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TOP-OF-MIND AND IN THE MIX THIS WEEK
| THE RUNDOWN
VOLUME 6, ISSUE 12 Featured this issue: Conestee Mill property bought for $1.7 million.......................................................7 Upstate companies with their heads in the cloud................................................14 Why the Border Adjustment Tax is a bad idea..................................................... 22
The T.C. Hooper planetarium at Greenville’s Roper Mountain Science Center is open again after closing last year for more than $1 million in renovations and improvements, with the money coming from private and public sources. Read more about the science center in this week’s Greenville Journal. Photo by Will Crooks.
WORTH REPEATING “He’s a great marketer, too, on top of being his own brand. Coach Swinney is different. He’s special.” Page 6
“I used to go home for a week and eat Abbott’s nine times. I realized that was a problem. The only way to fix it was to bring Abbott’s to the South with me.” Page 8
“There are two things I don’t want in my data center: water and people.” Page 19
TBA Macy's-owned national skin-care retailer Blue Mercury has signed a lease for the former Drake's florist space in the pink building on the corner of West North and Main streets in downtown Greenville.
VERBATIM
On NCAA returning to Greenville “They’ve experienced the destination, they had a positive experience, and I think that really puts us in a strong position for 2019 through 2022.” David Montgomery, vice president of VisitGreenvilleSC. The group estimates that last weekend’s tournament games had a $4.6 million economic impact.
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InSpec Group managers Ken Kaneko, left, and Joe Gallagher, right, stand inside Spartanburg Community College's Center for Business and Entrepreneurial Development. Their company will soon open its fifth office in the facility near Duncan.
INSPEC GROUP
Engineering firm hopes to strengthen Spartanburg's ties with Japan TREVOR ANDERSON | STAFF
tanderson@communityjournals.com Spartanburg County’s economic ties with Japan could soon get even stronger. InSpec Group, a Portland, Ore.-based engineering firm that specializes in helping Japanese industrial companies develop new facilities in the U.S. and beyond, announced last Monday it will open a new office near Duncan. InSpec has been working closely with Japan-based carbon fiber manufacturer Toray on the company’s new $1.4 billion plant on 400 acres at Tyger River Industrial Park near the intersection of highways 221 and 290. Joe Gallagher, assistant director of construction for InSpec, said the Toray project is the company’s first endeavor in the Upstate. The plant’s construction began in late 2015 and is nearing its second phase. Gallagher said that during InSpec’s time on the project it has identified the 4
UBJ | 3.24.2017
county as a “hotbed” for economic development, community support, and talent — three characteristics that make it a very “enticing” area for prospective companies. InSpec hopes the Spartanburg office, which will be in addition to its headquarters and three satellite offices in Atlanta; Decatur, Ala.; and Tokyo, will position the company to capitalize on growth in the Upstate and the Southeast. Gallagher said the company will start small with about four to five employees in a 400-square-foot space in Spartanburg Community College’s Center for Business and Entrepreneurial Development, also know as its Tyger River Campus. But he anticipates the office will grow as the company, founded in 2002, adds to its portfolio of projects. “As projects come in and our needs increase, we will grow,” Gallagher said. “We don’t want to grow too fast. We definitely want to take care of Toray.” Gallagher said he initially looked at
placing the office in Greenville, but ultimately felt like Spartanburg was the right fit. He said there are already several heavy hitters in the Upstate in terms of engineering and general contracting firms. “Competition helps spur excellence,” he said. Gallagher said the company wants to be a “bridge” between the U.S. and Japan. InSpec offers its customers a comprehensive range of services, including site selection, engineering and design, procurement, and field management. “InSpec is a well-known engineering firm,” said state Rep. Mike Forrester, R-Spartanburg, and director of economic development for SCC. “They have done great work. We have really enjoyed working with them. … I’m so excited they chose Spartanburg. They could have gone anywhere.” Forrester said in addition to Toray, the Upstate has had success in attracting
Japanese companies. A short list includes Kobelco, which is just down the road from Toray, Suminoe Textile of America in Gaffney, and AFL Telecommunications, a subsidiary of Japan-based Fujikura Ltd. “I think [InSpec’s announcement] speaks to our competitiveness as a region and our ability to attract Japanese companies,” Forrester said. “We’ve had great success and I think InSpec will be integral to our efforts going forward.” SCC’s Tyger River Campus opened in 2006 in the former headquarters of One Price Clothing Stores Inc. The 363,000-square-foot center has served as a launch pad for dozens of new and existing companies that have sought to begin, expand, or relocate their manufacturing, distribution, and office operations in the county. To date, the center has supported the creation of several thousand jobs and millions of dollars in economic investment.
