyssa did not meet each other while they were there. He received a degree in information systems and then worked in the oil industry, where he was hired by Alyssa’s mom. (They joke that he was preapproved by her mom.) While working for the oil company in Houston, Jason designed data analysis systems for complex equipment data out in the field. He traveled a lot and honed his skills of educating people on data analysis and designing interfaces for people who were trying to use data in different ways. That was the start of breeding some of the skills he needed for Elite HRV.

“It’s like the check engine light for your entire body and mind and examines the tiny changes and patterns between heartbeats.”

Jason’s big family has a lot of health issues—many of the top 10 killers of health you will find within a person or two of him in his family.

“My dad is suffering a lot right now with his health,” says Jason. “I was starting to see some early warning signs myself and then I had all these warning signs from my family that I needed to pay attention to. So, I just got really passionate about it over the years all the way to becoming a health coach and trainer as a side passion while doing this oil industry IT work.

I really didn’t ever really think I would pivot my whole career out of IT and information systems, but then we got married, and Alyssa had all these high stress things going on at work, and I was getting more into the health and fitness performance side of things as a passion—and so we saw kind of a mutual opportunity to quit.”

The couple had saved up a little bit of a buffer that allowed them to travel and spend more time bonding as a couple. Their time working in the oil industry enabled them to do this—both skill-wise and financial-wise. They acknowledge that not many people can forgo pay for a couple of years. And as they traveled, they started nurturing the ideas that Jason had, which started Elite HRV as a side project while they were working in the oil and gas industry.

“It was my previous college roommate and I,” says Jason. “He’s a computer science guy, and I had the data analysis side of it. He put out an app and within a couple of months while we were still working it had been downloaded by several thousand people.”

18

| March 2019

While Jason and Alyssa were traveling for two years, they started working more and more on Elite HRV. Jason recognizes Alyssa as being the type of person who multiplies anything she touches by 10 at least. So, as he began bouncing ideas off of her for Elite HRV, and the more time they dedicated to the business, the better it got. It became apparent that this Elite HRV side passion had started looking like a real business and they decided to go for it. Three months into their travel, Alyssa officially joined the company.

Continues Jason, “Eventually my original partner decided that he wanted to go back to a ‘normal job’—which is totally understandable because normal jobs—they actually pay you.

We continued on without him and we ended up contracting some additional help over time as we started figuring out how to monetize the business. Fast forward—now we are up to seven full-time people, and we moved to Asheville to set roots and work hard on the business and also be in a place that was conducive to the lifestyle that we like, which is good food, good outdoors, and a health priority, family-oriented. And as a bonus, there are amazing entrepreneur resources in Asheville that we didn’t even know about when we arrived here. So that’s been a blessing as well.”

ALYSSA MOORE

What’s HRV All About?

When Jason was a health coach, he realized that everyone’s situation is different and unique. Something that works for one person doesn’t work for someone else because they have their own situation and condition. It was then that he discovered the interesting concept called Heart Rate Variability (HRV). HRV is a deeper and more comprehensive biomarker than number of steps or heartrate. It’s like the check engine light for your entire body and mind and examines the tiny changes and patterns between heartbeats. At that time there was promising research being done that showed HRV can actually tell you what is happening to your body in real time.

“So, all of these factors are coming in as inputs and manifesting as you,” says Jason. “HRV, what it does, is detects subtle changes in your nervous system, and those changes in your nervous system are very sensitive to changes in your overall stress and health. What I determined is that there are people in the industry that are trying to make HRV more measurable and accessible to average people. My background in data analysis and tech and trying to figure out how to make complex data out in the field really useful to decision makers gave me the foundational knowledge I needed to create that. My original partner and I put our heads together. I [thought I could] make an app that connects to a basic chest strap that was accurate enough to get tiny changes in heart rate that we needed to measure HRV. So then you get real deep into the science here.

Essentially, that opened huge doors to be able to measure it anytime, anywhere. And then you can start to do all these really neat observations on yourself, and a coach can observe their client and say, ‘OK, when we tweak your exercise, what happens? When you do a diet, what happens? When we introduce this supplement, what happens?’”

Elite HRV started with a mobile app and then a desktop analytics tool followed, which actually syncs the data from the app and aggregates it for coaches, health practitioners, research teams, and sports teams. The Elite HRV advanced algorithms analyze the precise times between heartbeats and detect activity from the nervous system, which controls processes like energy regulation, digestion, mood, and response to stress.

Before, to get accurate HRV it required medical grade testing, so the average user couldn’t do that. Even if you did that in a hospital setting you couldn’t really do it long-term. Being able to do it at home now it is more powerful in a way because you are able to test more frequently and make better decisions and guidance. Originally it was the mobile app, which was and continues to be free for users, which could be used with a chest strap heart rate monitor. The mobile app may have no direct revenue associated with it, but it is actually the main entry point to the business.

Jason and Alyssa hoped someone would come out with a hardware that could accurately measure HRV without the chest strap. When this didn’t happen, they partnered with an engineer company and patented their CorSense medical grade

JASON MOORE

March 2019 | capitalatplay.com 19

finger sensor. The CorSense sensor, which can be purchased directly from the Elite HRV website, is much easier to use than a chest strap. Two minutes in the morning wearing the sensor is all it takes—a little morning check-in.

“To use our product, we really only recommend two minutes each morning,” says Alyssa. “We try and keep it as simple as possible. We don’t want people to have to wear wearables. We have a lot of that already. We don’t want to add to that.”

“We actually found benefits to the morning check-in process because a lot of times now people are so busy they just launch right into their day worrying about all that they have to do that day,” adds Jason. “Like skipping breakfast just to get after it. If you can really prioritize just a couple of minutes in the morning to check in with yourself, it’s like a win-win—you get data about what is going on inside, and you have a minute or two to say, ‘OK, start the day off with myself in mind.’ Not in a selfish way—it’s like, hey, I need to be good and healthy to help all the people out in the world that need my attention.”

One of the biggest things that changed the company’s growth was the launch of the Morning Readiness Gauge. It’s a simple green, yellow, red system that shows you how much stress your body is under. After you take your morning reading and check your app, this gauge swings right and left. If you are in balance, 20

| March 2019

you are in the green. Too much stress swings you to the left, and then too much of what they call recovery swings you to the right. If you are in either one of those states, you might not want to work out hard and might want to prioritize getting more sleep.

“Each morning you get this gauge that says for you, based on your own situation, you are in balance or out of balance,” says Jason. “On the morning of, you actually get a paragraph with suggestions that might say your body looks a little stressed, so today you might want to do a little bit of deep breathing. Maybe you don’t try and set a PR at the gym.”

The user also receives an HRV score with their morning reading (1 to 100) that helps compare them to the population.

Other statistics are also available, and you can actually put other information in like mood, exercise, and sleep. You can tag things like alcohol or caffeine and see how that data affects you over time.

“I think this app just saved your life.”

The next step for Elite HRV was adding educational courses.

They now have 20 instructors who are experts on various subjects who teach courses on their platform.

THE MOBILE APP makes it super easy for the user to keep up with their overall health.

“We actually sell premium educational courses,” notes Jason, “and originally this was just to teach people about HRV because it’s a really deep subject and so we had people coming in saying, ‘This is awesome—I can do my measurements, but I still want to understand more about how this works.’ So, we partnered with another person to co-develop a course on HRV, and we put that out there and it quickly became the world’s go-to-resource on HRV. We had really high-profile people take it and really normal people take it, too. It ended up generating a good amount of revenue for us and it also established our expertise further. And helped a lot of people learn. In the course, it’s not even selling our product, it’s just teaching science and teaching how to apply this to your real-world goals and things like that.”

Jason and Alyssa have received emails from people who say Elite HRV changed their life. One email was from an individual seeing in advance that they were going to have a heart attack, going to the hospital, and the hospital staff saying, “I think this app just saved your life.”

“This is not for predicting heart attacks, but it can and that’s the power of the metric that we use,” says Jason. “What you see more commonly is people saying I had no idea that I was beating up my body by trying to run a marathon and work 60

hours a week. They combine that work stress with that physical stress and its overload. So, their health is declining. They can’t figure out why their hair is thinning, or they are keeping a little extra weight even though they run eight hours a week. It kind of helps people really understand what’s going on inside.”

Elite HRV has over 270,000 users on the app worldwide, including every continent—even Antarctica. The Analytic Dashboard has a subscription model: $8 a month for personal, while for a team it’s $30 - $100 a month depending on the size of your team. The CorSense sensor and the courses are their main revenue channels.

So far, marketing has all been organic growth. Many people come to them through an online search for HRV, or perhaps they have someone they follow on a blog who mentioned HRV, so they search it in the app store.

“I wish I could say it was all by design, but basically HRV being so unique and powerful and us doing it really well has brought all the people to us, so we haven’t had to do a lot of outreach,” says Jason.

Eighty percent of users using Elite HRV are males; the average age is in the mid to early 40s, but they also have 90-year-olds and 20-year-olds. The Elite HRV platform works for all ages and all fitness levels.

March 2019 | capitalatplay.com

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Eligibility Requirements for The Venture 15 Awards from www.ventureasheville.com/venture15 When defining startups, we can use Steve Blank’s quote, a startup is a “temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.” Or we can consider a company’s orientation towards growth, capital, or an exit event. But truthfully, if you have to ask if your company is a startup, it probably isn’t.

Still wondering? Startups (companies, corporations, partnerships, sole proprietorships) must meet both of the following criteria:

1.

2.

Have been in business for two years or more as of August 1, 2018; and Have had verifiable annual revenues of $150,000 or more every year since calendar year in 2016, or for the past two full fiscal years.

Founders or company owners must operate businesses, sell in, or employ people in either Buncombe or Haywood Counties.

In 2017 Vivek Menon joined the team as CCO. He brought experience in developing sales and marketing channels and he was part of a medical device startup that ended up going through multiple fundraising rounds and having an IPO. He has been a nice addition to the team because Jason and Alyssa have a technical background, while he focuses on the commercialization side of things.

There is one last channel that underlines all of this—the data. The data is obviously powerful for the individual, but there is also now amazing potential in the aggregate data that Elite HRV has.

“We’ve collected over 10 million health matrices in our database, and it’s unique data you can’t find anywhere else,” says Jason. “We have actually had people offer to buy it and we have told them no. We’re not against aggregate analysis of the data anonymized without people’s information, but we really want to be careful with that. We also want it to be just put towards the greater good and not used in a shady way.

We think, internally, there is so much more power there that we should be able to analyze that aggregate data and come up with even better recommendations for our customers.

So, we haven’t even been able to spend a lot of time on that yet because we’re a startup—we can’t do all the things all the time.”

To identify the 15 fastest growing AshevilleArea startups, the Venture 15 will be ranked by compounded annual growth rate (CAGR).

Companies will be asked to provide baseline financial information about their organization via tax returns that will enable calculation of its CAGR. To ensure and maintain confidentiality, all financial documents will be submitted to and maintained by our independent accounting partner.

Forms accepted by this partner to verify sales or revenues (net of returns) include ONE of the following: Audited or reviewed financial statements by an external CPA firm (i.e., auditor’s signed opinion letter) for the last three years, or your most recently completed two fiscal years.

The business’ signed U.S. Income Tax Return for the last three years, or your most recently completed two fiscal years.

Asheville: An Entrepreneurial Mecca Jason and Alyssa were first introduced to Asheville’s entrepreneur resources through Mountain BizWorks. It was here that they were introduced into the local network and received a loan.

The couple credits Mountain BizWorks for being instrumental in getting Elite HRV to the next level.

Through a Kickstarter campaign they raised almost $200,000.

They also joined Venture Asheville’s Elevate Program; in Asheville they found amazing mentors, important networks, and a way to meet people that are like-minded and want to impact in the world like they do.

In December they were honored to win the Venture 15 Awards ranking the 15 fastest growing startups and honoring the people and organizations that make Asheville a place for startups to thrive. Sponsored by Venture Asheville, The Venture 15 Awards recognizes the area’s outstanding entrepreneurs and serves as an elite setting where they can share their talent and wisdom and offer inspiration to other companies. (The December 2018 issue of this magazine included a look at the Venture 15 Awards, for which we were an official co-sponsor.)

Jeffrey Kaplan, director of entrepreneurship for Venture Asheville, was immediately impressed with Jason and Alyssa’s thoughtfulness and focus, how well they work together as a team, and how well they understand their market.

March 2019 | capitalatplay.com 23

“Sometimes you see founders exhibit puffery, to sell you on their excitement and world-changing ideas,” observes Kaplan.

“Jason and Alyssa are confident and reserved, letting the product and testimonials speak for themselves. Beyond their competencies as founders, both Jason and Alyssa have tactical skills, making them such a strong combination. Jason knows the product, how to use and make observations from data, and leads an international team. Alyssa designs not just the product, but the graphics and instructions and illustrations in their pitch deck. They complement each other so well, it’s been a pleasure to support them on their journey.”

The Competition Jason and Alyssa have always broken down competitors into direct and indirect. A big indirect competitor is people’s attention because the Elite HRV platform requires an individual’s time to check-in with themselves.

“For the people who want to improve themselves and get healthy the main competitors would be big names like Apple,” says Jason. “An Apple watch tracks heart rate and things like that, but we don’t foresee them as much as a direct competitor as much as a potential future buyer or something like that, because our technology is very specialized to deliver accurate and meaningful insights about your nervous system, and the watch form factor really isn’t conducive for that. It’s nothing 24

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against Apple—it’s an amazing product, but it also does phone calls and has emojis. Those limitations that they have for it being a versatile social fashion type device will really hinder them on getting into the deeper metrics that we look at. That’s one end of the spectrum.”

“The other thing with high end wearables,” adds Alyssa, “is that they are expensive, so we are trying to make our stuff more accessible and affordable. We don’t want to replace those wearables, but we also know that there are a lot of people who would not buy them.”

Other competitors include basic fitness and activity trackers like Fitbit or step counters; however, a step tracker is a small piece of the overall pie of your health. Elite HRV will tell you if your step tracker is even helping you.

“There are a number of apps that do HRV,” explains Jason.

“We didn’t invent the concept of HRV; we just layered on a lot of intellectual property on making it more accurate and accessible for everyone. There are apps that do HRV and do some of the basic HRV from the research that’s available, but the good news [for us] is none of them have even come close to serving a fraction of the number of people that we have served. If you add them all together, they probably serve as many people as we serve. We are going to continue to keep innovating and building up those barriers for competition. At the same time, our goal is not to crush everyone, but just to be competitive.

To be able to have a business that has a good long-term future.

“We try and be as inclusive as possible. We made this device able to transfer data to any app. Some devices are closed platform—you can’t get your own data out of them; you can’t transfer your data; it’s not really your data. The devices won’t work with anything else. They try and get you into their thing and you can’t get out. We didn’t want to be like that. Our hardware can be used with anything.”

They spent a lot of time talking to their customers, which they believe is what set them apart at the beginning.

The monetization piece of the company is important from a business perspective, but not to get in the way of helping people.

The more people they help the more people will help them. They feature free content, which includes blogs to add value to as many people as possible. Jason does a podcast where he interviews experts which has a couple hundred thousand downloads.

“Our algorithms and our intellectual property are really robust and complex—that’s a pretty big barrier,” says Jason.

“For the big players, it would probably be easier for them to buy it from us rather than to re-create. For the smaller players, it’s a pretty high barrier because we’ve had a lot of time and expertise that’s gone into it. From a competition perspective there is also the basic intellectual property barriers that we have been putting up.”

The Highs and Lows of a Startup The success of Elite HRV has peers asking Jason and Alyssa how they got through certain things and how they have been so successful. They explain that failure is relative to the situation because if they had no cushion to live off of, then Elite HRV probably wouldn’t be here or perhaps would have needed investors early on. If they had not had the ability to live off of savings, it might have been the end of the company early on.

They see failures as learning opportunities. A “failure” they experienced plenty of times was the release of a new feature in the app which users hated. They had to quickly figure out if they should scratch the feature or try to get it to the point where they thought it could actually help. They had features that have been completely scratched and features that never went live.

They spent a lot of time talking to their customers, which they believe is what set them apart at the beginning. They learned from their users what they liked and what they were trying to March 2019 | capitalatplay.com 25

get out of the products. Jason has personally interacted with 15,000 people over the course of the past few years through email and phone.

“Any project, most often, takes longer and costs more than you originally anticipate unless you’ve done it before,” says Jason.

“Luckily, given our background in high dollar high cost projects we kind of know that’s the case. So, we have planned around that. Everything is going to take longer and cost more than you think, so if you are waiting to pay yourself to eat, you need to find a backup plan because it’s probably not going to be that easy.”

The couple brings core values to their company that they aren’t willing to bend on that include health and happiness and being family-oriented. They want employees to be excited to be at work because they know if it comes down to it, they can take care of their family. They, of course, still expect a lot from their people—they expect them to be a high performer, but it doesn’t have to be at the sacrifice of other things. They aren’t gauging people’s merit based on the number of hours that they are logged in. High performance is critical because the issue they are trying to tackle is, from their viewpoint, basically catastrophic globally. It feels almost like a duty to them to reach as many people as they can. The only way to do this is with high performers who learn quickly.

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“We have to not have excuses about figuring things out,” says Jason. “High performance is really important to us.”

What’s Next?

People often ask Jason and Alyssa what type of business they are in. Are you an app? What exactly does Elite HRV do?

“We are an ecosystem,” says Jason. “We are still trying to figure out the best word. ‘Platform’ often comes up. ‘Ecosystem.’

Sometimes ‘community’ depending on who you ask. But we have the app, we have desktop analytics tools, we have hardware, we have educational courses and data science going on behind the scenes, so it’s an interesting startup. A lot of startups revolve around just one thing. I would say from an early phase it’s more risky to try and do lots of things at once, but we got past that, and now, that has actually helped us create barriers to entry for competition and things like that. Because if someone wants to create an app, fine, but who is going to use an app if it doesn’t have the hardware, the courses, the community, the experts, and all that stuff. And it’s really hard to create all that.”

“We’ve done everything so far bootstrapping,” says Alyssa.

“Being able to work for no money for a couple of years was helpful for us getting this business to where it is. At this point,

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because we want to grow the team, we need investors to really get those resources—more developers, product managers.

Getting us out of every piece. We want to breathe a little. Be able to focus on what we need to but not worry about other aspects of the business. We are just really starting to fundraise for $1 million this year.

“Our goal is really to bring awareness to people to start tuning in more to their body when they make changes or have goals they are trying to accomplish. What’s really happening? It’s so easy to lose sight of that because we have such a stimulating environment around us. We want people to be more aware. If we can help facilitate that with objective data, that’s great.”

“You can see why we are so passionate about it, and you can translate that back to my family,” says Jason. “The core of what we do is help people learn about themselves, and we get to learn a lot in the process through our customers and from each other and from these experts that we can help by giving them better tools.

“I think at the end of the day,” he concludes, “that’s kind of our thing—empowering people through better learning.

Ourselves and the experts and the Average Joes and Sallys, and everyone else.”