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ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Greenville County won't create fund for industrial property deals RUDOLPH BELL | STAFF
rbell@communityjournals.com Greenville County officials have decided against creating a special fund for increasing the supply of property available for industrial development. The idea was proposed by Mark Farris, president of the Greenville Area Development Corp., the county’s economic development organization. Farris had envisioned a “Product
potential contribution to the development of industrial property on a caseby-case basis, said Butch Kirven, chairman of County Council and a member of the GADC board. At the same time, Kirven said, the county encourages Farris to be creative in negotiating with economic development prospects and won’t rule out contributing to the development of industrial property under the right circumstances.
“If you set up an account with money in it, then that’s a target that companies go after.” Butch Kirven, chairman of County Council and a member of the GADC board.
Development Fund” that the county could use to join with private-sector partners in developing new industrial parks or so-called “speculative” industrial buildings. As envisioned by Farris, the fund could have been used to pay for roads, utility service, or other infrastructure needed by a company to launch a new operation in the county or to expand an existing one. The fund might also have been used to develop office buildings on a speculative basis. Farris has said Greenville County is at a disadvantage in recruiting industry compared to Spartanburg and Anderson counties because those counties have more industrial land fronting or close to Interstate 85. County officials, however, have decided that such a fund could become a “target” for economic development prospects as they negotiate with the county for perks in exchange for jobs and corporate investment. The county prefers to handle any
“If you set up an account with money in it, then that’s a target that companies go after,” he said. “So we’re a little more entrepreneurial in our approach here, but we think it’s a better way to go than setting up a specific fund as a target.” County Administrator Joe Kernell said the county “feels we have a good system in place to deal with issues as they arise.” The county’s main supply of sites for new factories now is the Augusta Grove industrial park along U.S. 25 in southern Greenville County. That park was developed by the county in the late 1990s and owned and operated by the county until last year when the remaining 709 undeveloped acres were bought by a joint venture of the county and various private-sector investors, including TPA Group of Atlanta. The county retains a 40 percent stake. TPA Group and partners are constructing a 331,850-square-foot spec building at Augusta Grove. 3.24.2017
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PUBLIC RELATIONS
Two Clemson directors talk about the digital transformation of the school’s athletic brand DAVID DYKES | STAFF
In late February, two Clemson officials gave an Endeavor crowd of about 90 people in downtown Greenville a look inside the university athletics’ championship brand and explained how critical a digital transformation has been. Joe Galbraith, associate athletics director of communications, and Jonathan Gantt, director of new and creative media, said the audience on Clemson’s social channels recently passed 2 million, up from 355,731 on Jan. 1, 2014. They handle every aspect of the public social media efforts and content lifecycle (strategy, creation, publishing, promotion, measurement). Students also play a key role in content creation and mobile workflow related to event coverage and storytelling. Galbraith and Gantt sat down with UBJ before their Endeavor presentation to discuss the digital transformation of Clemson athletics.
What do you plan to tell the group tonight?
Galbraith: The main highlight of
tonight is how we have, from a PR standpoint, moved from traditional media into digital. And it’s a question that is still relevant and resonates with everybody, because it’s rapidly evolving and continues to and the task that we were given when we were brought in in 2013 was to modernize an already really good media relations, public relations outfit. That’s the main takeaway — the modernization of information distribution and how we are getting word out to our fans. That comes in a variety of forms, from video to graphics to all of those different multimedia techniques. But at the end, it’s still reaching our target audiences — recruits, fans, season ticket holders with information that’s important to them. It’s
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important to both of us that we are part of a larger university and it is not athletics on an island, only talking about sports.
Is your job to take [head football coach] Dabo Swinney and brand him? Or do you take the Clemson brand and apply it to him?