Advice for a New Startup from Jeffrey Kaplan, Director of Entrepreneurship, Venture Asheville • Focus, especially early on as you develop your product/market fit.

• Founding a startup will be hard. It’ll be harder than you could have expected, things will go wrong in ways you couldn’t have predicted, and the market will change. As a founder you will naturally seek the path of least resistance to get revenue, traction, or users. Don’t compromise.

Remain focused, remember why you took the startup leap.

• Be prepared to fight. Fight for your startup, your employees, your investors, your mentors, and your family.

• Being founder is not the same as having a hobby or a side-hustle. This is your life now. Are you prepared to eat, sleep, and breathe your startup?

Are you ready to dedicate every thought you have to it? That’s the level of focus you need.

Named Outstanding Chamber of the Year by

www.ashevillechamber.org March 2019 | capitalatplay.com 27

CAROLINA floor features a large foyer leading to an open staircase and French doors opening into a living room, a dining room, and a study. Floors are hardwood with the first floor being oak, and the second, mostly heart pine. The windows are new, but some of the light fixtures date back to the 1930s. After six months, the property had been shown to at least 30 parties with no offers; its 40-foot width prevented it from being hauled on many roads.

years ago, when Dhers started working in Jouault’s crêperie, Café Bastille. Dhers since moved to Spartanburg to be closer to family and was a partner in opening a French-Thai fusion bakery, Le Spice.

He had just opened a second location when one of his vendors told him about the Tryon location becoming available.

Upon visiting the site, Dhers saw a deal he couldn’t refuse, but he didn’t want to go it alone, so he contacted Jouault. Jouault, who had been running a restaurant and vending crêpes nationwide, had been considering slowing down. He bought a home in nearby Inman, which reminds him of Normandy, where he and Dhers studied French cuisine. Eloise García, Jouault’s wife, will be La Gaule’s chef. She grew up in the food business in Spain, and her specialty is described as French cuisine with a Spanish twist. The restaurant will have a liquor license and may, pending sufficient demand, expand to offer dinner.

La Crêpe Joyeuse

The Mergers Continue

rutherford county

macon county

Nicolas Dhers and Christian Jouault will be opening Café La Gaule, a bakery and brunch bistro in the location of the former 10 North Trade Street Café and Bakery, in Tryon. The duo met in Miami

Pending regulatory approval, Entegra Bank, based in Franklin, will be acquired

by Knoxville-based SmartFinancial. After the merger, Entegra will operate under the SmartBank aegis. The value of the

in the

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news briefs

In for the Long Haul haywood county

The First Presbyterian Church of Waynesville is trying to get rid of a historic house. The church deemed it surplus property and wanted to remove it to accommodate more parking spaces.

Since the house is in a historic district, the city asked its owners to try not to demolish it. A brainstorm on repurposing only came up with options requiring rights of way that neighbors were unwilling to provide. So, like an old piano, the church put the house on the market, for free, provided the buyer pay all costs of hauling it. The Colonial Revival property features a gambrel roof, a partial-width porch, and a stucco-interior chimney. It is listed as having been built in the 1930s, as a 3,000-sq.-ft. structure enclosing four bedrooms and two full baths. The first

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transaction is estimated at $160 million, just over a 20% premium in the all-stock deal, which is expected to close midyear.

The deal, SmartFinancial’s seventh and largest acquisition, will double that company’s holdings and expand its presence into a total of six Southeastern states.

SmartFinancial’s President and CEO Billy Carroll and Chair Miller Welborn will continue serving in those capacities, while Entegra’s CEO Roger Plemens will be named president of the banks in the Carolinas. SmartFinancial’s board of directors will expand to 17 to accommodate five representatives from Entegra.

Following the acquisition, SmartFinancial will own 47 branches with about $4 billion in assets. Also, as terms of the deal, SmartFinancial will contribute $1 million to its charitable foundation.

Snow Days watauga county

The opening date for the Marriott TownPlace Suites in Boone has been pushed back to August. Under construction is a four-story, 92-room hotel with 96 parking spaces. It is being built on the lot of the former Mountain Villa Motor Lodge, which has been vacant and deteriorating since it closed several years ago. The

carolina in the west

Marriott, which required the construction of a long, curved retaining wall made of eight-foot-tall tiers, was originally scheduled to open last year, but the winter has been harsh. Not only has it been the wettest year on record, two feet of snow fell in December. Acknowledging the town is home to a lot of wind, snow, ice, and other conditions that can stall construction, Boone’s development services policies allow permits for large construction projects to remain active as long as crews are making an effort. In other words, it is okay for work to slow down in winter. The extended-stay hotel is expected to serve visitors to the Watauga Medical Center, which recently purchased land across the street with plans for offering additional outpatient services.

said the lowest estimate now, based on a police-fire station in Fort Mill, South Carolina, would run around $345 per square foot. Construction prices are rising in general, and those for police-fire stations have been on an upward trajectory long enough not to anticipate a near-term turnaround. At the same meeting, Mitch Brigulio, from the public finance firm Davenport & Company, informed the commissioners they were already looking at a $257,000 budget shortfall for next year. They could, he said, build a $9.2 million facility should the USDA grant them a Rural Development loan with a 40-year term and a 3-4% interest rate. At that, the commissioners felt they would be hamstringing future commissioners with debt service. No vote was taken.

Construction Costs Up

A Fourteen-Year Run

wilkes county

caldwell county

Nor t h Wi l ke s b or o’s B o a r d o f Commissioners was informed construction of a new facility to house its police and fire departments would be 50% higher than first estimates. The plan was to build, at minimum, a 22,000-sq.-ft. facility on property owned by the town. Whereas estimates last year ran around $5-$6 million, Jim Powell of ADW Architects

At the end of 2019, Reebok terminated a 14-year run as the corporate sponsor of ZAP Fitness. Headquartered in Lenoir, ZAP runs a nonprofit training center in Boone for post-collegiate, long-distance runners hoping to go to the Olympics.

Most recently, the five ZAP runners to participate in the USA Track & Field Marathon Championship in December

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March 2019 | capitalatplay.com 29

carolina in the west

all qualified for the 2020 Olympic Trials, with two taking third and fourth place.

While Reebok provided a “significant chunk” of funding, coach Pete Rea said the organization’s founders, among whom was his wife, intentionally structured ZAP so as not to be dependent on a single source of income. Funding comes from the business that runs the Boone retreat center and its programs, as well as about 200-300 annual donors.

ZAP and Reebok parted on good terms.

Representatives of Reebok said the company wants to focus on the lightweight cushioning in its shoes, so it made more sense to support a short-distance team, which will be the company’s own Reebok Boston Track Club. ZAP, which will henceforth be known as ZAP Endurance, is now sponsored by On, a Swiss manufacturer of running shoes branded around healthy living.

Leaves Take Leave buncombe county

Back in 2008, Candler’s Michael Migliaccio patented his invention, the Gutter Grinder, which consists of motor-powered blades fitted into a gutter above the downspout. When it rains, the gutter grinder breaks up debris as it is washed out. The Gutter Grinder contains two sensors: One detects water; the other, debris. When both sensors are activated, the blades will turn. Migliaccio said he invented the system because he did not enjoy the inconvenience and safety hazards associated with climbing a ladder to clean out the debris. He wasn’t interested in using one of the screen systems on the market because leaves can get caught and build up on the screen, loading the roof and thus defeating the purpose of the gutters in the first place. Migliaccio built his original model with an erector set and took it to a machine shop for fabricating the first prototype, which he installed and found to work quite well.

Migliaccio is now looking to license or sell the patent.

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The Fabric of Dreams watauga county

Blowing Rock was named Business Insider’s Best Small Town in North Carolina. The online news source describes the town as having access to every outdoor activity imaginable, including fly fishing, rock climbing, and rafting. But the real charm is the downtown, a quaint, well-kempt village with over 100 small shops and restaurants, all set with a mountain backdrop. “This small town seems to be right out of a storybook,” the writeup exclaims. The list is compiled because small towns, with rich artistic scenes and fine dining, are taking ground from urban centers as travel destinations. Blowing Rock can add this award to its long and growing list. It has been named one of The South’s Best Small Towns in Every State by Southern Living, in the top-10 of the Best Small Southern Towns by USA Today readers, one of America’s Prettiest Winter Towns by Travel+Leisure, the favorite mountain destination of Our State, Best Mountain Town by Blue Ridge Country, Best Day Trip by the Winston-Salem Journal, and much, much more.

A Mix of Old & New haywood county

Five years ago, along with several smalltown theaters, the Smoky Mountain Cinema closed. The motion picture industry had gone all-digital, and the costs of upgrading were insurmountable.

The Smoky Mountain Cinema was worse for the wear then, and it has only been deteriorating since. The sloped floor made it difficult for repurposing, and people who knew the industry typically didn’t have funds to invest upfront for renovations. Then, Greg Israel called owner James Clayton. Israel had been the general manager for the Regal, Carmike, and AMC theaters in Asheville, and he recently decided to strike out on his own to renovate small-town theaters.

He had just finished his first project in

Minnesota, and that gave Clayton the confidence he needed to close the deal.

The solid-concrete building has now been gutted, and new utilities are being installed. Tapping his connections in the industry, Israel was able to acquire two U-Hauls of modern equipment, including projectors and popcorn machines, from a South Carolina theater that was closing. Israel is hoping to open the theater, which will have the same layout and name as the old one, by summer.

Imagine Next Year transylvania county

It may be ho-hum nowadays, but it’s a far cry from the old science fairs where the class genius would dazzle everybody by making something like a working digital clock or a radio. This year, students from Transylvania County’s elementary, middle, and high schools came together to demonstrate their coding of robots and plasma-cutting skills. Students were charged with performing scientific inquiries with practical applications for improving quality of life in Transylvania County. Starting small, elementary school students participated by gathering mosquito eggs from their yards to send to entomology students at Western Carolina University. But by middle school, kids were building and programming robots and making things with 3D printers and a CNC machine. The Dr. A. Mickey Church Math and Science Fair and Expo was held at the Transylvania County Library. Projects on-display were pre-judged for advancing to the regional science fair at the university in February.

Kid’s Got Acumen buncombe county

Elisha Lewis just purchased the coffee shop last known as Edna’s, on Merrimon Avenue in Asheville, with plans to open another Rolled and Roasted. Lewis is 20 years old, and he already owns two businesses. At the first, Tech On, located

in the Asheville Mall, he builds customized computers. Lewis used to earn $2,000-$3,000 a month in high school repairing computers and phones. That showed him he could turn his passions into a business, and building computers is one of his favorite things to do. But then he found another passion: running businesses. So, he opened his first Rolled and Roasted store in the mall.

It serves coffee and ice cream rolled with “sprinkles,” like different types of cereal. Lewis is currently pursuing a degree in business administration at UNC-Asheville, and last year he was invited to attend Forbes’ 30 under 30 Summit in Boston. He described it as a great networking event where young entrepreneurs inspired each other with their success stories.

A Grave Burden watauga county

Klee Liles is trying to find a buyer for Mount Lawn Memorial Park and Gardens, a 69-year-old, 13.26-acre cemetery. Handling 50-70 burials a year, the park has over 1,400 gravesites with room for another 2,400. Nobody willing to meet Liles’ asking price of $200,000 has stepped up, and Watauga County rejected an offer to gift the cemetery to them. He’s now trying to interest the Town of Boone, and that is the course of action recommended by the North Carolina Cemetery Commission. Liles purchased the property out of receivership in 2005, and he has had only four complaints over the years, which is considered “better than many.” The town could accept the offer, but Town Manager John Ward doubted he had the resources for maintenance and getting the road up to standards. In addition, legal disputes concerning ownership of the building on the property and the dispensation of revoked bonds would have to be settled first. If the town declines the offer, Liles could abandon the cemetery, and then it would be turned over to the town with no obligation for upkeep.

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carolina in the west

At the Root of the Problem swain county

During a meeting of the budget council of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Pete Taylor put forth a resolution intended to discourage ginseng poaching; Taylor had said five years ago that ginseng was selling for almost $2,000 a pound. People were harvesting it before the plants had a chance to go to seed to sell at pawn shops, and now he has hardly any on his property. The tribe’s supervisory biologist, Mike Lavoie, agreed there was a problem with the plant disappearing; ginseng had been found on less than 1% of over 300 tribal reserve land plant plots recently surveyed. Taylor called for permitting harvesters, defining a harvesting season, and fining anybody in violation. Principal Chief Richard Sneed agreed with the problem, but not with Taylor’s solution. He said the matter should be handled in an ordinance and as a part of a comprehensive overhaul of environmental regulations on tribal lands, now underway. Taylor withdrew his resolution and then worked with the tribe’s attorney general to draft an ordinance. Instead of creating a season and issuing permits, it merely said taking ginseng from somebody else’s property was punishable with a maximum of three

years and $15,000. The tribe should vote on the ordinance by this spring.

What’s in a Name? cherokee county

In an unveiling ceremony, representatives of Murphy Medical Center (MMC) announced the 40-year-old operation is changing its name to Erlanger Western Carolina Hospital. CEO Mark Kimball indicated he had been hearing from a broad range of interested parties that the name was too specific. The hospital has grown in size and scope, with satellites in Andrews and Hayesville, and executives wanted a more inclusive name. As local luminaries and employees who had been given teeshirts with the new hospital logo the day before were gathered, one of the new signs was presented. Kimball reviewed the strategic advantages of ongoing hospital consolidation, saying the former MMC had gained access to resources and expertise by partnering with the nationally-acclaimed Erlanger.

Erlanger is one of the 10 largest public healthcare systems in the country, with seven hospitals, a major academic medical center, and six Life Force air ambulances. The deal to acquire MMC was finalized last April.

Don’t Dream It’s Over haywood county

In the last three years, the Haywood County Tourism Development Authority didn’t feel its relationships with advertising agencies were going anywhere. So, it partnered with Crawford Strategy of Greenville, South Carolina. Crawford first found the county’s website was aggravatingly slow. Since the blue circle of death couldn’t be generating warm feelings about the area, Crawford altered content to make the site more visible to search engines and changed the design so pages would download faster. After analytics showed a 5400% increase in browser engagement, Crawford was retained for a branding overhaul. Crawford observed how people don’t search for destinations using county names, so they changed the site’s name to something more appealing to the senses: VisitNCSmokies.com.

Searching for a slogan, they came up with “Hay, Now,” reflecting both the county name and a sense of immediacy. They loved it so much, they threw it as their single pitch, and were delighted to hear TDA reps saying, “Hay, Now” to each other as they left the meeting. The website now posts photos from social media accounts bearing #HayNow in their captions. The marketing campaign has won six awards

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| March 2019

Marsha Neese Broker Associate - REALTOR® mneese@beverly-hanks.com C: 828-707-5297

to date and, most importantly to the TDA, increased room-tax revenues 11% year over year.

Blossoming a New Era buncombe county

Blossoms, a wedding and event design service, and Baggie Goose, a stationery shop, are restructuring. Owners Audrey and Alan Hirsch and Adrienne Kort have decided to merge the two businesses into one, which will be called Blossoms Creative, and dispense with their bricks-and-mortar storefronts in Biltmore Park Town Square. Blossoms will continue to provide full-service event designs, which Alan says will completely transform a space. Blossoms outsources for floral arrangements, but it designs “custom-built dramatic elements,” like fountains, lighting, and everything else down to boutonnieres. It also takes care of the invitations on custom stationery.

In the absence of retail space, production will continue at a design studio in North Asheville. Clientele meetings are traditionally conducted at the event venues themselves; but if they aren’t, Blossoms has on-demand access to Engaged, a coworking space in Reynolds Mountain.

The trio purchased Baggie Goose 10 years

ago after it had been operating 45 years and had launched Blossoms 14 years ago.

cover costs of construction, which could begin this spring.

Do it For the Kids

Help on the Homestead

macon county

watauga county

T he M a c on C o u nt y B o a rd o f Commissioners authorized the Macon County Board of Education to begin soliciting bids from architects for an expansion to South Macon Elementary School. The building is 20 years old, and it was originally designed to be expanded.

For years, it has been operating above capacity. Three extra classrooms were created by using the music room and converting the music program into a rolling kiosk that visits each classroom, teaching English as a Second Language in an office, and convening an Exceptional Children’s class in a large storage closet. The fire marshal recently wrote the school up for partitioning one room into two classes, leaving one without an egress. Redistricting will not solve the problem, because all the county’s elementary schools are at capacity. The expansion should enclose about 9,700 additional square feet for six classrooms and another 1,200 square feet for cafeteria expansion. The school board will select the architect, and the county will

Ian Snider is the Forest Practitioner in Residence at Appalachian State University, working on the school’s 369 acres of forests and farmland. Snider and his wife, Kelly, also run Mountain Works Sustainable Development, a demonstration project that advocates conservation as a lifestyle instead of a series of interventions. Through Mountain Works, they partner with other businesses to provide homesteading products and services as diverse as grass-fed lamb and beef, horse logging, timber framing, and forestry consulting. Snider wants to show others how using a broad spectrum of alternative microenterprises can support a high quality of life. Two key elements of the project are horsepower and sawmilling with a portable Wood-Mizer LT35. Snider says those aides allow him to care for the forest by removing damaged or needed timber with minimal disruption to the rest of the ecosystem. It is somewhat ironic that draft animals are no longer appreciated for the low-impact, high-horsepower roles they can play.

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828-254-6141 mbhaynes.com

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QUALITY COMMITMENT CHARACTER since1921

March 2019 | capitalatplay.com

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34

| March 2019

Photo by Carr ELliott Photography/ Cour tesy Cordial & Craft

local industry

THE

Main Event written by bill kopp

Everyone’s heard of event planners. But what exactly is it that they do, and how do they get it done? Spoiler alert: It all comes down to professionalism.

March 2019 | capitalatplay.com

35

local industry

photo by Realities Photography/ Cour tesy Cordial & Craft

- EVENT PLANNERS SOURCE KEY Beveridge

Knuth

Harvey

Minton

Lloyd

Holly Beveridge

Becca Knuth

Lexie Harvey

Mary Minton

Kim Lloyd

Studio HB Events & Communication

Asheville Event Co.

Cordial & Craft

M7 Event Solutions

Celine & Company

Western North Carolina’s natural beauty and business infrastructure combine to make our area a popular hosting ground for events.

Whether they’re corporate meetings, concerts, weddings, or conventions, large-scale events require meticulous and expert planning. Meeting those demands in the region are several dozen event planning professionals, ranging from one-person operations to deep-bench staffs of workers, all dedicated to handling the logistics, problem solving, and troubleshooting duties essential to a successful event.

What And Who Is An Event Planner?

Do a Google search for “event planners” and an overwhelming number of the results will be wedding planners, florists, and venues that host—rather than primarily plan—events. Pretty much anyone can hang out a shingle and call themselves an event planner. Even the International Institute of Event Management concedes that there’s no universally accepted definition of what constitutes an event planner. The Institute’s website (Instituteof-event-management.com) offers up an industry definition of a 36

| March 2019

planner’s functions: “Event planning is the process of managing a project such as a meeting, convention, tradeshow, ceremony, team building activity, party, or convention.”