Galbraith: He’s a great marketer,
too, on top of being his own brand. ... Coach Swinney is different. He’s special. But each coach tries to instill their belief system, their value system. With Dabo, the culture that he has created around the authentic — you call it brand — but personality that he has, it really resonates. It resonates inside the locker room and out in the community. And that’s important. He is not any different whether it’s right after we win a game, right after we lose a game, or he’s on the rubber-chicken circuit in April. He is the same guy throughout the year and that authenticity can’t be — it’s hard to duplicate, and makes it easy for us to show him or any of our student-athletes or coaches because they all follow that same set of values and respect him to the point that they carry themselves well and we’re happy to show it off.
Gantt: It makes our jobs easier in
terms of trying to recruit and trying to bring the best talented student-athletes… and even staff, like me, and other people. When you’ve got that kind of culture in place, and when you’ve got the leader of the football program who’s approaching things that way and who’s making sure every single day that you keep maintaining and enhancing that culture, it makes it easier on everybody else in terms of we don’t have to manufacture anything special about Clemson. It’s all already there. It’s just a matter of capturing it and sharing it. And that’s a great advantage for us.
Joe Galbraith
You’re not on the front line of getting recruits to sign letters of intent?
Gantt: Right. Galbraith: But we are on the front
lines of making sure that 15- and 16-year-olds think Clemson is cool so that when those coaches do reach out, we’re that much better off. And we do that for all of our sports. That’s the task that we have — we want to be there to support that coach that’s walking into the living room that the kid, the parents, everybody that they’re talking to, knows and wants their son, daughter, to be a part of what we have at Clemson.
How do you do that? Gantt: It’s very hard to describe
what’s special about Clemson in words. You start to use the comprehensive mix of visuals — and sometimes that can be words — but sometimes it’s videos, photos, and photo graphics. When you throw that comprehensive mix at it, you get a little bit better shot of trying to illustrate that to someone.
Galbraith: What Jonathan says to his team all the time is, “Show people what it’s like to be a Clemson Tiger.” Gantt: Every post, the point is to
answer the question: What’s it like
Jonathan Gannt to be a Clemson football player? What’s it like to be a Clemson women’s tennis player? We know our coaches are obviously communicating a great deal with recruits. But they can’t communicate with them all the time. We provide, hopefully, an extra resource that there’s a certain amount of time each day and we want that recruit — and the fan — to be thinking about Clemson for as much time as possible throughout that day. … The reason why we’re doing it the way we’re doing it is because when you look at that demographic, they’re getting their news, they’re getting their information, they’re getting their entertainment, and they’re communicating with their friends on social media. They’re doing it all through their phone. If that’s where they are, then that’s where we need to be. And that’s why all the content is focused on digital, at least right now. That could change. And we’re prepared to be flexible. Wherever that group goes is where we’re going to go.
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Conestee Mill | Photo by John Foxe via Wikimedia Commons
DEVELOPMENT
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Redevelopment plan announced for Conestee Mill County. The property’s new owners plan to put residences in about 60,000 square feet of space in the former mill building and find new commercial uses such as restaurants for about 15,000 square feet in five other buildings on the property, Laney said. He said the new owners are negotiating with potential tenants but haven’t signed any leases yet. The property is located at the southern terminus of the Swamp Rabbit Trail, and Laney said the new owners hope to spark a commercial renaissance in the area similar to what has taken place at the northern end of the trail in Travelers Rest, where restaurants and other retail establishments have flourished in recent years. The trail connects the old mill complex to the 400-acre Lake Conestee Nature Park and beyond that to the Conestee Park youth baseball complex.
RUDOLPH BELL | STAFF
rbell@communityjournals.com Investors have bought the
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historic Conestee Mill property south of Greenville with plans to redevelop the riverfront complex. WCM Global Wealth, a Greenville-based financial services company, said a real estate fund that it manages acquired the site in a deal that closed Friday. WCM is managed by Erik Weir, who is also among a group of investors that stepped in to finance the Camperdown development under construction across from the Peace Center. The sale price for the Conestee Mill property was about $1.7 million, according to Christopher Laney, brokerin-charge for WCM’s real estate arm. The former mill was built in the early 1800s to create South Carolina’s first mill village and closed in 1973, according to a master plan for the Conestee area drawn up by Greenville
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FROZEN ASSETS
Abbott's Frozen Custard headed for downtown Spartanburg TREVOR ANDERSON | STAFF
tanderson@communityjournals.com Growing up in Rochester, N.Y., Mark Khoury was never far away from his favorite dessert shop, Abbott’s Frozen Custard. But when he came to the Upstate a few years ago, he found it difficult to find anything that tapped into his sense of nostalgia and satisfied his cravings for something sweet. “I used to go home for a week and eat Abbott’s nine times,” Khoury said. “I realized that was a problem. The only way to fix it was to bring Abbott’s to the South with me.” On Jan. 8, 2015, Khoury opened his first franchise and the first South Carolina store for the Rochester-based chain at 119 E. Poinsett St. in downtown Greer.
Khoury said Tuesday he has found a location for his and the state’s second store in downtown Spartanburg. The entrepreneur has signed a lease on a more than 1,500-square-foot space at 100 E. Main St. on the ground floor of the Palmetto Building between Groucho’s Deli and the Two Doors Down boutique. The space was formerly occupied by Upstate Forever. “It’s very exciting,” Khoury said. “This is a totally different taste and concept than most people are used to. The response in Greer has been amazing. Customers are happy. We hear from other business owners that their traffic has increased. I like win-win. I want to give people a reason to come downtown.” Khoury said the store will open within the next few months. He anticipates hiring up to 10 employees initially.
The Spartanburg location of Rochester, N.Y.-based Abbott’s Frozen Custard will be the state’s second. The store will serve pies, cakes, novelty desserts, sundaes, sandwiches, and, of course, more than 100 flavors of Abbott’s Frozen Custard, which has been wooing patrons since 1902. Khoury said the store will also offer catering. Everything will be made in the store from fresh, authentic ingredients. Even the milk used in Abbott’s recipes will be brought to Spartanburg from a supplier in Upstate New York. In contrast with the newer feel of his Greer store, the Spartanburg location will have an old-fashioned vibe, Khoury said. The owner said he believes Abbott’s will strengthen downtown’s existing
dessert market, which already includes popular spots like Hub City Scoops and Dottie’s Toffee. Khoury said he is the South Carolina developer for Abbott’s. He has exclusive rights to develop stores in the Upstate and the right of first refusal for stores outside the region. His future plans include opening three more stores. “My goal is to get to five and then see where we go from there,” Khoury said. Andrew Babb with NAI Earle Furman brokered Khoury’s lease for the downtown Spartanburg store. The store will operate from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days per week.
HEALTH CARE
GHS opens new medical center in Boiling Springs TREVOR ANDERSON | STAFF
tanderson@communityjournals.com Greenville Health System last Friday officially opened its new 20,000-square-foot medical center in Spartanburg County. The center, which is at 2400 Highway 9 in Boiling Springs, is a multispecialty practice aimed at providing patients a range of services at one location. It has 24 exam rooms, internists, and family medicine physicians, urgent care provided by the health system’s MD360 concept, a pharmacy by Upstate Pharmacy, an ATI Physical Therapy branch, and space for GHS’ department of psychiatry. “It’s great to be in Boiling Springs,” 8
UBJ | 3.24.2017
said Spence Taylor, president of GHS. “This is a beautiful facility. Our vision is to transform health care for people in the communities we serve. In order to do that, we’ve got to have places like this.” Construction on the center began in 2016 at the site beside the Eagle Pointe neighborhood. McMillan Pazdan Smith Architecture of Spartanburg designed the facility. Greenville-based Clayton Construction Co. was the project’s general contractor. In December, Katie Spinks, an internal medicine and pediatrics physician for GHS, set up operations and began accepting patients out of a modular office on the site. Jeremy Skoog, senior regional director for ATI Physical Therapy, said his
The medical center has exam rooms, urgent care, a pharmacy, physical therapy services, and space for GHS’ department of psychiatry. company’s office at the center has the potential to eventually house five to six practitioners. Steve Ranck, director of ambulatory pharmacy services with Upstate Pharmacy, said his company will initially have two employees at the GHS facility. He hopes that number will continue to grow over time. The center has a lab, an X-ray machine, and a large, open space with nurse’s stations and other offices. Todd Horne, chairman of the Spar-
tanburg Area Chamber of Commerce and vice president of business development at Clayton Construction Co., said Boiling Springs in particular has become a magnet for business activity and residential growth. “This is one of the fastest growing communities in Spartanburg County and we are excited to be part of it,” said Wendell James, GHS’s chief clinical officer for Greer and Spartanburg, in a statement.