That description includes an array of tasks including “budgeting, establishing timelines, selecting and reserving event sites, acquiring permits, planning food, coordinating transportation, developing a theme, arranging for activities, selecting speakers and keynotes, arranging for equipment and facilities, managing risk, and developing contingency plans.”

The organization follows up that definition with another slightly different “official” definition per the United States Department of Labor, plus what it characterizes as “an optimist’s view” and a pessimistic one. The latter focuses upon the high stress level of the job.

Holly Beveridge, of Flat Rock’s Studio HB Events & Communication, concedes that confusion is commonplace.

“People often don’t understand what an event planner does,” she says. “They ask, ‘What exactly do you do again?’ I explain that my work is to be sure every detail required to make that event happen is taken care of.

“I may even list off some of those details, unless I see their eyes start to glaze over,” she quips.

She uses the iceberg analogy to explain how she views her role. “Any conference, event, or production is like the tip of an iceberg: It’s the part that you see. An event planner takes

BECCA KNUTH setting a table for an event. photo cour tesy Asheville Event Co.

care of the massive details lying beneath the surface, the bulk of the iceberg that most people will never see.” To her, an event planner’s job is simply to get things done, often working behind the scenes.

Beveridge enjoys her work, but allows that there’s at least some truth to the idea of event planning as a stressfilled endeavor. “I was mildly horrified, but not completely surprised, to learn last year that ‘event coordinator’ was listed by careercast.com as #5 in their Most Stressful Jobs of 2018 list,” she says. While suggesting that such an assertion is “a bit extreme, maybe,” Becca Knuth, managing partner at Asheville Event Company, allows that “we have definitely had our fair share of stressful situations and clients with high expectations.” She says that the ability to multitask, think on one’s feet, and “manage those stressful situations with a calm demeanor” are requirements of the job.

“On some events we could be considered more of a project manager,” says Knuth. “But it’s essentially the same thing.” She says that the staff at Asheville Event Co. think of themselves as concierge-style planners, “above and beyond what most other planning firms offer.”

Canton- and Asheville-based Cordial & Craft also makes an effort to define itself beyond the already blurred parameters of event planning. “We started calling ourselves an event production company,” the company’s co-founder Lexie Harvey admits, “because we have so many varied aspects to our company that work together.”

There is no licensing program for event planners, though there are a variety of professional certifications available.

In a 2016 salary survey, the Professional Convention Management Association’s Convene magazine found that planners holding a Certified Meeting Professional (CMP) certification earned an average of about $85,000 annually, while those without the CMP designation made nearly $9,000 less each year. Meeting Professionals International offers its own Certified Meeting Management (CMM) designation. And the above-mentioned Institute of Event Management has its own online certificate programs in event management.

Training is worthwhile, but ultimately, planning companies with multiple staff often require that new hires come with experience. “So many people come to us with the illusion that event planning must be so fun and glamorous,” says Knuth. “It takes experience, a solid understanding of event logistics and requirements, and attention to detail.”

Getting With the Plan The types of events managed and coordinated by the region’s event planners vary widely. While a few pride themselves—and stake out a position in the market—as having expertise in a particular kind of event, many planners have the skills and know-how to put together events for consumer, corporate, and institutional clients.

March 2019 | capitalatplay.com 37

local industry

Becca Knuth says that her firm produces large-scale corporate events, grand openings, corporate milestone events, festivals, conferences, weddings, and fundraisers. In addition, Asheville Event Co. is sometimes contracted directly by local event venues “for consulting prior to launching their venues.

We have two planners who specialize in full-service planning, large-scale corporate events, and festivals,” Knuth says.

Studio HB Events & Communication’s focus is part of its name.

Holly Beveridge says her expertise lies in both the promotion and execution of events. Her one-person operation specializes in conferences, concerts, academic ceremonies, educational programming, and nonprofit fundraising events, but Beveridge’s experience also includes planning for seminars and symposia, receptions and celebrations, races, and promotional events as well. In all cases, she notes that Studio HB “places a strong emphasis on event-related communication and marketing.”

On occasion, Western North Carolina-based event planners take on work outside the region. “We were recently in California working on a product launch for an Asheville-based company,” says Cordial & Craft’s Harvey. Locally, the firm specializes in fundraisers and grand openings. “And of course, weddings,” she adds. Asheville Event Co. plans weddings outside of Western North Carolina as well.

Even though wedding planners are effectively a business type of their own, most (though certainly not all) event planners in Western North Carolina handle weddings. Those that do often focus on specific niches or wedding type. Knuth says that Asheville Event Co. plans “destination weddings” for the luxury market. “Those clients choose Asheville as their wedding location even though they don’t live here,” she explains, adding, “We don’t really produce birthday parties, anniversaries, or elopements.”

Organize and Delegate Very few event planning companies maintain in-house staff to address every single one of the multifarious demands placed upon them. They turn to a list of vendors; keeping that list current and well-rounded is an important part of successful event planning.

All of the planners interviewed for this story say that they work with a preferred list of local vendors to provide specific services. Those services might include musicians, deejays, and other live performers; beverage distributors, suppliers, and bartenders; furniture rental companies; and many other vendor types.

Downtown Asheville’s Celine & Company’s owner Kim Lloyd articulates a perspective common to all of these planners. “We do work with a preferred vendor list of local professionals who mirror our production and customer service standards,” she explains, “but we’re open to meeting and working with new vendors as well.” Becca Knuth adds, “We try not to work with the same vendors repeatedly; we like to consider ourselves ‘matchmakers’ in the sense that we get to know our client and recommend 38

| March 2019

photo by Parker J Photo/ cour tesy Asheville Event Co.

WOMEN OF Cordial & Craf t, photo by Amber Hatley/ Cour tesy Cordial & Craft

HOLLY BEVERIDGE putting together a display for a client. photo by Edward Raines / Cour tesy of Studio HB Events

vendors that we feel best suit their vision and budget. Our list is pretty extensive and reaches outside Asheville.”

“I’ve found word of mouth and referrals to be the best way of identifying quality vendors,” says Holly Beveridge. “And I always prefer to work with local businesses. I do like to see, taste, or experience the work or product in action first, to be sure that I’ll be proud of the finished product or service.”

Harvey says that Cordial & Craft prefers working with established and trusted vendors over “someone we’ve never worked with before.” She says that using a new vendor can be “a big risk, one that can end up costing a lot of time and stress in the end.”

But they do keep their eyes open, and for practical reasons.

“You can’t guarantee that your go-to caterer or technician will always be available on your event date,” Beveridge points out. “So, it’s good to have multiple options and choices.”

Mary Minton, of Asheville’s M7 Event Solutions, echoes that sentiment. “And we love engaging with other local small business owners,” she says.

The qualities most sought in vendors are mostly obvious ones: a high standard of quality, flexibility, reliability, and a

commitment to being a team player rank high on most event planners’ lists. “Collaboration is a huge part of our planning process,” says Knuth. “We seek out vendors that are open to being part of the creative process and creating a unique event experience together.” Harvey looks for a spirit of creativity. “If you aren’t being creative or having fun in your industry, that can take away from the experience of our clients,” she says.

Placing a value upon sustainability and having a local focus are assets as well, says Beveridge.

In the end, being a successful vendor for an event planner comes down to professionalism.

Trending Events To the extent that it’s practical and fiscally responsible to do so, planners highlight the adaptability of their skills to most every type of event. But they also keep an eye on emerging trends. For example, the high-end destination wedding events Knuth mentions have slowed a bit in 2018 and 2019, she says.

“But,” she adds, “we’re seeing an increase in 2020.” She also observes that corporate events are on the increase; the company March 2019 | capitalatplay.com 39

local industry

TIES THAT BIND EVENT planning and design by Asheville Event Co. / Catering and staff ing by Celine & Company and Cordial & Craf t. photo by Realities Photography

did more corporate work than weddings in 2018, a trend she attributes to the number of new businesses in and around Asheville. Specific to what clients are looking for at events, she notes an increased emphasis upon “a food experience, not just a meal.”

Celine & Company’s Lloyd points to clients’ greater focus upon sustainability issues. And she has noticed another trend: conferences utilizing alternate formats, moving beyond simply booking ballrooms. Instead, they’re making use of “Asheville’s unique event spaces in conjunction with area hotels,” she says. Mary Minton concurs: “Companies are more often opting to hold their gatherings in an event venue known for great views, atmosphere, and food, in comparison to the traditional plain hotel conference rooms of the past.”

Beveridge notes increased interest in group experiences that take advantage of Western North Carolina’s “natural beauty, endless outdoor activities, and unique array of culinary and beverage experiences.” She points to 40

| March 2019

recent growth in music trails, art walks, historic trolley and comedy tours, beer camps, wine trails, farm visits, and foraging tours. “People are coming to our area for an

“With the growth of the city, I’ve been seeing many more businesses seeking event help from professionals instead of handling it all in-house.” experience,” she explains. That fact adds to the appeal of scheduling conferences here. “They love the added value of combining business or education with memorable, oneof-a-kind travel.” She notes that the term “bleisure travel” is turning up more and more often. “That’s combining

business travel with leisure. Many people consider the appeal of an event destination as an important factor in deciding which meetings and conferences they’re going to attend; they add on days for personal and leisure time.”

Minton adds that while clients are increasingly interested in unique décor and outstanding food options, they’re always looking for “what is going to be most cost effective while also adding the most guest engagement.”

Juggling all of those priorities—some of which might seem in direct opposition to others—is the brief of the event planner.

And to put these events and experiences together, organizations turn to these experts. “With the growth of the city, I’ve been seeing many more businesses seeking event help from professionals instead of handling it all in-house,” says Harvey.

Risk and Reward All of the event planners surveyed for this story carry liability insurance; because of additional activities in which some engage,

extra insurance is also required sometimes. “Our insurance requirements are different than a [typical] event planner in that we travel with food items and serve alcohol,” says Lloyd. “We carry additional insurance for the security of our clients and employees.” Serving alcohol carries additional risk. Harvey notes that because her company is known for its event beverage service, Cordial & Craft carries additional liquor liability coverage.

General liability and professional liability policies—also known as Errors & Omissions coverage—are considered standard and recommended within the field. But the insurance needs of each event planning company will typically be unique. Observes Beveridge, “A large event venue hosting thousands of guests, for example, may require a planner or event client to have higher levels of coverage than a small meeting venue where you’re holding a conference or event for 30 people.” As with any kind of business endeavor, it’s best to consult with a professional to determine the type and amount of insurance needed.

Story continued on p. 44. The following pages contain a list of the numerous event planners currently operating in Western North Carolina.

March 2019 | capitalatplay.com 41

local industry

PARTY PEOPLE

List of Event Planners Currently Operating in Western North Carolina. > >a

wedding pl ace and lodge

5274 NC-226, Marion, NC 828-652-1653 aweddingplace.wixsite.com/ weddingvenue

> >ama zing

affairs and events

46 Southwicke Dr, Arden, NC 828-399-0797

> >archangel productions

315 Ridgetop Rd, Franklin, NC 855-642-8346 archangelaudioproductions.com

> >asheville destination management co .

35 Haywood St, Asheville, NC 828-232-9994

> >asheville

event centre & dance centre

291 Sweeten Creek Rd, Asheville, NC 828-274-1377 ashevilleeventcentre.com

> >asheville

event co .

PO Box 8998 Asheville, NC 888-240-8062 ashevilleeventco.com

> >asheville

meeting

logistics

828-277-9634 ashevillemeetinglogistics.com

> >askliz ze 110 Dorchester Ave, Asheville, NC 804-517-8017

> >bobbymark ’ s designs

828-450-3532 bobbymarksdesigns.com

> >business

a l a carte

28 Old Applewood Ln, Hendersonville, NC 828-290-7441

> >carolina

19 Zillicoa St #100, Asheville, NC 252-903-1202 carolinaloveevents.com

> >carolina

| March 2019

mountain

72 Snow Summit Ln, Banner Elk, NC 407-697-8640

> >celine &

company

49 Broadway St, Asheville, NC 828-254-9902 celineandcompany.com

> >champion

hills special events

1 Hagen Dr, Hendersonville, NC 828-696-1962 championhillsevents.com

> >cordial &

cr aft

41 N Merrimon Ave #107, Asheville, NC 828-316-1502 cordialandcraft.com

> >crest

center , the

P.O. Box 6100, Asheville NC 828-251-1820 thecrestcenter.com

> >debonair

events

828-545-6259 elenaevents.com

> >engaged

asheville

41 N Merrimon Ave #107, Asheville, NC 865-803-3900 engagedasheville.com

> >english

elegance weddings and events

844-866-7526

> >events

by elizabeth

ashley

wedding

980-226-4535 42

love

events

> >elena

affairs

Boone St, Asheville, NC 828-773-8431 eventsbyelizabethashley.com

> >events

by kiersa

13 1/2 W Walnut St, Asheville, NC 828-606-9659 asheville-events.com

> >events

by sarah

ashley

85 W Walnut St #309, Asheville, NC 225-400-2489

> >events

for you

828-279-4132 eventsforyou.net

> >exquisite

events and consulting

704-578-1974 exquisiteevents.info

> >firefly

event company

410-279-1022 fireflyeventcompany.com

> >flora 428 Haywood Rd B, Asheville, NC 828-252-8888 florabotanicalliving.com

> >fontaine

wedding &

events

1336 Alexander Rd, Leicester, NC 828-683-2316 fontaineweddingevents.com

> >foreman

event co.

910-273-4793 foremaneventco.com

> >front

porch events

518-524-6112 frontporcheventsnc.com

> >gray

rock ridge

events

Forest Brook Dr, Black Mountain, NC 828-329-7704

> >heartfelt

weddings

and events

401-285-6201 heartfeltwe.com

> >hpm

associates , inc .

114 Ray Cline Rd, Whittier, NC 305-274-0030 hpmassociates.com

> >i

do

539 Main St, Highlands, NC 864-908-4856 upstateido.com

> >kenmure

weddings

100 Club House Drive, Flat Rock, NC 828-697-9999 kenmureweddings.com

> >lisa

pleasant events

28 Schenck Pkwy, Asheville, NC 828-214-7197 lisapleasant.com

> >m +j

events

828-515-1914 mandjevents.com

> >maggie

valley weddings

81 Tanglewood Ln, Maggie Valley, NC 828-246-2617 maggievalleyweddings.com

> >mary

bell events

61 Village Pointe Ln, Asheville, NC 828-450-2209 marybellevents.com

> >messe inc .

stuttgart

191 Lyman St, Asheville, NC 828-620-3094 messe-stuttgart.de/messestuttgart-inc/

> >mingle

events and vintage rentals

865-803-3900 mingleeventsandrentals.com

> >mosaix

group asheville

160 Royal Pines Dr, Arden, NC 828-654-8118 mosaixgroup.com

> >mountain

elegance

1687 Matheson Cove Rd, Hayesville, NC 828-389-4001 mountainelegancenc.com

> >nantahala weddings

16121 Wayah Rd, Topton, NC 828-421-0141 nantahalaweddings.com

> >north +

south wedding co.

828-393-5793 northsouthweddingco.com

> >occasions

by emily

85 Old Case Rd, Fletcher, NC 828-539-4800 occasionsbyemily.com

> >oh ,

henry events

127 Aurora Dr, Asheville, NC 512-554-7508 ohhenryevents.com

> >party

envy event planning & floral design

102 Ashley Cir, Asheville, NC 828-779-4816 party-envy.com

> >peak co.

production

172 Charlotte St, Asheville, NC 828-255-2526

> >pride

rock farm

3455 Ridge Rd, Hendersonville, NC 828-674-6987

> >shay

brown events

80 Broadway St, Asheville, NC 828-299-4513 shaybrownevents.com

> >smash

events , inc

786-338-3655 smasheventsinc.com

> >social

people producitons

10 Adamswood Rd, Asheville, NC 828-577-2912

> >something

like a dream weddings and events

105 Dock Branch Rd, Barnardsville, NC 828-775-4373

> >spirit

savvy

375 Upper Grassy Branch Rd, Asheville, NC 828-777-2038 spiritsavvycocktails.com

> >studio

hb events & communication

828-275-1906 studiohb-avl.com

> >studiowed 15 Arlington St, Asheville, NC 828-490-9310 studiowed.net

> >the

mindful planner

7 Old Haw Creek Rd, Asheville, NC 571-275-9660 themindfulplanner.com

> >the

pond

105 Lindsey Loop Rd, Fletcher, NC 828-606-5448 thepondevents.com

> >the

venue

21 N Market St, Asheville, NC 828-252-1101 ashevillevenue.com

> >the

wedding journey

828-242-8621 heartlightweddings.com

> >the

wedding resource center

703 W King St #103, Boone, NC 828-773-8431 weddingresourcenc.com

> >the

whole shebang

1107 Main St #B, Blowing Rock, NC 828-719-9171 wholeshebangevents.com

> >to

plan ahead

828-318-8428 toplanahead.com

> >two

sweet sparrows wedding & event planning

38 Austin Ave, Asheville, NC 828-707-2534 wosweetsparrows.com

> >verge

events

15 Arlington St, Asheville, NC 828-398-0732 vergeevents.net

> >vintage

barn events

780 Beech Tree Rd, Whittier, NC 828-631-5249 mountainbarnevents.com

> >wedding

belle ’ s nc

828-772-2317 weddingbellesnc.com

> >wedding connections

82 Patton Ave #710, Asheville, NC 919-260-6860 southeastweddingplanner.com/

> >wedding inspirations bridal boutique

308 Merrimon Ave, Asheville, NC 828-253-3012 weddinginsp.com

> >weddings

by wendy

828-702-5134

> >wnc

weddings & events

828-553-7718 wncweddings.net

March 2019 | capitalatplay.com 43

local industry

All of the event planning professionals with whom we spoke were reluctant to give specifics on any disaster stories of events gone wrong (“I’m saving those stories for my book,” laughs Becca Knuth). But to a person, each mentioned weather-related factors as the single biggest wildcard in event planning. “I have dealt with 17 inches of snow, 40 mile-per-hour winds on the South Terrace at Biltmore Estate, and a whole lot of rain,” says Knuth.

“Any time alcohol is served, you know some interesting things can happen,” says Minton, diplomatically choosing not to elaborate further. “Every event has to seem perfect for the client and guests,” says Lloyd. “Our job is to protect that veil of perfection and turn a ‘disaster’ into a triumph.”

Not surprisingly, details about success stories are easier to come by. “Transforming the U.S. Cellular Center more than once has been a really rewarding experience,” says Knuth. And Beveridge relates an anecdote about the logistics involved in delivering a featured guest to an event moments after the guest had been in a serious car accident. She recalls “a blur of radio chatter and last-minute plotting with our team” as they sorted everything out, and calls the event “an exciting caper. And it reminds me why I love planning events.” photo by Anthony Harden

BEVERIDGE preparing for an event at UNC-Asheville. photo by Pat O'Brien / Cour tesy of Studio HB Events

44

| March 2019

Plan Ahead The logistics involved in planning an event vary in each case.