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Greenco’s new facility will serve as the flagship distribution center for the Upstate and northeast Georgia.
DISTRIBUTION
when it was founded in Greenville as Chero Bottling and Distribution by W.W. Woodruff.
This week, Greenco Beverage Company officially opened its new facility along the Poinsett Corridor in Greenville.
The original line of products included Chero Cola, whose name was later changed to Royal Crown Cola. —Staff Report
Greenco opens new Poinsett Corridor facility
Greenco President Russell Farr cut the ribbon on the 120,000-square-foot distribution facility on Metts Street near the intersection of Furham Hall Road and Poinsett Highway in a ceremony Tuesday. The new facility will serve as Greenco's flagship distribution center for customers in the Upstate of South Carolina and northeast Georgia.
RETAIL
J.C. Penney closing Easley store The J.C. Penney store in Easley is scheduled to close in mid-June after nearly 20 years of doing business in the Town N’ Country shopping center along U.S. 123.
The company’s history dates to 1916,
The store is on a list of 138 stores around
7. The company’s 24-hour stores typically employ up to 200 people, she said.
The Plano, Texas-based retailer said the closings will affect 5,000 employees, including 30 at the Easley store.
Patty Bock, economic development director for the city of Spartanburg, said she believes the new IHOP will give the east side a boost and could attract even more restaurants and retail to that side of town.
In an email to UBJ, J.C. Penney spokesperson Sarah Holland said the company is helping affected employees find new jobs at nearby stores if possible. In addition, she said, affected employees will receive “separation benefits,” if eligible. A liquidation sale begins at the Easley store on April 17, she said. Cindy Hopkins, president of the Greater Easley Chamber of Commerce, said the closing of J.C. Penney — and a Kmart in 2015 — are not indications of the health of Easley’s retail market, which has grown in recent years with the emergence of the Walmart-anchored Easley Town Center. “In recent years [retail has] been a very strong suit for Easley in terms of recruiting new business to town,” Hopkins said, noting that Hamrick's and Bargain Hunt quickly filled the retail space left vacant by the Kmart closure in the Easley Village Shopping Center. J.C. Penney also announced the closing of a supply chain facility in Florida and the relocation of one in California. —Rudolph Bell
INNOVATIVE LEADERSHIP SERIES
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the country that J.C. Penney is closing in a cost-cutting move. In South Carolina, the retailer also plans to close a Charleston store. The company has announced no plans to close its Greenville and Spartanburg stores.
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Florida-based Alliance Pancake Partners, an affiliate of Summit Restaurant Group, said it is seeking to build a new 4,500-square-foot IHOP on a 1.15-acre parcel at East Main Centre at 2081 E. Main St. in front of the Tractor Supply store in Spartanburg. The 132-seat eatery will be the IHOP franchisee's first store in the community, but it will be Spartanburg’s second, including a west-side location that IHOP Corp. opened in the late 1990s at 8135 Warren H. Abernathy Highway. Janet Alexander, director of marketing and communication for APP, said the store is still in the permitting phase and a target opening date for the store has not yet been set. The company’s preliminary site plan has been filed with the city and is currently under review. Alexander said the store’s hours have not been established, but it could be open 24-
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UBJ | 3.24.2017
The site is positioned across the street from the new Lidl grocery store and Spartanburg High School, which are under construction.