Lloyd ticks off a list of some of the most frequently encountered issues: “Location, weather, transportation, vendor quality control, budgets, client personalities, and interpersonal family relationships.” Knuth points out that quite a lot of logistical planning takes place well before the actual event. For outdoor events in particular, site visits are part of the process of assessing parking, power, water, rest rooms, and other requirements. And such events, she adds, can include planning for “everything from transporting guests to building a venue in a field.”

Harvey says that one top logistical priority is rule-following.

“Most of our interactions are with the vendors involved, making sure everyone complies and respects the rules of the venue.”

Beveridge begins by getting a clear picture of the client's mission and vision for the event. Once the desired end result has been established, she says that she works “backward from the final date and goal to create a timeline, action plan, and task list.” That task list might be quite lengthy for a corporate event and could include any or all of the following: venue, speaker, or artist selection; contracting, catering, and technical arrangements; marketing, communications, and advertising; print assignments and deadlines; event materials selection and ordering.

If a particular task falls outside the purview of an event planner, they think on their feet. “We have been asked to do many things that we consider outside the scope of a normal planning process,” Knuth admits. “We just manage it the best that we can and try to offer solutions. Unless it’s something

photo cour tesy of Celine and Company

photo by Anastasiia Photography Cour tesy Cordial & Craft

that we consider unsafe or logistically impossible, we do our best to comply.”

“By nature, most event planners have the ability to juggle and execute a breadth of tasks,” Beveridge says. “The secret is to determine the things you enjoy and excel at, and know which areas are better handled by others.” Harvey has a policy of avoiding saying no. “Some tasks,” she says with a smile, “just cost a bit more.”

Preparation for an event can—and often does—start early.

“Where large numbers of guests are involved,” says Beveridge, “sometimes initial planning begins two to three years before the actual event date, particularly when substantial blocks of hotel rooms and transportation needs are involved.” By contrast, most corporate events have a shorter planning period—according to Knuth, “some six months, some six weeks.” Ultimately, like most every factor involved in the event planning process, each situation is unique, and the time required to plan effectively varies greatly. “Sometimes we’re called a day or two in advance when other [vendors] have last minute call out,” says Harvey.

“Other times we are working with a client two years in advance; we’re booking October 2020 now.”

Pricing, too, varies widely depending on the event. “Most of our events are priced by project fee, others a percentage,” says

Knuth. “Especially if there are a lot of unknowns on the front end.” Beveridge says that Studio HB’s pricing is generally based on an hourly rate. “I provide a proposal based on discussion and needs assessment with the client, and an estimate of total hours,” she says. Celine & Company’s Lloyd points out that corporate clients often have pre-set budgets, saying, “We help those folks understand how to manipulate their entire budget to include their prioritized line items.” Minton notes that event pricing can vary based on the time of year, too.

Location, Location, Location Asheville and other cities and towns offer a number of venues suitable for hosting events. The planners interviewed for this story maintain good relationships with multiple venues so that they can suggest the ideal location for each unique event.

While most event planners work in a variety of purposedesig ned and /or non-traditional venues, a few are location-specific. Celine & Company Catering and Events primarily hosts events at its downtown Asheville location, On Broadway, and Lloyd notes that her company works with an assortment of event types. “We work with individual clients as they plan celebrations and special occasions,” she says, “as well as fostering long-term corporate and nonprofit relationships.”

M7 Event Solutions hosts events at the Crest Center & Pavilion atop Crest Mountain, a few miles northwest of downtown Asheville, and at Claxton Farm, halfway between Weaverville and Barnardsville. “You name an event you’d like to plan in the Asheville area, and we have it covered at our venues,” Mary Minton says, ticking off a list of examples that includes corporate parties and luncheons, weddings, fundraisers, school proms, and nonprofit benefits.

Asheville Events Company’s Knuth says that her company plans many events in Asheville at the Biltmore Estate and the March 2019 | capitalatplay.com 45

local industry

Omni Grove Park Inn, Canyon Kitchen at Lonesome Valley in Cashiers, and Highlands’ Old Edwards Inn. “For corporate events, it varies,” she says. “We have done several events at the U.S. Cellular Center, transforming the space for fundraisers and a human resources conference as well.”

Beveridge’s experience includes planning events at many of the aforementioned venues; she mentions the Renaissance Hotel and Diana Wortham Theatre as popular locations as well.

“There are a growing numbers of breweries, wineries, hotels, restaurants, and colleges in our area that provide excellent event and meeting space,” she says. “There’s no one-size-fitsall approach to venue selection; it’s dependent upon the type, purpose, and personality of each event. No two events are alike.”

One of Cordial & Craft’s specialties is cocktails. “We are at Chestnut Ridge [in Canton] almost every weekend as their in-house bar staff,” Harvey says. “Otherwise, our events are scattered all over.”

Part of the Region’s Economic Engine Event planning is big business in Western North Carolina.

Even with the large number of planners in the region, there are plenty of events to keep local planners busy. “In 2018 we

produced 14 corporate events,” Knuth reports. As a result, the company planned fewer than its average of 15-20 weddings that year. Minton says that M7 plans and hosts over 300 events annually at its two locations. Cordial & Craft has more than 100 clients per year; Celine & Company plans for about twice that number. And Beveridge, whose business is new, has prior experience planning more than two dozen large-scale events (including conferences and concerts) annually.

And planners from outside Western North Carolina play a significant role in local event logistics, too. Among its other roles and functions, the Buncombe County Tourism Development Authority’s Convention & Visitors Bureau (branded as Explore Asheville) helps attract events to the region. Dodie Stephens, the Bureau’s director of communications, explains, “In the first half of this fiscal year, our sales team hosted 251 groups on the ground with an estimated revenue of $7.3 million (hotel, meeting room rental, F&B, and A/V costs) going to area partners.” She adds that “these meetings and conferences hosted at local hotels are just a slice of the event business in Asheville.”

“Event planning has a tremendous cultural impact on our region,” agrees Holly Beveridge. “All of those events require the work of many, many event planners just to happen, let alone to thrive and grow.” But there is a danger of what Minton describes

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as too much of a good thing. “Hotels, wedding and event venues, and breweries are springing up all over Western North Carolina,” she notes, “with the market currently over-saturated for this type of start-up business venture.”

and Tourism business cluster, a classification responsible for an estimated $449M in annual sales and employing over 7,000 people—and that’s just within Asheville.

Start Planning Now With today’s crowd-sourcing approach to problem solving, some will consider going it alone when it comes to planning a major event. But targeted expertise and ability to find quick and effective solutions to problems are hallmarks of the most successful event planners. For those who want or need to know that everything will go smoothly—or for those who simply don’t want to contend with the stress and headaches associated with event logistics— choosing to work with one of Western North Carolina’s event planners can be a wise decision indeed.

“Event planning has a tremendous cultural impact on our region. All of those events require the work of many, many event planners just to happen, let alone to thrive and grow.”

Still, in the short term the outlook for event planning in the region looks bright.

The Asheville-Buncombe County Economic Development Coalition’s most recently cited research data (as of November 2018) doesn’t break down industries or business sectors to specify event planners. Event planning activities would fall at least partially under the coalition’s Hospitality

For a related story on the Western North Carolina wedding industry, see “Hand In Hand” in the July 2018 issue of this magazine.

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column

Drink Old School

The forgotten wineries are still among the best.

I

J

john kerr

is the co-owner of Metro Wines located on Charlotte Street in downtown Asheville.

48

N THE ICONIC WINE FILM SIDEWAYS,

Miles (played by Paul Giamatti) breaks the ice with Maya (Virginia Madsen) by asking her about the bottle that got her started. “What was the bottle that did it?” he asks, while they sip wine in the kitchen.

Without hesitation, Maya replies, “1988 Sassicaia.”

Sassicaia is the kind of bottle that changes how just about anyone views wine. This wine almost single-handedly saved Italy’s wine industry. Before the 1970s, Italian wine was known best for its bottles in straw baskets that made great candle holders.

Sassicaia was Italy’s first Super Tuscan, a Cabernet Sauvignon blend grown in the warmth of Tuscan soil. At a 1978 tasting of the world’s great clarets, Sassicaia placed first over a field of 33 wines from 11 countries. After that the world took a second look at Italy’s wines.

A few nights ago, I thought about the bottle that did it for me. I had just opened a Chardonnay from one of Napa’s stalwarts, Heitz Cellars. I took it home because it had languished on the shelf for over a year. I couldn’t recall the last time anyone had asked for a bottle of Heitz, Cab, or Chard. Since the Chardonnay was from the 2014 vintage, I was worried that it would go bad before anyone got to enjoy it. So, I decided that person would be me.

Even though it was five years old, the wine tasted fresh and beautifully balanced. A truly well-made

| March 2019

Chardonnay can last a half decade or more. It was unmistakably Californian, but leaned so French that you could see why French judges at the Judgement of Paris mistakenly chose a Napa Chardonnay as the best white Burgundy. If you don’t know the story, I suggest you see the film Bottle Shock to learn how Napa became world famous.

European wines like Sassicaia are certainly not forgotten by wine enthusiasts. But many of the West Coast wines that once held the top of the list are.

People are always looking for the next best thing.

Wine Spectator and other wine industry magazines continually applaud the next wine rock star. With all this hoopla over the new, old wineries get lost in the shuffle.

Heitz’s Chardonnay was so good that it made me wonder why I’d waited so long to crack open one of the old school bottles. That led to a month-long quest where I became reacquainted with old friends.

Below I’ve listed the favorites from my indulgence that inspired this column.

J Chateau Montelena Founded in 1882, this winery is about as old school as it gets. The main building resembles a stone English Gothic castle and it’s one of the few American wineries with Chateau in its name. The winery was built into the hillside with stone walls three to twelve feet thick. The builders wanted to replicate the cool, even temperature of the caves used by many European wineries to age their wines.

Montelena has long been known for its Cabernet. Their Cabs are deep and rich since the grapes are grown in the most northern and hottest part of Napa

PEOPLE ARE ALWAYS LOOKING FOR THE NEXT WINE ROCK STAR. WITH ALL THIS HOOPLA OVER THE NEW, OLD WINERIES GET LOST IN THE SHUFFLE. Valley. The 2015 vintage is described as “filled with juicy blackberries, rich cocoa, and cassis. Dried cherry and a touch of tobacco come into focus along with some wispy notes of fresh violets.

Density and concentration sum up the palate nicely as tight-grained tannin is interwoven among layers of fresh raspberry, mint, and hazelnut. These notes slowly transition to a subtle richness of molasses and fig that’s almost chewy enough to sink your teeth into.” Pair this with steak and mushrooms for a night you won’t forget.

Although Montelena is known for its Cabs, it is their Chardonnay that made all of Napa famous. This is the one that won the Judgement of Paris and fooled the judges into thinking it was French.

The Chardonnay was actually made

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by Mike Grgich, who was Montelena’s winemaker at the time.

With his newfound recognition, he split off and started Grgich Hills winery whose Cabs and Chards are also among the best in Napa.

Larkmead Vineyards Larkmead is almost unknown even among the most diehard Napa fans. But the winery has produced excellent Cabernets for most of Napa’s history.

Before Prohibition, Larkmead was considered one of the four great wineries in Napa along with Beaulieu (BV), Inglenook, and Beringer. The one-two punch of Prohibition and a false diagnosis of cancer for the owner took Larkmead out of the limelight. To provide for his family, the owner sold the winery but kept its 110 acres of prime Napa vineyards.

For several decades Larkmead sold its grapes to other famous wineries. So, when Larkmead finally released its wine publicly again in 1998, its reputation was long forgotten. The winery now consistently produces high quality award-winning wines.

And Napa’s winemakers voted Larkmead’s vintner “winemaker of the year” a couple of years back.

Despite the recent accolades, most people don’t know the winery. Part of the reason it remains unknown is that supply is very limited—it is one of the few Napa wineries to make its wines from grapes grown solely in its own vineyards. The good news is that North Carolina is one of the few states outside of California where these wines are available. Since they’re made with traditional methods, these Cabs need age or air to bring them to the peak of their enjoyment. If you simply can’t wait, decant at breakfast to serve them at dinner.

Adelsheim and Ponzi Vineyards Some regions have a much more short-lived history. For Willamette Valley you need only go back to the 1970s. Today, Oregon’s place among the great Pinot regions is old news. But back in 1970, starting a winery in Willamette Valley was a daring risk. The owners of Ponzi and Adelsheim vineyards independently decided that they would plant a little-known grape in a place nobody ever heard of to launch their career in wine.

With this remarkable leap of faith, Oregon’s fame as a leading producer of Pinot Noir was born. Like every new wine region, it took the vintners a while to figure out the terroir

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before they could produce world class wine. And Adelsheim and Ponzi were leading the pack. The vintners brought with them the ethos of the 1960s using traditional methods that were organic or sustainable.

IF YOU HAVE YET TO FIND THE BOT TLE THAT DID IT FOR YOU, YOU’ VE GOT LOST TIME TO MAKE UP.

Years later, Oregon wineries tried to replicate their success with Chardonnay. They planted the wrong clone for the soil and weather, producing some of the worst Chard on the West Coast. All had to be uprooted and vintners quickly turned to Pinot Gris for a white alternative. In the past few years, several wineries figured it out, and I think these new Chardonnays outshine anything else coming from the West Coast.

***

Ponzi remains a solid winery. But for my money, I think that Adelsheim consistently produces a better Pinot. Wine Spectator awarded Adelsheim’s 2017 entry level Pinot 91 points and described it as “polished and elegantly complex, with pretty rose petal, raspberry, and spiced tea flavors that glide on the long finish.” You’ll want to pair this beauty with salmon or lamb.

Oh yes, what was the bottle that did it for me? I’d have to say it was the 1974 Cabernet Sauvignon from Chateau Montelena.

I drank the twelve-year-old bottle with my best friends while overlooking the Pacific Ocean from a hot tub (this was the 1980s after all).

If you have yet to find the bottle that did it for you, you’ve got lost time to make up. While on your adventure, don’t forget to include a few of the wines that got this whole thing started.

You may find that old is your favorite new.

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THE OLD

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Solar Flair charlotte

On January 2 Duke Energy began taking applications for its solar rebate program. On January 4 all available rebates were spoken for; by way of contrast, in 2018 it took two weeks for over 1,300 customers wanting to install solar panels to tap out the program.

Legislation passed in 2017, known as the Competitive Energy Solutions for North Carolina law, authorized the rebates, which were first distributed last summer. The rebates pay 60 cents per watt for up to 10kW for solar panels installed on residences, 50 cents per watt for up to 100kW for nonresidential systems, and 75 cents per watt for up to 100kW for nonprofit installations. Last year, about 7,500 customers applied for the rebates, collecting $6 million to date,

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with more to be distributed after systems are connected. While the rebates cause a surge in business for solar companies, they clearly fall short of demand. So, manufacturers and installers are lobbying Duke to explore ways to get rebates into the hands of more customers. The program is authorized for only five years.

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Flytrex, a drone-delivery technology company based in Tel Aviv, raised $7.5 million in a second funding round led by the Silicon Valley’s Benhamou Global Ventures, bringing total investments to date up to $11 million. Most of the funding will support an on-demand delivery network in Holly Springs. The plan is to

As Regulated as a Bird greensboro

Greensboro has decided to allow both Bird and Lime scooters back after banning them a few months ago. Like many entrepreneurial concepts, the dockless scooter rental companies have been prohibited in many cities over safety concerns due to lack of regulation. Now that Greensboro has had time to draft some regulations, a pilot program will

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create the first-ever drone-delivery distribution center. Located in a shopping mall, it would deliver products to the doors of persons within a three-mile radius. While Flytrex still has to get approvals from the North Carolina DOT and the Federal Aviation Administration, it could launch its first delivery route early this year.

Flytrex was the company behind the firstever autonomous urban drone delivery system. In 2017, AHA, an eCommerce company in Reykjavík, Iceland, began using the drones to reduce delivery times by flying goods across the Elliðaá River.

Flytrex also launched a drone delivery system at King’s Walk Golf Course in North Dakota last year. Golfers wanting a drink or a snack just call up a drone.

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run through August 1. The companies will be responsible for teaching users safe riding and parking practices. The new ordinance requires drivers to be at least 18 years old. Users may only operate the vehicles on streets with a speed limit no greater than 35 mph. They may drive in bike lanes, but not on sidewalks.

Users must drive on the right sides of roads, following all traffic signs and signals. Scooters will have to be parked so as to leave at least six feet of pedestrian clearance, and they may not block street cafés, bus stops, bike racks, benches, driveways, loading zones, or handicap ramps or parking spaces. Bird and Lime will be responsible for collecting any scooters parked inappropriately within two hours of notification. Following the pilot, the ordinances will be adjusted to accommodate any concerns raised.

Improve, Move, and Enjoy

Chief Technology Officer Phil Rolchigo describes it, Pentair helps people “improve, move, and enjoy water.” It will be staffed by engineers and product development teams tasked with delivering new technologies and solutions. A 50,000-sq.-ft. facility, it will also feature advanced IoT and electronics labs and instrumentation for environmental and physical testing. There will be in-ground and above-ground swimming pools for full-scale testing. Flex space will be available for rapid prototyping of manufacturing systems, using a lot of 3D printing. There will also be areas dedicated for conferences and collaboration. The center will serve Pentair’s 130 locations in 34 countries.

Legacy Fruit Packers, in the construction of a $17 million apple-packing plant. For an undisclosed price, IFC will be acquiring 4,000 acres of orchards (that produce 4 million boxes of fruit a year) and two packing facilities. The combined company will be known as Columbia River Orchards (CRO), and Peter Verbrugge of Valley Fruit will serve as interim CEO. IFC described CRO as having state-of-the-art packing and storage, horticultural expertise, and forward-looking marketing. IFC intends for CRO to acquire and cultivate more land and invest substantially in packaging technology. Outside investment in the orchard industry is estimated to have tripled in the last three to five years, following a tripling of produce prices over the last ten.

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International Farming Corporation (IFC), a Kinston-based agricultural investment firm, has purchased three fruit companies based in the state of Washington: Legacy Fruit Packers and Valley Fruit III of Wapato and Larson Fruit of Selah. Valley Fruit and Larson were in the business of cultivating apple and cherry Fast, family orchards. Both third-generation businesses, they had justfriendly cooperated, as

Procter & Gamble has entered into a strategic licensing partnership with the Clorox Company to manufacture Burt’s Bees toothpastes. Burt’s Bees began in Maine in 1984, with founders Roxanne Quimby and Burt Shavitz making candles with beeswax, a byproduct of their honey business. The business incorporated and expanded into natural soaps, perfumes, and lip balm before moving

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to North Carolina. In 2007, as it was manufacturing about 200 products, the company was acquired by Clorox.

Then, this January, after Burt’s Bees had twice failed to launch a toothpaste line with the kind of following its lip balm has attracted, P&G began making toothpaste under that label, with formulas for adults and children, with and without fluoride. The agreement with Clorox was reached after P&G conducted extensive research on consumer preferences and category trends. They found 35% of people in the United States were interested in simple and effective toothpaste formulas, but only 5% were buying them, tradeoffs being a major deterrent. P&G is interested in licensing additional Burt’s Bees products should this venture prove successful.

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Cook Medical has purchased 850,000 square feet of the former Whitaker Park manufacturing complex. The terms of the deal with Whitaker Park Development Authority were not disclosed. Renovations are to begin this year, and in two or three years, it is expected all 650 Cook Medical employees in the Winston-Salem area will move into a consolidated facility. Operations will include the manufacture of medical devices, biologic materials, and cellular therapies. The irony is that the innovator of less-invasive devices in 41 medical specialties is moving into the former home of RJ Reynolds’ cigarette production. Reynolds opened the park in 1961, and it became the world’s largest and most modern cigarette manufacturing plant, employing 2,000 at its peak. Today, the complex would have a replacement cost of $270.2 million.

Cook Medical will collect supplementary funding for renovations by renting unused space. It also received $4 million a piece from both Winston-Salem and Forsyth County, and $1.7 million from the Golden Leaf Foundation. Reynolds

will continue to process and warehouse tobacco in the portions of the park not purchased by Cook Medical.

It’s No Flying Horse asheboro

Phase Change Energy Solutions (PCES), based in Asheboro, recently announced investment funding by Pegasus Capital Advisors, a private-equity firm specializing in mid-size companies pursuing sustainability and wellness objectives; Emerald Technology Ventures, an investment firm specializing in companies of any size with environmentally-conscious missions in the fields of energy, water, advanced materials, and industrial IoT; and Third Prime, a supporter of startups striving to improve the human condition. The amount of investment in unknown, but Dennis McGill of Pegasus will become CEO. PCES manufactures a proprietary, climate control technology based on 100% plant materials. The concept, invented by Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Reyad Sawafta, is called BioPCM. It claims to capitalize on latent heat, cooling by directing excess ambient heat into the melting of the materials and heating by circulating thermal releases when the product freezes. The technology is especially popular for companies needing to maintain temperatures for computer banks or shipments of perishable foods and drugs. Investment funds will be used for portfolio diversification and global expansion.

PBR Ain’t Dead Yet eden

In a $2.75 million deal, MillerCoors sold its 1,365-acre Eden plant to Ventures LLC, an affiliate of DH Griffin, which specializes in demolition and site development. In 2015 MillerCoors announced it would be winding down operations, laying off 500 employees due to corporate streamlining and

right-sizing for decreasing demand.

MillerCoors had been Rockingham County’s third-largest private employer.

The closure came during negotiations over extending the company’s contract with Pabst. MillerCoors had been brewing and shipping most Pabst beers since 1999, and Pabst said its 20-year contract entitled it to two five-year extensions.

With the plant closing, MillerCoors said it no longer had the capacity to produce for Pabst. The companies also could not agree on a per-barrel price to continue the operation. Pabst even offered to buy the facility, but that deal didn’t materialize. Instead, Pabst sued, and this past November, nine days into a jury trial, the parties announced they had reached an amicable agreement, and Pabst beers would continue to be available.

Learning Experience kannapolis

Thanks to a $200,000 grant from Duke Energy and Piedmont Natural Gas, Rowan-Cabarrus Community College is launching the Multicraft Maintenance Technician Apprenticeship program.

Grant proceeds will cover tuition, books, and materials for all apprenticeships during the next four years, as well as equipment and supplies for the Advanced Manufacturing Training Center, scheduled to open later this year in Kannapolis. The program is designed to meet demand for skilled manufacturing employees, particularly in the plastics industry. Apprentices will become skilled electricians, mechanics, machine operators, welders, fabricators, HVAC specialists, and PLC programmers. Companies will open their doors to give students hands-on, job-specific training; and the college will handle the administrative end, including oversight of on-the-job training and all classroom instruction. Companies like Alevo and Chroma Color benefit from the partnership because they could not justify dedicating the resources needed to run an apprenticeship program in-house.

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TOMMY TUTEN auctioning off a cast iron pan, held by Noel Cost.

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There’s more action than you think at auction houses across Western North Carolina.

March 2019 | capitalatplay.com 57

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Stuff.

A

ll those possessions that both enhance and clutter our lives, those objects we never needed but found appealing for some obscure reason, after a few years those objects work their way into the category of Stuff.

Our Stuff becomes more than items to remind us of impetuous moments when the urge for acquisition overcame the caution of “buyer beware.” It eventually becomes part of our identity: “You are the sum of your Stuff.” Or something like that.

Yes, our Stuff is part of our lives, and one effective venue to either acquire more Stuff, or get rid of the Stuff we no longer want is—an auction.

Of course! Auctions offer incredible arrays of artifacts, gadgets, doo-dads, and general-interest Stuff, and to acquire it, all you have to do is raise your hand.

In Western North Carolina we have a rich variety of auction houses to satisfy every appetite for Stuff, from the useless— but unique—widget to the exquisite—and expensive—work of art. They stretch from Weaverville to Hendersonville, from Waynesville to Old Fort, with the superstar of the bunch on Tunnel Road in Asheville.

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| March 2019

AUCTION ITEMS ready to be sold. photo courtesy Broken Arch Auction

TOMMY TUTEN AND JOHNNY PENLAND AUCTIONS gathers a large crowd on a cold Friday night.

Their geographic diversity is matched by the variety of items they sell, ranging from a silverplate dish for $2.50 to a 16th Century painting selling for $160,000. Those expensive items—“high end” in auctioneer talk—come up for sale at Brunk Auctions on Tunnel Road, where they become part of what Brunk calls “premier catalog auctions” every two months.

At the other end of the spectrum, Tommy Tuten and Johnny Penland hold an auction every Friday night. Johnny explained how they maintain their weekly schedule. “We take in items starting at 6:30 every Monday morning. Our lot is filled with trucks, and we have five or six people working.

We unload it, fill out contracts for the sellers, and set it all up—as many as 325 to 350 items. We have it all set up by 2:30 in the afternoon.”

Setting it up is only the beginning of the job. “We come back Tuesday morning and I start writing down the stuff we’re selling. Tommy comes in and starts photographing—as many as 200 to 250 photographs. And my daughter types all this stuff up and she puts it all online.”

By Friday, about 150 bidders show up. They tend to be middle-aged or older with a scattering of younger adults. At a recent sale, a 30-something mother sat next to her 10-year old son, who was focused on a game on his iPhone with two earplugs keeping out the noise of the auction.

Most of the bidders are at least semi-regulars. At a recent auction, I asked some of them why they are here.

A Barnardsville couple, Gary and Cheryl, said they’ve been coming to auctions for 25 years. “For the fun of it,” he said. “We find good bargains, but just to spend time together.” Cheryl took a more practical approach. “I look for quilts and old stuff,” and Gary interrupted. “She tells us what we want and that’s what we get.” They agreed on their best auction buy: “We got some scrimshaw that we sold for four times as much as we bought it for,” he said, as she nodded happily.

Hilda Keener and her husband, Larry, have been going to auctions for 30 years. They drive from Canton to Swannanoa for the Friday night auctions because, as she explains, “We get some good buys and we have a lot of fun. It’s fun to watch the people bid when they get serious and it’s one going against the other.” Larry had no trouble recalling his best auction buy: “I bought a gun for $450 and it’s worth a thousand.”

Boyd Wampler, of Landrum, South Carolina, was there with his wife as part of their business/hobby. “We like to dabble in antiques. We have a couple of booths at an antique mall in Landrum. We enjoy it.”

Mike Stanton, of Leicester, offered a philosophical rationale for auctions. “One man’s junk is another man’s treasure,” he said. He and his wife find things that they enjoy for a while, March 2019 | capitalatplay.com 59

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and then either sell or donate it when the next auction treasure strikes their fancy. He says a great buy is what you make of it.

Robert and Melinda Champion of Tryon have been coming to auctions for 30 years. “Since we’ve been married,” he says.

Why? Melinda is quick with the answer. “To get a bargain.”

Their best buy? No contest. “Our dining room table!” they said in unison. He elaborated. “It was valued online at 11 hundred dollars. We bought it for $65. And that included the pads—that made it even more valuable.” They both grinned at the memory.

Between items, Tommy recognizes many of the bidders by name from the podium, kidding back and forth and giving the proceedings more an air of town-wide gabfest than a commercial event. But there is plenty of business going on. They manage to sell those 300 items in a little over three hours, averaging 90 to 100 items an hour.

*** Whether or not you’re there to make a bid, live auctions can be entertaining. But if you want to get in on some auction action, you don’t even have to leave your house. Hunters of Stuff can find auctions just by logging on to their computers.

The website, Auctionzip.com, lists internet auctions, as well as live auctions by geographic area. For live listings, just enter your location and the distance you’re willing to travel. The listings will include links to the auctioneer’s website, which usually contains a description and pictures of items in their next auction.

For anyone interested in internet auctions, AuctionZip is a gateway to a dizzying universe of possibilities. In any given week, the listings may include four or five “live” auctions in the Asheville area and as many as 60 or more online. Those internet auctions present a cornucopia of choices: Jewelry, antiques, rugs, rare books, coins, sports memorabilia, fossils, autographs, toys, and on and on. If you can imagine an object, chances are you can find something like it in an online auction.

For the adventurous, there are auctions of abandoned storage units. The announcements include a short description of the contents and pictures that tend to show a pile of stuff, some of it identifiable and the rest a jumble of garbage bags and cartons.

Many internet auctions provide detailed descriptions and several photographs of their objects, but bidders will not have the opportunity to examine them in person, to touch them, to get a feel for them in the three-dimensional real world.

That personal interaction with an object you plan to bid on is an essential ingredient of the “live” auction. You should take advantage of the auction “preview,” arriving at least an hour early to examine items that have caught your interest.

A cursory look is not enough. If it has parts, take it apart, make sure everything is in working order. Check for repairs or replaced elements, and satisfy yourself that the item measures up to your expectations. At an auction, there is no such thing as “wrong size, wrong color.” If you buy it, you own it.

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Notice, we didn’t say, “If you WIN it, you own it.” You never “win” an item at an auction; you buy it—or one bid more than anyone else is willing to pay. The distinction is an important reminder that an auction is not a competition. The bidder who allows his competitive instinct to overcome his good sense will inevitably “win” that battle with the other guy by paying too much for the item. Pyrrhic victory. Decide before the auction what you think a piece is worth and don’t let the pressure of the moment push you to bid more. Look at the online pictures, attend the preview to be sure the item is what you’re looking for, and then get ready to bid.

When you arrive at the auction, the first thing to do is sign in. You’ll give the clerk your contact information, and she will hand you a card with your bidding number. This becomes your auction ID. When any item is sold, the auctioneer will announce, “Sold to bidder 72 for $60.” The clerk takes down the information, and when you check out she will add up your purchases, add the buyer’s premium and tax, and once you pay the total, she will hand you a receipt. You’ll gather up your new Stuff and take it home.

As for bidding strategy, some buyers like to start bidding as soon as an item comes up. Others wait until the bidding slows down and only then raise their hand. There is no particular advantage to either approach, so do it whichever way you want.

No matter how you bid, you can come away with some excellent objects at great prices. If you’re furnishing a house, apartment, or a single room, check out the area auction galleries. Many auctions feature both vintage and contemporary furniture, and the pieces often sell for a fraction of retail. The same can be said of many other categories. From books to guns, from kitchen ware to wall art, the items may fetch top dollar or go begging for a bid. It all depends on who’s bidding and what their interests—and budgets—are.

*** Now, about that buyer’s premium. The auctioneer charges the sellers of items a commission, and also charges the buyer a premium on his or her purchase. Depending on the auction house, premiums generally run from 10 to 15 or 20 percent of the purchase price. So, if you bid $100 on an item, the real price will be $110 or even $120—plus sales tax. To the casual observer, it might appear the auctioneer is making a killing, charging a commission to both the buyer and seller. Johnny Penland demurs, however, and he ran through some of the expenses that cut into the profit.

“You have a lot of overhead, starting with the rent. You gotta have a truck, truck insurance, liability insurance, payroll, heat, lights, water.” He took a breath and went on. “Then there’s supplies. You need bid cards, and contract forms. We write a contract listing the items for every consignor.”

The consignors—people putting items up for auction— comprise a variety of sources. Penland says people bring in

ALMOST ANYTHING can be found at an auction. photo courtesy Broken Arch Auction

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items they no longer want or need, or can’t stand to look at.

He adds that much of their merchandise also arrives through attorneys settling estates.

Jamie Rhodes, auctioneer and owner of Country Rhodes in Hendersonville, is overwhelmed with the amount that comes in. “Sometimes I have to turn business away, which I hate,” she says. Jamie is relatively new to the auction business, having called her first auction in January of last year. She holds auctions “once or twice a month,” selling what she calls everyday things. “When I decided to start, my biggest fear was, how will I get items to sell? It was like a leap of faith, but before I knew it, I had more people consigning than I had even hoped.

It was overwhelming.”

Jamie says, “I’m doing it all by myself,” except on auction nights, when her two daughters and husband are called into duty. Family involvement is a trend that runs throughout the auction industry, with many auction families including multi-generational family members. Johnny Penland, for example, started in his father’s used furniture business back in the 1950s. He and his wife, Ann, began the auction in 1985, and now his son-in-law, Tommy Tuten, has taken over, with Tommy’s wife setting up the website listings. Johnny’s other daughter and her husband also work the auctions along with their son and daughter. It adds up to eight relatives covering three generations.

Brunk Auctions, meanwhile, began as a one-man operation in 1982. Bob Brunk soon employed his young son, Andrew, to hold 62

| March 2019

ANDREW BRUNK conducting an auction. photo courtesy Brunk Auctions photo courtesy Brunk Auctions

up items for bidding and handle other chores. Thirty years later, Bob is retired, and Andrew is the president of Brunk Auctions.

And at Broken Arch Auctions in Weaverville, auctioneer Mark Wilson is the uncle of the owner, Travis Wilson. Mark started in his parents’ antique business when he was a child—and soon developed into a colorful young dealer. “By the time I was 12, I was tradin’ on stuff,” he says, in a drawl that marks him as a local native. “When I was 16, 17 years old, I had a trunk full of .22 rifles I traded on. I’d sell ‘em to my friends in school. My assistant principal would buy from me.” By the time he turned 20, Mark had already amassed the knowledge of obscure old objects that is the hallmark of a seasoned auctioneer.

*** At a recent Broken Arch auction, Mark was all business, selling more than 400 items on a Saturday afternoon and finishing in time for dinner. I spoke to some of his bidders, including Christine Antonelli of Hendersonville, who has been

A BIDDER viewing items set for auction. photo courtesy Brunk Auctions

attending auctions at least once a month for 10 years. “I just like to find different things,” she said. She is a dealer who sells “mostly online.” For her, the allure of an auction is simple: “You never know what you’re going to see. So, it’s fun!”

Across the room, Phyllis Blackard of Brevard was clutching a piece of pottery she had just bought and said she has been

“You spend years lookin’ at stuff, touching it, and it eventually sticks,” Mark says. “If I come across something I’m not sure of, I’ll do some research so I can know what I’m talkin’ about.”

Andrew puts the same message a bit differently. “Learning in the field is a process of slow and constant osmosis. You learn by doing, by soaking it up a little bit at a time.”

“I think people can be intimidated by the auction process,” he says. “They’re afraid if they twitch, they’re buying something for a thousand dollars.” going to auctions for “five or six years. They’re entertaining, and you find some really unusual things.” She breaks into a wide grin as she announced, “And today I bought a prayer rug.

The big one. Because it’s unusual, and I think I have a place where it will look really good in my house.”

Sit at enough auctions and you eventually wonder how the auctioneer can know so much about so many diverse things.

Mark Wilson and Andrew Brunk agree on the source of all that knowledge.

To some people who have never attended an auction, the prospect seems daunting. Mark and Andrew, both regarded as among our area’s more prominent auctioneers, responded to that reluctance.

Mark, who estimates he has done about 300 auctions over the past 20 years, says, “There’s opportunities for young buyers that they’re not taking advantage of.” Many auctions, he explains, offer everything from kitchen utensils to furniture to wall art, opportunities to furnish a first apartment. “[But] if you go to March 2019 | capitalatplay.com 63

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an auction, you look around, look at the median age, and they’re all retirement age. There’s wonderful opportunity, but the young people are not taking it.”

Andrew, who returned to Asheville to take over the Tunnel Road business from his father nine years ago, had previously been the head of the American Furniture department at Christie’s auction house in New York City. “I think people can be intimidated by the auction process,” he says. “They’re afraid if they twitch, they’re buying something for a thousand dollars.” That’s not true; in fact, he describes the atmosphere at an auction is quite different: “It’s a friendly, informal setting. In the course of an auction, people can come and go.

They don’t need a reservation or a ticket; they don’t need to dress up. They don’t need to have been to an auction. It’s a fun place to come and look at great things.”

At Brunk, that “look at great things” statement takes on extra meaning. The Brunk previews, generally held a couple of nights before the auction (check the website), display every item in an upcoming auction. At the preview, there’s no requirement that you be an interested bidder. You’re free to check everything out. In its January auction, “everything” included legendary ice-skater Dick Button’s collection of skating materials, with the items from costumes he wore at various shows to skating paintings and posters, even Delft tiles, and, of course several pairs of early skates.

Also in the auction was the 16th Century painting (shown on facing page) mentioned above that sold for $160,000. Both of the two final bidders were bidding by phone. The scene took on an aspect of suspenseful theater as Andrew would call out the advancing bid -- “$100 thousand”—and a staff member would relay the number to his phone bidder and pause for a tense few seconds. Hearing the bidder accept the new price, the staffer would raise his hand, and Andrew would respond: “$120 thousand.” Then it was the other bidder’s turn.

So it went, with each phone pause adding a touch of tension until the painting was hammered down at $160,000. With the buyer’s premium, the final price reached $192,000. It drew a round of applause from the people in the room.

Brunk auctions take on the atmosphere of quiet spectacle, with items regularly reaching dramatic prices. But bidders can also make more modest purchases. At the same two-day auction of the pricey painting, a buyer also took home a 19th Century one-drawer table for $100, and other items sold for similar low prices.

Brunk competes with major auction houses in New York and across the country from a small mountain city, which could be perceived as a handicap when working against the big-city, big-name auctions. Not so, says Andrew. In fact, “A lot of times I think we get more [money] than New York on certain things. If we get something great, we’re going to put all the spotlights on it. We give it a lot of marketing focus, make sure all the right people know. There’s a level at which people love buying outside of New York. There’s an idea that maybe they’re sneaking up on something.”

At a recent Brunk Auction, this painting, "Christ Blessing The Children," went for around $160K. photo courtesy Brunk Auctions

He also points out that Asheville has become a destination city, and some bidders travel a long way to the auction. “We’ve had sales here with a hundred Chinese bidders in the room, passports in hand.”

He leans back and points to a large framed poster on the wall, promoting a past auction. The poster shows a decorative porcelain vase: “We sold for $1.2 million. The underbidder on that never saw it in person. He bid from photographs, he bid from the other side of the world, and bid to a million dollars.

He didn’t need to be in the room.”

*** Auctioneers Andrew Brunk and Mark Wilson agree that fears about buying at an auction are unjustified. And there is another backstop for reluctant bidders: The North Carolina Auction Licensing Board. The five-member board enforces no fewer than 32 pages of state laws and regulations that govern the auction business. Those regulations include a $200,000 recovery fund for buyers or sellers defrauded by an auctioneer.

Licensing Board Executive Director Charles Diehl says, “There are 2035 licensed auctioneers in the state,” selling real estate, industrial, farm, and restaurant equipment, and personal property. The board licenses auctioneers and, notes Diehl, “We do occasionally have disciplinary hearings involving March 2019 | capitalatplay.com 65

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PLACES TO PLACE YOUR BIDS Western North Carolina has a plethora of auction houses that cater to bidders of all tastes. For more comprehensive information online, also consult auctionzip.com and company websites for their updated auction times. > >brunk auctions

> >sheehan ’s auction services

Live, online, specialty auctions at their 26,000-foot gallery space dedicated to auctions.

General merchandise auction every other Saturday.

Also conducts tag sales.

117 Tunnel Road Asheville, NC 828-254-6846 brunkauctions.com

 58 Catawba Ave, Old Fort, NC 828-668-9246 Sheehansauction.com

> >broken arch gallery

> >thad woods auction

Live antique and general interest auctions roughly every month. Note that there will be one the day after this issue of the magazine is published, on March 2.

General merchandise, estate, consignment auction every Friday night. Includes new merchandise as well.

1098 New Stock Rd, Weaverville, NC 828-713-8869 brokenarchgallery.com

> >tommy tuten and johnny penl and auctions

General merchandise auction every Friday, specializing in antiques, collectibles, and cars.

301 Patton Cove Rd., Swannanoa, NC 828-686-0833 tutenpenlandauctions.com

> >advantage auction services Offering a variety of auctions including: property, real estate, business liquidations, farm equipment, automobiles, and estate.

114 E. Caswell St., Hendersonville, NC 828-674-7307 advantageauctionservices.com

> >country rhodes auction gallery

Weekly or biweekly general interest/vintage auction.

130 Tracy Grove Rd suite A, Hendersonville, NC 828-551-4946 countryrhodesauction.com 66

| March 2019

25 Muse Business Park, Waynesville, NC 828-456-3298 thadwoodsauction.com

> >richard d . hatch & associates Four auctions a year: spring, summer, fall, winter.

General high-end merchandise, antiques.

913 Upward Rd, Flat Rock, NC 828-696-3440 richardhatchauctions.com

> >bagwell & associates auction co .

Specializing in military memorabilia of all eras, including some firearms.

5 Winners Circle, Arden, NC 828-651-9699 bagwellauctions.com

> >southeast livestock exchange

Livestock auctions conducted via video, but also scheduled for the WNC Regional Livestock Center.

474 Stock Drive, Canton, NC 828-646-0270 southeastlivestockexchange.com

TUTEN & PENLAND AUCTIONS tallies winning bids the old-school way - in slots next to the bidder’s number.

anything from technical transgressions to serious violations.

In the most serious cases the board has suspended or revoked a license. Those would be any time an auctioneer breaches his or her fiduciary duty to a client.”

The fiduciary duty is to the seller, not the bidder. Mark Wilson sums it up: “My job is to get you to pay more than it’s worth.

Your job is to get it for less than it’s worth. Somewhere we should reach a meeting of the minds.”

The auctioneer’s license test includes questions about state rules and regulations as well as about an applicant’s practical knowledge of the auction business. Diehl provided some sample test questions: The auctioneer’s contract called for a 15% commission.

Auction sale proceeds were $53,750 and the auctioneer’s expenses totaled $1,750. What was the auctioneer’s net profit from the sale?

The Auctioneer Licensing Board may deny, suspend, or revoke a license upon which of the following grounds? a) violation of any provision of Chapter N.C.G.S. 85B of the General Statutes b) failure to possess truth, honesty, and integrity c) violation of any federal or state statute or rule relating to the auctioneering profession d) any of these grounds Diehl summarizes the testing and regulatory enforcement: “The licensing board exists to protect the public.”

But there must be a reason that an industry has its own regulatory board—and 36 pages of regulations. There must be something going on, right? In the overwhelming number of auctions, nothing underhanded is happening, but unscrupulous auctioneers have been known to employ tricks to achieve higher prices. For example, the auctioneer points at you to accept your bid. He then points to someone behind you for a higher bid. Back to you and then back to that other guy.

But that “other guy” might just be the back wall of the room.

The other bidder is a phantom—and you, the victim, have kept bidding. Or the auctioneer is taking phone bids—but the person holding the phone, relaying those bids from the caller, his phone is not switched on, let alone connected to anyone.

Another phantom bidder.

Mark Wilson summed it up: “There’s a million ways to play the game. Illegal ways are the hardest ways to play it, but people want to do it anyway. It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen.”

An incident a couple of years ago revealed a Weaverville auctioneer who was cheating his consignors rather than the bidders. Paul Blake Terry, who owned Blake Terry Auctions, was charged with two counts of embezzlement, amounting to an estimated $150,000. His case was dismissed after he agreed to make restitution and surrendered his auctioneer’s license.

Auctioneers have their history and reputation to protect, and they face their own frustrations. “Most frustrating?” Johnny Penland leaned forward at his desk. His voice became intense.

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“Somebody brings 10 items in, and they get way more from nine of them than they were ever dreaming of. One falls short, and that’s all they remember: The one bad one.”

Andrew Brunk faces a different challenge. In evaluating a piece for auction, he sometimes must inform a consignor that an item is not nearly as valuable as he expects.

“It’s a difficult moment, sure,” he says. Referring to a recent downward trend in prices for many categories of antiques, he adds, “Because the market has changed so much, everyone in the industry has to be good at breaking bad news to people.” But he sees a flip side to that coin: “There can be surprises in both directions, and you have to be prepared to make the happy call as well as the unhappy call.”

*** The allure of an auction goes beyond the attraction of a particular item. It embodies a sense of adventure, not knowing in advance if your bids will be successful or if you will watch someone else take that Stuff you want. Andrew 68

| March 2019

Brunk summed it up from his own perspective, but his words ring true for both auctioneer and bidder: “The sense of treasure hunt still remains. When I walk into a house [to consign items], you never know what you’re going to find. That is still very much exciting. I’ve been

“The sense of treasure hunt still remains. When I walk into a house [to consign items], you never know what you’re going to find.

That is still very much exciting. ” doing this for 30 years, and there are still great moments of excitement. When you discover something, it really recharges your batteries.”

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Articles of Innovation: Sustainability 101

Don’t let the bureaucrats fool you: It is less about what a business is doing and more about how they’re doing it.

F

OR SUCH A LONG WORD, “SUSTAINABLE”

seems to have found its way onto websites and advertisements by everyone from the service industry, to tech, to beauty products— reminding us all that no one pays by the letter for marketing materials anymore.

G gillie roberts

is owner of downtown Asheville sustainable lifestyle store Ware.

70

Longer still is the conversation around what sustainability actually entails. Frustratingly, the term alludes more to the end result than the steps for getting there. I’m here to contend that businesses are our only hope at keeping that target within sight.

Aside from being used in the context of maintaining some aforementioned action or status (e.g., financial sustainability or the sustainability of your new diet), “sustainable” most colloquially references environmental practices that have an eye to conservation and pollution minimization. However, international development (that’s the field of work related to the growth and evolution of societies around the world) takes a more comprehensive approach, establishing true sustainability as the portion of the Venn diagram where the following three undertakings overlap: environmental stewardship

| March 2019

(inclusive of the animal kingdom); ethical treatment of human actors and their cultures; and responsible action, wherein economies are affected at both micro and macro levels.

If that doesn’t seem to narrow it down much, you’re not alone in your confusion. Sustainability has rather nebulous roots. One of the earliest and most-quoted definitions of sustainable development is, “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,” from a 1987 UN report.

While poetic, that description affords little guidance for those of us looking to put action behind the underlying values.

W hile studying sustainable development at Appalachian State University in Boone, my classmates and I used the “3 P’s” (planet, people,

G Charlotte Street profit) or “3 E’s” (environment, ethics, economy) as simplified mnemonic devices to keep discussions organized.

Any of the concept’s three pillars can easily be broken down into dozens of fields with experts whose work must continue in perpetuity in order to keep the larger community operating with the best and latest information. Not only is sustainability all-encompassing, it relies on sciences that are learning more as the world around us changes at an accelerating pace. In fact, sustainability has changed so much in the past five years alone, it’s not even always called by that name anymore.

SUSTAINABILITY IS LESS ABOUT WHAT YOU’RE DOING AND MORE ABOUT HOW YOU’RE DOING IT. IT ’S A LENS THROUGH WHICH TO APPROACH EVERYTHING.

Now that sustainability efforts are fighting the drastic and everworsening effects of climate change, the term “resilience” often replaces “sustainability,” as it considers a project’s ability to recover from extreme weather patterns or the need to restore an environment before productive efforts can begin. The real difference between the two is the starting point— sustainability efforts assume we are starting at zero, while resilience efforts start in the negative or prepare for its eventuality. I mostly tell you this so you recognize the word if you come across it. We’ll keep to our original vocabulary word, for the sake of clarity.

What I came to understand from my college studies is that sustainability is less about what you’re doing and

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more about how you’re doing it. It’s a lens through which to approach everything from government procedure, to business endeavors, to an individual’s lifestyle choices. My personal passions are the latter two subjects, so I combined them into a single business. I own a boutique that sells a range of the kinds of goods we find ourselves interacting with dailykitchenwares to clothing, but I don’t consider myself to be working “in retail,” at least not exclusively. I consider myself a sustainability professional whose vehicle is retail. Apparel and home goods just happen to be a great platform for getting the general population to lean in to the conversations I feel are crucial to prompting real change in our lives and immediate communities—and, really, where else can we start?

The interesting thing about a field that is so rapidly evolving is that authorities on the matter are not, in many cases, those who have been around the subject matter(s) the longest; they are those who are nimble enough to stay relevant and those who bring fresh perspectives to the table. Though a cliché, it’s once again true that the status quo where business practice is concerned is not going to solve the problems it caused. The

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It’s rather logical that businesses are the most agile actors in Western society. Governments historically can’t react quickly enough to lead the way because of the “B-word”: bureaucracy.

For better or for worse, an about-face by regional and federal governmental bodies takes iterations of decisions and, therefore, time. Business, on the other hand, is uniquely positioned to be the first to react where sustainability efforts are needed.

In the introduction of his book, Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto, Adam Werbach tells the story of how this same realization came to him during his work with New Orleans city government as an environmentalist in the wake of hurricane Katrina. Upon recognizing that businesses were the first to respond to the disaster with any real efficiency, he writes, “The corporate sector has the incentives, operational know-how, scalability, and ingenuity to respond to the global challenges we face today.” He went on to say it is the private sector that “witness[es] how resource constraints affect markets, customers, communities, and natural habitats.”

Not only are businesses faced with an opportunity to lead the winds of change, they must do so if they intend to have

resources for production and customers to purchase their goods and services. (Side note: If you’re itching for homework, I highly recommend this book for its approachable portrayal of the intrinsic link between business and sustainability.)

In the coming editions, this column will venture away from the theory of sustainability into the world of its application in small business in Western North Carolina—as well as the occasional glance at best practices in the larger community of sustainable business. Class dismissed.

To learn more about Gillie Roberts, and her sustainable business practices, see her profile in the December 2018 issue of Capital at Play.

It’s amazing what the right business loan can do for you.

At Carolina Alliance Bank, we’ve helped lots of small, local businesses reach new heights. With sound advice, strong encouragement and just the right loan to help meet their needs and goals.

So stop by Carolina Alliance Bank's location and talk to one of our professionals today. And get ready for things to really take off.

March 2019 | capitalatplay.com 73

AWARDS AND SLINGSHOTS adorn Nathan Masters' office.

From 2015-2018 he has placed 1st in the East Coast Slingshot Tournament.

74

| March 2019

Why do people find hitting a target to be so satisfying?

Nathan Masters, of SimpleShot, says he thinks he knows: “It’s in our DNA.”

Direct HIT written by arthur treff

|

photos by anthony harden

March 2019 | capitalatplay.com 75

I

’M ENJOYING AN UNUSUALLY WAR M JANUARY sunset in the company of Nathan Masters. The French Broad River runs quickly by our picnic table at Zillicoah Beer, located on the northern end of Asheville’s River Arts District. Just hanging out, we’re talking typical “guy stuff”—oh, you know, like the importance of fun for human development and fulfillment.

“I believe humans seek play, fun, and joy as a means to live fuller and more abundant lives,” says Nathan, pausing for emphasis. A sparkle lights his eyes and a child’s smile appears on his bearded adult face: “…and that is why I love slingshots.”

“Dennis the Menace!” I reply. “Who didn’t try to make his or her own slingshot after seeing Dennis?”

Exactly. After falling in love with them, the Asheville native made artisanal versions of daily newspaper cartoon legend (and neighbor to the eternally harried Mr. Wilson) Dennis Mitchell’s famed forked stick as a hobby, and in eight short years his company, SimpleShot, has achieved 110% average annual growth, employs four workers full-time, and has become the largest online retailer of all things slingshot in the world.

If you grew up in these Western North Carolina parts, you’d know them as, “Flips” or “Bean Flips.” As a kid, I’d made my own slingshots using coat hangars, electrical tape, and rubber bands, but never managed to achieve accuracy. Still, I had fun trying. At Boy Scout camp, I was drawn to archery, and can still remember the joyful moment when my arrows actually hit the target, as opposed to the field beyond. Why was the simple act of hitting a target so satisfying? Nathan Masters, the philosopher, has an answer.

“It’s in our DNA. It dates back to when, as a species, we were just learning to use simple hand-held tools. With spears and arrows, we could reach beyond our sphere of physical influence to intentionally affect change in our world. Flips are quite easy to learn to shoot with tremendous accuracy, and this ease of obtaining skill is what makes them so great!”

Sure, a slingshot could potentially injure someone. So could darts, a golf ball, or hedge clippers, but as defensive weapons, they’re all poor choices. Flips are perfect for simple target shooting. Humans feel good when we master something, be it pottery or painting, cooking and canning, or just knocking the cans off a fence.

Go With The Flow

MULTIPLE “JELLY BEAN” slingshots cut from a sheet of high-density polyethylene.

76

| March 2019

Nathan’s played with guns, arrows, slingshots, even blowguns, but prefers his projectiles human powered, because shooting anything without gunpowder he says, requires the shooter to achieve what he calls a flow state.

Flow, also known colloquially as remaining present, or being in the zone, is a mental state in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, deep involvement, and joy in the process.

From his own experiences Nathan believes that the ability to remain present in any activity reaps benefits in the rest of his life, because it enhances focus, relaxation, and fun.

BOXES OF BALL BEARINGS ready to be used as ammo.

BAND ASSEMBLY during production of slingshots.

Like most college graduates, after securing a BA in philosophy, with a minor in entrepreneurship from Clemson University, Nathan treated himself to some new experiences. In 1999 he briefly owned Green Bird Farms, a business that grew organic heirloom vegetables, and also became a certified Taoist massage therapist. He moved to Colorado, opened a private massage practice, and guided backcountry ski trips and fishing expeditions.

Seven years later, Nathan and his wife, Ashley, moved back to Western North Carolina to start a family. He found work in commercial real estate for the stable income, but it wasn’t his dream job.

Nathan uncovered something while cleaning his father’s shop one day. It was a custom flip with modern flatband elastics and ball bearing ammo. He put a ball in the pouch, pulled, aimed at a pinecone, and hit it. Cool!

As a boy, Nathan had launched pebbles from inexpensive wrist-rockets, but it was almost impossible to hit anything with them. This was different. He took another shot—another direct hit!

Flipping Out With the aid of internet forums, Nathan made his own slingshot and worked at his shooting technique. The joy and

relaxation he experienced was a welcome change from real estate; flips were another way to enter his beloved flow state.

An accomplished woodworker, Nathan gradually designed and built more complex slingshots and shared pictures of them in those web forums. At the slingshot competitions he subsequently attended, fellow competitors were shooting off-the-shelf models and were impressed with his custom creations: People wanted them.

His screen name for the forums was “Flippinout,” so Nathan started a website, Flippinoutslingshots.com, to display the beautiful creations. Built of laminated exotic woods, dyed in complementary colors, then sculpted into sensuous shapes, his Flips were—as forum commenters no doubt enthused—flippin’ gorgeous! This hobby was a blast for Nathan; he loved designing them, building them, and dreaming up unique names for them.

At the time, you could buy a rudimentary slingshot at WalMart for around ten dollars; there was nothing else available other than custom one-off flips. Meanwhile, prices of a FlippinOut slingshot started at $100, and many were sold for well north of $500… certainly beyond the reach Dennis the Menace’s allowance.

And orders began to pile up.

In 2011 Nathan realized he could support his family with slingshots alone, so he drew up a business plan and showed it March 2019 | capitalatplay.com 77

to Ashley. “OK, you’ve got two years, make it work,” was her response.

Get Busy Nathan believed that any brand, once established, could become a conduit to move a variety of products. Ignoring the distraction of other modalities, his company would concentrate solely on target shooting in its simplest, least regulated form: slingshots.

Dubbed SimpleShot, the company would showcase his FlippinOut brand as well as flips by the other slingshot artisans Nathan had come to know. To further enhance the shooting credibility he’d established online, Nathan wanted his website to exude global professionalism and quality; it had to make the company look big. He hired an expert in website design and marketing to create Simple-Shot.com.

To reach more customers, the new company needed to balance their custom slingshot lines with less expensive alternatives. Nathan created another brand, ClassicCatapults. Featuring basic designs cut from Baltic birch plywood, they would be considerably less expensive to manufacture and sell.

Once the site was up and running, SimpleShot rapidly gained ground as a solid brand representing solid product lines and providing their spare parts, but Nathan realized he needed even lower cost flips. He designed another slingshot, but this one was going to be molded from plastic, which can be produced in volume.

“I named it the Scout, and the shape mimics the Boy Scouts of America logo design; I really wanted to get them involved,” says Nathan. “I was hoping that slingshots could be incorporated into some Boy Scout instruction, and maybe competition… but they never took me up on it.”

The Scout was a quality product, though, with a price point that would be attractive to mainstream buyers. To test the waters, he attended the largest national shooting trade event, The Shot Show. Armed with the Scout prototype and collateral marketing materials touting that it was designed, built, and sold in the USA, it received rave reviews.

Late in 2012, SimpleShot went live with the $40 Scout product—and it was a game changer, with Nathan selling 200 of them within the first hour. Up to this point, the company was one man working out of his family home. Not anymore. With the Scout’s success, capacity had been reached.

The new company was accepted into A-B Tech Community College’s small business incubator, based in Candler, North Carolina, just outside Asheville, in 2013. It’s a highly effective program that provides a stepping-stone to fledgling small businesses. Like magic, he now had a commercial warehouse, enough space to incorporate his wood working shop, and somewhere to shoot product videos.

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| March 2019

BANDS FOR Slingshots ready to be shipped out to customers.

Another prominent name in the sport came from Hungary. Mark Seljan had been designing slingshot frames for himself and openly sharing them with folks wanting to make their own. Nathan approached the Hungarian and

“SimpleShot—which, it’s worth noting, to date has been total self-financed from savings and short-term loans... ” asked if he could purchase one of Seljan’s designs, modified for injection molding.

A deal was struck, and the Torque model was born. Nathan wanted the product to have a different look and feel, so they decided to incorporate a hexagonal surface treatment. The hexagons reduced the mass of the part, thus lowering cost and reducing the cross-sectional thickness, which would in turn alleviate potential heat distortion in the finished

NATAHAN COMPETES around the world. Most recently in Italy for WorldCup Slingshot Tournament where he placed 9th overall.

product. Torque oozed quality; it earned a Hungarian industrial design award; and just like Scout, people wanted one.

Nathan’s wife Ashley’s two-year deadline for the slingshot venture was still months away, and the company was on track to double its previous year’s sales numbers. SimpleShot—which, it’s worth noting, to date has been total self-financed from savings and short-term loans—was so busy that the first full-time employee was hired.

SIMPLESHOT SHIPS its products to enthusiasts all over the world.

Brand Building At this point, I should note that Nathan hadn’t stumbled into an unknown deep-niche market. As I listened to him tell me his story, it quickly became apparent that he and the SimpleShot team created this market.

From the beginning, he was thinking big; he wanted SimpleShot to appear larger than it was. Simple-Shot.com was corporate-slick in appearance but also retained the downhome-vibe that Nathan himself exudes and his fellow sling shooters value. This was conveyed via video.

They produced scores of instructional tutorial videos which were distributed on the website. Nathan’s on-screen persona is L-R Master model for green sand casting, the “Scout,” the “Hammer.”.79 March 2019 and | capitalatplay.com

everyone’s favorite high school teacher: the relaxed, fun-but-serious guy, the one all the cool kids respect and want to hang with. He is direct and well-spoken, and he smiles a lot, even when he’s giving a lecture on the physics of slingshot accuracy or band adjustment. It’s hard not to want him to turn up in your own backyard, plinking soda cans.

Site visitors will find a range of subjects, from basic nomenclature, shooting safety, elastic band replacement, building a safe indoor shooting range (easier than you think), and all the way up to filming yourself shooting to achieve a higher marksmanship certification.

Googling SEO All online business brands are built using Search Engine Optimization, and targeted marketing services through a Google paid service called Google Ads. This program allows a paying company’s ads to appear in Google search result lists, as banners or ads in email apps, or as videos that pop up during YouTube searches.

It’s a great tool, but for companies like SimpleShot, there was a catch: The Google Ads program will not allow advertising for an eCommerce site where a weapon is sold. Slingshots are hardly weapons, but where there’s a will…

Nathan called his close friend, Boomer Sassmann, owner of the Asheville internet consulting agency, Big Boom Designs. He suggested that Nathan broaden the online presence by using separate websites for instruction and sales. Google Ads would bring customers to the informational sites where they can indulge in product information, but the purchase function would be routed to Simple-Shot.com via a button at the bottom each page.

Instructional blogs, instructional manuals, and videos would be showcased on www.SimpleShot.Academy.

Additionally, if the public wanted to read reviews and compare all the products Nathan sold, they would go to www.

SlingShotBuyersGuide.com.

When SimpleShot would be launching future products, Boomer also suggested that a new website be created around each new product. Thanks to this advice, slingshot searches filled the results page with multiple websites, and they all bore SimpleShot’s logo. The company looked gigantic.

It’s key for a developing brand to be involved in as many aspects of the market as possible. To this end (and Nathan has to have fun sometimes), SimpleShot bought sponsorship at established slingshot events as well as promoted its own competitions. Nathan also continued to compete and win. In the slingshot world, he has become a bit of a celebrity.

HAMMER SLINGSHOT/SLINGBOW This image shows all the components that make up the Hammer slingshot/slingbow platform.

All of these par ts are interchangeable for various end uses.

Hammer XT head and handle set up for slingshot mode

Hammer XT handle with wrist brace and LT head for slingbow 80

| March 2019

Flatbands for round ball projectiles

Hammer XT head and components

Neverland Found In the company office, located on Riverside Drive in Woodfin (slightly north of Asheville), Nathan’s impressive collection of competition trophies pales alongside his giant slingshot collection. One wall showcases flips he has crafted, from the first forked stick all the way up to carbon fiber/brass masterpieces, all displayed on a custom wooden rack.

The opposing wall could be the Smithsonian Slingshot Channel: It’s Nathan’s private collection, an homage to slingshot makers past and present; many are gifts from the artists themselves.

There are blacksmith-forged steel flips, an intricately formed and polished root burl complete with embedded rock, even one built from a bicycle chain. There are almost too many to look at, but each one I touch contains a story told with reverence by Nathan; flips and those who make them are very close to his heart.

In SimpleShot’s warehouse, an old fashioned red and silver gumball machine filled with shimmering ball bearings beckons from a desktop. A shooting area, complete with targets and safety netting rests along the far wall, and every horizontal surface holds at least one slingshot. The place exudes fun, and I suddenly want to grab some bearings and start shooting, but I don’t. I might hit Nathan and Aaron, his warehouse manager, who are meticulously inspecting a new shipment of molded parts.

SLING SHOT

101

Bins overflowing with product parts intrigue me, and with each question, Nathan astounds me with the depth of his knowledge. I pass boxes bursting with yellow, black, and red flat latex elastic bands, and Nathan points out the elastic properties necessary for competition versus everyday longevity and safety.

He hands me a roll of red latex and instructs me about the highly regarded red rubber “the old timers” used to use. “I’ve located a high quality modern source,” he whispers.

It occurs to me that SimpleShot is the Nordstrom’s of the sling shooting: a curated collection of products, all sourced with great care.

Transforming Difference By 2016 it was time for a new product, something completely different. Nathan turned his marketing mind to SimpleShot’s customer demographic.

“They’re late Baby Boomers/GenXers, age 35-55 years,” he says. “When you look at the toys available during their childhood, you see Erector Sets, Transformers, bendable action figures—toys that are modular, can be built upon, accessorized.”

Nathan recalled that the sport of archery requires a similar mindset and body mechanics to slingshot shooting. What if he

FRAME

BAND

BAND TYPES

POUCH

What the rubber is attached to and shooter holds onto, be it forked stick or machined titanium.

The elastic pieces that attach to the frame on one end, and the pouch on the other.

This choice divides shooters into two camps who defend their band choice ardently, be they flat or tubular.

The strip of leather tied between the bands into which a projectile is placed.

Hammer LT slingshot and slingbow heads

Hammer LT and XT handles

Wire wrist brace for Hammer XT handle

Hammer XT head and handle with wrist brace setup for Slingbow March 2019 | capitalatplay.com

81

NATHAN MASTERS demonstrating the proper posture and aim.

could manufacture a slingshot that with the right accessories, could launch arrows?

Nathan once again contacted the Hungarian design wunderkind Seljan, and with his assistance, created the Transformer of slingshots. At its most basic, it’s a technical looking flip, but the frame can be separated from the handle, replaced with one that’s ready for full sized arrows via multiple tubular elastics. A wrist stabilizer can be attached, even a flashlight. It was named the Hammer, which went to market in 2016. Not surprisingly, the product garnered more industrial design awards.

The Hammer was also featured on the CNBC TV show, Adventure Capitalists, a Shark Tank meets (clueless-but-wealthy) investor athletes scenario. The segment aired on Halloween 2017, and while SimpleShot didn’t secure any additional capital, it did put the company and its products in mainstream media.

The Good Twenty-seventeen was a year of opportunities for SimpleShot. They were accepted into GoldmanSachs “10,000 Small Businesses” program. It’s the financial firm’s pay it forward program to help entrepreneurs create jobs and economic opportunity by providing greater access to education, capital, and business support services. To date, more than 7,300 business owners have graduated 82

| March 2019

from the program across all 50 states in the United States, Puerto Rico, and Washington, D.C..

Nathan regularly flew to Boston to attend sessions at Babson College and work alongside his classmates, fellow entrepreneurs from all corners of the small business strata. The experience has been described by program participants as getting an MBA through a fire hose, estimating the value at $50,000.

What is it about his job that gets Nathan out of bed in the morning?

“Providing for my family of course,” he says, “and I enjoy my customers. They’re having fun with the products we make—what’s not to like?”

As any entrepreneur can attest, as enjoyable as use of their product can be, things are seldom all fun and games in the manufacturing world. SimpleShot has had their share of supplier headaches, and the complex molds that churn out the company’s five core products can cost upwards of seventy thousand dollars apiece… and molds wear out.

Additionally, there are two things that keep him up at night. Being a successful business has made SimpleShot a target. Slingshots are big in China, and the company has done good business there.

Which brings us to…

The Bad A year ago, the company’s Internet Protocol Address was brazenly stolen by a business associate:

WAREHOUSE MANAGER Aaron Smutz prepares shipments for UPS pick-up..

his own Chinese distributor. This was not just product piracy of names and logo, but SimpleShot’s entire way to make a living; it was stealing in plain sight.

Nathan immediately confronted the offender on the phone, but the gentleman hid behind cultural differences, attitudes, and business practices—Nathan got nowhere. Acting quickly, as his entire company was at stake, he sought legal advice. It cost some

Looking for someone to help his tiny business stand up to this assault, Nathan approached Amazon, but the cry fell on deaf ears. hefty legal fees, but he quickly got it all back. Still, SimpleShot isn’t out of the woods yet.

Bootlegged copies of all SimpleShot products are now being sold

by China-based companies on Amazon at prices well below Nathan’s actual per-item costs, and all with free two-day delivery thanks in part to subsidized postage rates that Chinese businesses receive from the United States (and which domestic companies here in the States claim tilt the playing field in favor of the Chinese). They are exact copies of everything, including the company’s patented Ocularis band mounting system, right down to the word “patented” A BOX OF “Ocularis” slingshots; the BeanFlip” model is in the forefront.

March 2019 | capitalatplay.com 83

molded on the outside. Looking for someone to help his tiny business stand up to this assault, Nathan approached Amazon, but the cry fell on deaf ears. Amazon coldly stated that their allegiance is to the customer only, not the supplier—another factoid that bedevils American small businesses attempting to compete with product knockoff specialists.

Born in the USA? Two weeks ago, Nathan ambled into High Five Coffee and his smile was uncharacteristically absent. He placed two pocket-sized flips in my lap: One was beautifully cast and machined metal, requiring a great deal of hand labor. The other was a flawlessly molded composite model.

“These just arrived from China via Amazon, I placed the order two days ago. They also came with a ton of freebies—fifty-two extra band sets! The total price was below what I could make and sell just one for, using USA labor and materials.”

Neither one was a copy of a SimpleShot product, but their existence speaks to the foreign market pressure many companies struggle with. When Nathan launched the company, he was adamant that all his products be manufactured, assembled, and sold from the United States, and advertised as such. Now that he’s singlehandedly expanded the slingshot market and his company, in turn, appears large, he’s open to attack from competitors—and criticism from customers. Yes, customers.

After years of giving away slingshot tutorial videos, sponsoring slingshot events, selling quality products at fair prices, and spending thousands of hours on the phone answering customer questions, his customers are now asking why a slingshot that looks just like his Scout product is selling on Amazon for half the amount? Out of ignorance, they ask Nathan if he has been overcharging for his products.

“I’m having to re-think my approach,” says a dejected Nathan. “I thought ‘made in USA’ meant something to people, but obviously not, because, they’ll go to Walmart or Amazon to purchase cheap goods made in China.”

For the Pied Piper of fun, this is a gut-punch. Living in the United States is more expensive than most places, so manufacturing here costs more. Other countries with a lower standard of living are known for unscrupulous business practices, which are further enabled by the retail great white shark: Amazon.

Which brings us, in turn, to…

The Ugly (and Paying the Freight) I believe that if SimpleShot had never come along, and all slingshot sales were via Amazon, the market would not be what it is now. Ever try to get detailed technical information there? Amazon is number two behind Walmart in the global race to the bottom; they’re all about price and delivery, not the shopping experience.

I knew nothing about slingshots prior to researching this article.

But I learned so much from a facility tour and SimpleShot’s website that I wanted to own and learn to shoot one, because Nathan’s love 84

| March 2019

SIMPLESHOT

BY THE

NUMBERS Webstore only-does not include wholesale or Amazon shipments.

7 Years SHIPPING PRODUCT

110% AVERAGE GROWTH, YOY.

293 ACTIVE SKUS

UNITS SHIPPED

3,600 2015

7,200 2016

9,000 2017

9,900 2018

March 2019 | capitalatplay.com 85

of the activity comes through every tutorial, photograph, and video. After an hour online, I felt like he was my friend.

Experienced shooters know their elastic bands wear out quickly, so they keep plenty on hand. First time flip buyers can be unprepared for breaking bands, so they seek

another, but who pays? SimpleShot does, as well as associated shipping fees.

How about those reviews? Many times, regardless of how an issue is resolved, buyers will write a bad Amazon review—which SimpleShot is not allowed to answer.

Negative buyer reviews are a death sentence on Amazon; companies that have them can be pushed down in the site’s search results or, worse, dropped. If you are a business owner reading this, are you sweating yet?

Rightly so, Amazon has strict rules against sellers placing fraudulent positive reviews on their page. If suspected of this, a seller’s assets are immediately frozen, including stock and money Amazon owes them.

Nathan Masters is quick to point out that he doesn’t work alone; he has always been surrounded by a network of talented people. satisfaction. When they contact SimpleShot, an employee explains the problem and usually puts a free band set in the mail to a happily educated customer.

For products sold on Amazon, though, Nathan’s team is cut out of the customer experience. If a customer contacts the internet giant about a band break, no one educates them. Instead, Amazon just ships them another complete flip, and when that band breaks, Amazon will ship yet

Bob Lewis Ballpark, a complex of seven baseball fields and part of the larger Enka Youth Sports Complex, was once the site of an industrial landfill. Our attorneys helped secure the property, obtained nonprofit organizational status, and negotiated with the Department of Environmental Quality to see the project-funded by local donations and support from Buncombe County and the Tourism Development Authority­ through to completion. When it comes to helping little kids have big-league fun, we've got this.

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Dirty Tricksters In his article “Prime and Punishment, Dirty Dealing in the $175B Amazon Marketplace,” published last December at TheVerge.com, journalist Josh Dzieza portrayed the Wild West landscape of Amazon, where the internet giant stands as accuser, judge, jury, (and in some cases) executioner of

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roberts-stevens.com 828.252.6600

sellers. The piece leads off with the story of a small business that had been selling product reliably via the platform.

Suddenly one morning, there were sixteen five-star reviews on this seller’s Amazon page. All were poorly written, and seemed to be speaking of a different product. The owner complained to Amazon, which took the reviews down, but later mailed the seller an official suspension letter, accusing the small company of review fraud. As it turns out, a sleazy foreign competitor had placed the bogus reviews intentionally, knowing that Amazon would freeze the target company and hobble them.

The article explained, ominously: “Amazon already has something like a judicial system—one that is secretive, volatile, and often terrifying.”

Meanwhile, an April 2018 article in Forbes magazine, “Pros and Cons of Selling on Amazon,” by Pamela Danziger, bore further witness to the Amazon vortex, admonishing small businesses that selling products there is a gamble, and Amazon holds all the cards.

The Sun Also Rises

stop fighting foreign pressure. Nathan Masters is quick to point out that he doesn’t work alone; he has always been surrounded by a network of talented people, and very good opportunities are glowing along the company horizon.

At the 2019 Shot Show, Nathan and Ashley had some productive meetings, which could yield some high-volume wholesale opportunities, further increasing the company’s reach. Additionally, the modular Hammer product is doing well, and in the coming year, SimpleShot’s on track to release a new modular version of the popular Scout.

SimpleShot.academy, incidentally, reminds visitors to check local laws before strolling around their hometown with a flip in a back pocket. This begged a question. If he were to reappear in modern times with his ubiquitous slingshot dangling from his overalls’ back pocket, would Dennis the Menace need a license to carry?

At that, Nathan’s grin returns.

“No, his permanent state of boyhood, combined with his devilish yet lovable nature, would remove any requirements for him to be permitted to carry a flip… Though Mr. Wilson disagrees.”

This small Asheville company has weathered its fair share of storms by adapting to challenges, and SimpleShot isn’t about to

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March 2019 | capitalatplay.com 87

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1. Dante` Camia & Nathan Moran sculpting ice.

2. Auctioneers Annie Rasheed & Margo Lenmark.

3. Jeremy and Nikki Barnes at dinner.

4. Tracy Brown, Emcee John Carter, & Loni

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Miller at the Polar Plunge.

5. (L-R) WinterFest Director Sarah Goff, WinterFashions Show coordinators Ronnie Mark & Katy L Reisterer.

6. (L-R) Matt Franklin,Taylor Malm, &

William Murphy with Twigs Restaurant.

7. Jess Gregg & Edward Gravley: Plunger winners for their costumes.

8. Over 100 people made the jump at the WinterFest Polar Plunge at Chetola Resort.

21st Annual Blowing Rock Winterfest Downtown Blowing Rock, NC | January 24-27, 2019 Photos by Amanda Lugenbell 10

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9. Chad Berry, Meris Gantt, & Anna Huffman of Handlebar Betty perform.

10. Foster Ramsey & Erica Brinker, owners of The Speckled Trout.

11. Olivia Winger & Archie at the Dog Show.Â

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12. Savannah Stevens hits the runway.

13. Carole Cheek, Carol Truett, & Roof.

14. Cacy Lingle, Brad Panovich, with Tammy & Josh Taylor.

15. Pete & Geana Welter keep the crowd dancing.

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16. Richard and Taylor Campbell of Avodah Woodworks with customer Jim Crowell.

17. Dog Show Judges (L-R): Ronnie Mark, Charlie Sellers, Alice Roess, & Deatra Sellers.

18. Jessica & Patti Stamper posing.

March 2019 | capitalatplay.com 89

events

march

EVENTS march 1

Conflict Resolution for Managers & Leaders

9:30AM-4:30PM The Mediation Center 40 North French Broad Ave, Suite B, Asheville, NC Attendees will gain skills of de-escalation and learn how to coach others to resolve conflicts themselves.

> Registration: $149 > 828-251-6089 > mediatewnc.org march 1-31

“Fresh Air”

11AM-6PM (Mon-Sat) & 11AM-4PM (Sun) Asheville Gallery of Art 82 Patton Avee, Asheville, NC

Sue Dolamore’s forte is plein air set within 30 miles of Asheville. Her exhibit will kick off with an artist’s reception March 1, from 5-8PM.

> 828-251-5796 > ashevillegallery-of-art.com march 2-3

Blue Ridge Orchestra presents “Mostly Mozart”

3PM-4:30PM

Biltmore United Methodist Church 376 Hendersonville Rd, Asheville, NC There will also be a little Bach.

Conducted by Dr. Milton Crotts, the Blue Ridge Orchestra chamber strings, performs with Hobart Whitman and Bradford Malbon, on horn and flute.

>Tickets: Adult $15, Student $5 > 828-782-3354 > blueridgeorchestra.org march 3

Blue Ridge Symphonic Brass

3-4:30PM

First Baptist Church 94 Gaston St, Brevard, NC This “heavy metal” band, under the direction of Maestro Jamie Hafner, can play anything from Renaissance pieces to modern works (presumably not by Judas Priest or Black Sabbath, however).

Free, but donations welcome.

> 828-551-6839 > blueridgesymphonicbrass.org march 5 - 6

WNC Press Pass Conference 8AM-6PM

A-B Tech Mission Health Conference Center 6 Fernihurst Dr, Asheville, NC Learn how to boost and hone your public relations skills via in-depth workshops, as well as keynote presentations and panels featuring seasoned PR, branding, and media experts.

> Registration: $175 (both days); $149 (day 2 only)

> 828-347-6240 > wncpresspass.com

A Unique and Independent Real Estate Company since 1979 90

23 Arlington Street Asheville, NC 28801 | 828. 255.7530 | www.appalachianrealty.com | March 2019

march 5

march 8 -17

12:30-1:30PM First United Methodist Church 204 Sixth Ave West, Hendersonville, NC

7:30PM (Fri, Sat), 2PM (Sun) Hendersonville Community Theatre – Main Stage: 229 South Washington St, Hendersonville, NC

Violinist Benjamin Sung and pianist David Kalhous will accompany the Hendersonville Symphony Orchestra in the first of a free three-part series.

Based on the movie, six Southern women share stories of love and loss.

Chamber Music Tuesdays

> 828-862-2120 > brevardmusic.org march 7-17

The Marvelous Wonderettes

7:30-9:45PM (Thu-Sat) & 2:30-4:45PM (Sat-Sun) Owen Theatre, Mars Hill University 100 Athletic St, Mars Hill, NC Over 30 oldies accompany the drama set in the 1958 Springfield High prom.

This is a presentation of the Southern Appalachian Repertory Theatre.

> Admission: $29 & $34 > facebook.com/

events/393229594752039

Steel Magnolias

>Tickets: Adult $25, Youth (0-17) $15 > 828-692-1082 > hendersonvilletheatre.org march 8 -10

Organic Growers School Spring Conference Mars Hill University: 100 Athletic St, Mars Hill, NC

The 26th annual promises practical, regionally-appropriate topics. Full of workshops on farming, sustainability, and cooking.

> Registration: Saturday and Sunday

$99, Saturday-only $59, Sunday-only $49, Friday workshops-only $70 > 828-680-0661 > organicgrowersschool.org

march 9

Art Affair 2019: Mission X

7-9PM Ambrose West 312 Haywood Rd, Asheville, NC

With “sumptuous cuisine,” open bar, and live entertainment, the 10th annual live and mobile auction/gala raises funds to help lift children out of generational poverty.

> Admission: General $125, VIP $175, Bronze $500, Silver $1,000, Gold $2,500 > 828-239-8811 > opendoorsasheville.org

march 13

Basic Internet Marketing

6-9PM A-B Tech Small Business Center 1459 Sand Hill Rd, Candler, NC

Internet marketing strategist Sarah Benoit will teach basics for those new to online advertising at this free workshop.

Participants will analyze existing websites and may bring their own laptops.

> 828-271-4786 > ashevillescore.org

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March 2019 | capitalatplay.com 91

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events

march 14

ASAP’s CSA Fair

3-6PM New Belgium Brewing Company 21 Craven St, Asheville, NC Via Community Supported Agriculture programs, subscribers receive a box of fresh produce throughout the growing season. Participating growers will all be in one place to elaborate on their offerings and help subscribers make informed decisions. (Another ASAP fair will be held in Boone March 21.)

> asapconnections.org/events/csa-fair march 14 -17

AppalachA’ville: Engage.

Sustain. Innovate.

UNC Asheville 1 University Heights, Asheville, NC

The 42nd Annual Appalachian Studies Conference includes plenary sessions and panel discussions for registrants, and five events free and open to the public. AppalachA’ville is co-hosted by UNC Asheville and Mars Hill University.

> Registration: Early bird, $150; After

Western North Carolina's Free Spirit of Enterprise

Follow us on Social Media!

Feb. 25, $185 > 304-696-2904 > appalachianstudies.org/ annualconference

march 15 -17

Vintage Market Days

10AM-5PM (Fri, Sat) & 10AM-4PM (Sun) WNC Agricultural Center 1301 Fanning Bridge Rd, Fletcher, NC It’s a bazaar of original art, furnishings, jewelry, and apparel, all in the vintage persuasion.

> Admission: Adult $5, Child (0-11) F o r t i c K e t G i V e aWay s ,

e Xc lu s i V e s , a n d m o r e !

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free > 828-687-1414 > vintagemarketdays.com

march 15 -30

Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book 7-8:30PM (Fri, Sat) & 2-3:30PM (Sat, Sun) Flat Rock Playhouse Mainstage 2661 Greenville Hwy, Flat Rock, NC The stage production explores values (and perhaps the bare necessities of life) through the adventures of Mowgli in the jungles of India paralleled by a young Kipling in boarding school.

>Tickets: Adult $28, Student (0-25) $14 > 828-693-0731 > flatrockplayhouse.org

march 16

Daniel Boone Rail Jam

6-8PM Horn in the West 591 Horn in the West Dr, Boone, NC

All ages and abilities are invited to compete for over $4,000 in cash prizes at the 5th-annual ski and snowboard competition. Proceeds will support amphitheater improvements.

> Spectator: Advance $5, Door $10, VIP $55; Competitor: Advance FREE, Door $35 > 828-264-2120 > danielboonerailjam.com

march 16

Advanced Toastmasters of Asheville Open House: An Evaluations Presentation 8:30-11AM Earth Fare Community Room 66 Westgate Pwy, Asheville, NC

Aut hor, m a rket er, a nd a 2 0 0 3 Toastmasters’ Ten Best Speaker Brian Woolf will share the five essentials of constructive delivery. Participants will

institutional banking, wealth management1 and insurance1 services are why customers have trusted us with their financial well-being for well over one hundred years.

Over 100 years.

Forever First. ®

then speak and evaluate each other at this free event.

> 828-253-7656 > earthfare.com/westgate

Who We Are

Headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina, First Citizens is the largest family-controlled bank in the United States. Because of our heritage, we understand the importance of helping people do more with the money they earn, save and invest. Carefully stewarding our customers’ financial resources is always among our highest priorities.

Who We Are

Founded in 1898, First Citizens Bank is one of Founded in 1898, First Citizens Bank is one of the nation’s strongest the nation’s strongest and most stable financialand most stable financial institutions, providing a broad range of 7 than years – 3.25% 500 locations in 19 states.APR* institutions, providing a broad range of bankingbanking services at more services at more than 500 locations in 19 states.

Our steadfast commitment to building lasting relationships has made us one of the country’s leading financial institutions for both consumer

march 16

5th Annual Florence Flapjack Fundraiser

8:30-11AM Florence Thomas Art School 10 S. Jefferson Ave, West Jefferson, NC Traditional Appalachian farm-to-table favorites raise funds for the beloved school.

> Admission: Adult $10, Child (0-10) $4 > 336-246-6348 > florenceartschool.org

march 16 -17

Carolina Guitar Show

10AM-5PM (Sat) & 10AM-4PM (Sun) WNC Agricultural Center 1301 Fanning Bridge Rd, Fletcher, NC Hundreds will be selling guitars, gear such as pedals and amps, and sundry guitar stuff guaranteed to help you release your inner Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix, Thurston Moore, or Trey Anastasio.

Our steadfast commitment to building lasting and commercial customers. This long-term approach along with our relationships has made us one of the country’scompetitive product offerings in areas such as business, commercial, leading financial institutions for both consumerinstitutional banking, wealth management1 and insurance1 services are why customers have trusted us with their financial well-being for well and commercial This long-term At First Citizens,customers. customers benefit from a high level of personal service and our integrated approach to helping people and over one Ready hundred years. to get started? businesses achieve goals. After all these years, we remain committed to the values and principles that have allowed approach along withtheir ourfinancial competitive product Headquartered in Raleigh, us – and our customers prosper.

Barry KampeNorth Carolina, First Citizens is the largest offerings in areas such –asto business, commercial, family-controlled bank in the United States. Banker Because ofIIIour heritage, we Vice President, Business Ready tobanking, get started? institutional wealth management1 andunderstand the importance of helping people do more with the money Barry Kampe 108 Patton Avenue 1 insurance services are why customers have they earn, save and invest. Carefully stewarding our customers’ financial Vice President,�Business Banker III Asheville, NC 28801 108us Patton Avenue ® trusted with their financial well-being for wellresources is always among our highest priorities.

828.280.1167 Asheville,�NC�28801 over 828.280.1167 one hundred years. barry.kampe@firstcitizens.com barry.kampe@firstcitizens.com Headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina, First 1 Wealth management and insurance services are not available in all areas. Consult with yourfi local banker. rstcitizens.com Investments in securities, annuitiesfamily-controlled and insurance are not insured bybank the FDIC orin any federal government agency; may lose value; are not a deposit or other obligation, or guaranteed by, any Citizens is the largest bank or affiliate; and are subject to investment risks, including possible loss of the principal amount invested. the United States. of our heritage, we Member FDIC. Equal HousingBecause Lender .

1 Wealth management and insurance services are not available in all areas. with your local banker. APR* understand the importance of helping people 7Consult years – 3.25% GOH-011 05.18 Investments in securities, annuities and insurance are not do more with the money they earn, save and firstcitizens.com insured by the FDIC or any federal government agency; may invest. Carefully stewarding our customers’ lose value; are not a deposit or other obligation, or guaranteed by, any bank or affiliate; and are subject to investment risks, financial resources is always among our including possible loss of the principal amount invested. Member highest priorities.

FDIC. Equal Housing Lender .

Over 100 years.

Forever First.

At First Citizens, customers benefit from a high level of personal service and our integrated approach to helping people and businesses achieve their financial goals. After all these years, we remain committed to the values and principles that have allowed us – and our customers – to prosper.

Ready to get started?

Barry Kampe Vice President,�Business Banker III 108 Patton Avenue Asheville,�NC�28801 828.280.1167 barry.kampe@firstcitizens.com 1 Wealth management and insurance services are not available in all areas. Consult with your local banker.

Investments in securities, annuities and insurance are not insured by the FDIC or any federal government agency; may lose value; are not a deposit or other obligation, or guaranteed by, any bank or affiliate; and are subject to investment risks, including possible loss of the principal amount invested.

Member FDIC. Equal Housing Lender .

GOH-011 05.18

firstcitizens.com

> Admission: Adult $10, Child (0-12) > 828-298-2197 > bee3vintage.com march 18

N.C. Writers’ Network Open Mic Night

6-8PM Henderson County Public Library 301 North Washington St, Hendersonville, NC Members and nonmembers of the Henderson County Chapter are invited

Your source for Hearth & Patio needs 264 Biltmore Ave. Asheville, NC | 828.252.2789

March 2019 | capitalatplay.com 93

events

to read up to three minutes of original poetry or five minutes of original prose, or just come along to listen. Free; sign-in 5:30-6PM.

> 336-293-8844 > ncwriters.org march 19

Takács Quartet & Garrick Ohlsson 8-9:30PM Diana Wortham Theatre 18 Biltmore Ave, Asheville, NC

Selections will be Haydn’s “String Quartet, Op. 76, No. 1”; Mendelssohn’s “String Quartet, Op. 80”; and Amy Beach’s “Piano Quintet, Op. 67.”

>Tickets: Adult $42, Youth (0-24) $5 > 828-575-7427 > ashevillechambermusic.org march 20

Advanced Internet Marketing

6-9PM A-B Tech Small Business Center 1459 Sand Hill Rd, Candler, NC

Internet marketing strategist Sarah Benoit will help those already engaged online to improve their effectiveness. Topics at the free workshop will include SEO, options for online advertising and outreach, use of social media, blogging strategies, and e-newsletter best practices.

> 828-271-4786 > asheville.score.org march 21

Biz & Bites: Stand and Deliver

12-1PM Focal Point Coworking 125 South Lexington Ave, Suite 101, Asheville, NC Barrie Barton, founder of Stand and Deliver, will provide an overview of the skills fundamental to building good business relationships.

> Admission: $5 > 828-407-0357 > focalpointcowork.com 94

| March 2019

march 23

Raleigh Flute Choir

7:30-9:30PM Ashe Civic Center 962 Mt. Jefferson Rd, West Jefferson, NC The ensemble covers eight octaves on instruments ranging from the piccolo to the eight-foot contrabass.

> Admission: Adult $16, Student $5 > 336-846-2787 > ashecountyarts.org/events/Raleigh-flute-choir march 23 -24

Meltdown Games

11AM-5PM Appalachian Ski Mountain 940 Ski Mountain Rd, Blowing Rock, NC In the tradition of soothing the sadness of the melting snow, App Ski has cobbled together some crazy events like the Cardboard Box Derby, Trash Bag Downhill Race, the Chinese Downhill, the Pond Skim and Costume Contest—and, of course, the High Ollie (who? what?).

> 828-295-7828 > appskimtn.com march 23 -24

Creating Pysanky: Ukrainian Easter Eggs

11AM-4PM Grovewood Village 111 Grovewood Rd, Asheville, NC

Andrea Kulish will demonstrate the intricate and colorful ancient art, discuss the symbolism, and have several for sale.

> 828-253-7651 > grovewood.com march 23

Say, “I Do,” to Hendersonville Bridal Show

10AM-4PM Blue Ridge Community College Concert Hall 180 West Campus Dr, Flat Rock, NC

...and lasts lasts ...and a lifetime. a lifetime.

Exceptional Faculty Exceptional Faculty High Student Engagement High Student Engagement Outstanding College Placement Outstanding College Placement Expansive Alumni Network

Expansive Alumni Network

CAROLINA DAY SCHOOL

Co-ed • Independent • Pre-K/12 CAROLINA DAY SCHOOL

& Life Preparatory Co-edCollege • Independent • Pre-K/12 Life Apply College and visit & now for Preparatory school year 2019-2020.

Limited spaces available in some grades.

Apply and visit now for school year 2019-2020.

Limited spaces available some grades.

CarolinaDay.org ● in828.210.9157

| capitalatplay.com 95 CarolinaDay.orgMarch ● 2019 828.210.9157

events

This one-stop-shop lets brides- and grooms-to-be speak with planners, venue hosts, fashion retailers, florists, bakers, DJs, hairdressers, makeup artists, photographers, caterers, and others. Say “I Do” is sponsored by the Hendersonville County TDA.

> Admission: $5 > 828-693-9708 > visithendersonvillenc.org/weddings march 26

A Seat at the Table

6PM-10PM Haywood Street Congregation 297 Haywood St, Asheville, NC Extremely worthy charitable organization (profiled in our Nov. 2018 issue about area nonprofits) hosts a fundraiser for The Downtown Welcome Table, a free community lunch program for the homeless. Spotlighted: Chef Ashleigh Shanti (of Benne on Eagle) along with sponsors Wicked Weed and Mission Health, plus other Asheville restaurants’ high-profile chefs.

> 828-576-2477 > haywoodstreet.org march 26

Yefim Bronfman

march 28

Appalachian Storytelling Extravaganza

Tweetsie Railroad Opening Day

Featured storytellers will be Freeman Owle, Ronnie Pepper, and Michael “Badhair” Williams.

The train will start running Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays; but the park will not open until May 24.

7-9PM Blue Ridge Community College Auditorium 180 Campus Dr, Flat Rock, NC

> Admission: $15 > 828-692-8062 > saveculture.org march 31

CCx: Hack

8:30AM-5PM The Collider 1 Haywood St, Asheville, NC Programmers are invited to collaborate for climate change awareness and action in this portion of the 10-day Climate City Expo.

> Admission: $12 > 828-254-6283 > thecollider.org

This could be the best piano performance you’ll ever see. Bronfman literally shreds his fingers on the keyboard. Non-series tickets (along w/prices) should become available near show date.

Colorful f lowers bloom in turn in the acres designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. It’s a different show every day.

| March 2019

> Admission: Adult $50, Child (3-12) $32, Infant FREE > 800-526-5740 > tweetsie.com

april 5

The World of Musicals

7-8:30PM Schaefer Center for the Performing Arts 733 Rivers St, Boone, NC The internationally-acclaimed West End Performers will interpret classics from musicals running the gamut.

>Tickets: $10, $20, $25 > 800-841-2787 > theschaefercenter.org

Biltmore Blooms

9AM-5PM The Biltmore Estate One Lodge St, Asheville, NC

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9AM-6PM Tweetsie Railroad 300 Tweetsie Railroad Lane, Blowing Rock, NC

april 1- may 23

8-9:30PM Tryon Fine Arts Center 34 Melrose Ave, Tryon, NC

> 828-859-8322 > tryonconcerts.com

april 5

> 800-411-3812 > biltmore.com

If your organization has any local press releases for our briefs section, or events that you would like to see here, feel free to email us at events@capitalatplay.com.

Please submit your event at least six weeks in advance.

March 2019 | capitalatplay.com 97

ASHEVILLE:

Historic Biltmore Village 9 Kitchin Place 828-274-2630

STORE HOURS:

Mon. - Fri. 9:30am-7pm Sat. 9:30am-6pm Sun. 12pm-5pm

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WOMEN’S EM-POWER LUNCH

Celebrating

&

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY EQUAL PAY DAY

SPEAKERS

April 2nd | 11am-1pm Pack’s Tavern Century Room

Join Laura Webb, CFP® President and Faith Doyle, MBA, Financial Advisor Associate, for a critical conversation about the way women think about money. From the way we get paid, to the way we plan for our futures, it is time to transition to a new mindset.

BUY TICKETS ® nt Laura Webb, CFP Preside

webbinvestmentservices.com/EqualPayDay ALL TICKET PROCEEDS GO TO BENEFIT Women for Women Endowment Fund

Faith Doyle, MBA Financial Advisor Associate

828.252.5132 | webbinvestmentservices.com | 82 Patton Avenue, Suite 610 | Asheville, NC 28801 Webb Investment Services is not a registered broker/dealer and is independent of Raymond James Financial Services, Inc. Investment Advisory Services are offered though Raymond James Financial Services Advisors. Securities offered through Raymond James Financial March 2019 | capitalatplay.com 99 Services, Inc. Member FINRA/SIPC. Raymond James is not affiliated with and does not endorse Community Foundation of WNC.

CONNECTING YOU TO THE WORLD OF LUXURY Luxury Portfolio International®, our global marketing partner, is part of an exclusive global network that: • Sells more U.S. homes than any network or franchise • Represents more $1M+ homes than any luxury network • Reaches 200 countries/territories around the world

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With our network of market leaders in over 55 countries, we’re able to expertly market your property here in the North Carolina mountains and throughout the world. Call us to learn how we can make our market share work for you. (866) 716-5892