“IHOP is a family-oriented, communityminded chain,” she said. “I think it will be a real shot in the arm for that area. I’m excited about it. I don’t think it’s going to take anything away from the IHOP on the other side of town.” —Trevor Anderson
BIOTECH
Konduros is new SCBIO president and CEO The S.C. Biotechnology Industry Organization (SCBIO) named Sam Konduros, a business leader and biomedical and economic development consultant, as the new president and CEO of the statewide not-for-profit entity. SCBIO represents and catalyzes innovators in medicine, medical devices, and biomaterials. Konduros, a member of the SCBIO board, is the founder of SK Strategies LLC, which launched in 2004, and has led or consulted numerous state economic development efforts. He also served as executive director of Greenville Health System’s Research Development Corporation from 2014 to 2016. “Sam’s strengths in knowing the biotech sector and his deep experience in business and economic development were compelling,” said Erin Ford, chair of SCBIO. “The board was won over by his vision for the growth of SCBIO.” As executive director for the GHS RDC, Konduros worked to facilitate tech transfer, attract new biomedical companies, and grow collaborations between clinicians, researchers, and health educators while nurturing startups in shared lab space. He also chaired the health care system’s IP Committee, and helped develop the concept for a new life sciences innovation district referred to as the IMED Innovation Corridor. Konduros said he is “highly motivated to get officially started in this exciting new role in late April.” Konduros also served as a multiyear consultant to help forge Clemson University’s International Center for Automotive Research (CU-ICAR). He
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IT’S PLANE SIMPLE MORE NONSTOPS • CONVENIENT PARKING LESS HASSLE • LOW FARES
Spartanburg residents were eager to visit the new ALDI grocery store on the city’s west side.
>> was the founding president and CEO of the Upstate SC Alliance. Konduros is a former Cancer Society chairman, Greenville Chamber chairman, and S.C. Chamber of Commerce executive committee member. He has a law degree from the University of South Carolina and undergraduate degree from Clemson. —Staff Report GROCERIES
ALDI opens new store on Spartanburg's west side Germany-based grocery chain ALDI opened its third store in Spartanburg County last Thursday. Customers braved freezing temperatures and lined up in front of the more than 14,000-square-foot store in the former Office Max space in the shopping center at 150 E. Blackstock Road across from Dorman Centre. When the doors opened, local residents streamed in and loaded up their shopping carts, carefully navigating the six-aisle store, which is the largest store design in the company’s repertoire. “There is a lot of excitement and energy behind this store,” said Thom Behtz, vice president of ALDI’s division based out of Jefferson, Ga. “This is really a hot area for retail. There is a lot of foot traffic. We’re really happy to be here.” ALDI signed a lease on the location in mid-2016. The company has spent the past several months renovating the space. The west-side store is in addition to an east-side store the company opened in 1999 at 1605 E. Main St. and a store it opened in 2015 in Boiling Springs at 4301 Highway 9. David McCleod, district manager for ALDI, said at least 15 jobs have been created by the store. The starting hourly pay for ALDI employees is $11.50, and employees receive health, dental, and 401(k) retirement benefits. Excluding a Food Lion store that shuttered a few years ago off Reidville Road and the Costco at WestGate Mall, ALDI is the first
new grocery store on the west side in about 15 years. Behtz said the company’s decision to lease the space instead of building a new store was not about cost.
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“We were just looking for the best location,” he said. —Trevor Anderson
HIGH PRINCIPLES
Milliken & Co. makes world's most ethical list again Spartanburg-based innovation company Milliken & Co. has been named one of the world’s most ethical companies for an 11th consecutive year.
TOTAL D NONST AILY OPS Detroit
Milliken is one of 124 employers from 19 different countries to appear on this year’s list generated by the Ethisphere Institute, an organization that promotes ethical business practices.
Chicago (O’Hare)
Washington (Dulles & Reagan)
The company is one of only 13 corporations that have made the list every year since it was first published in 2007. Milliken is also one of only 20 privately held companies on the 2017 list. The list aims to honor companies that “recognize their role in society to influence and drive positive change; consider the impact of their actions on their employees, investors, customers, and other key stakeholders; and use their values and culture as an underpinning to the decisions they make every day,” according to the Ethisphere Institute. “How Milliken grows is equally as important as how much we grow. This is an integral belief that each Milliken associate holds and that directs their daily work,” said J. Harold Chandler, Milliken’s president, CEO, and chairman, in a statement. “It is an honor to be annually recognized for this perspective on a successful, values-based business.” A few other firms with ties to the Upstate were named on the list, including 3M, CH2M, CBRE, Flour Corp., GE, International Paper, Praxair, Timken, and Waste Management. For a complete look, visit ethisphere.com. —Trevor Anderson
NYC (LaGuardia) Newark
Philadelphia
GREENVILLE/SPARTANBURG
Charlotte
1 ST CONNE OP CTIONS
TO OVE R 200 CIT IE WORLD S WIDE
Atlanta Dallas/Fort Worth
Orlando/Sanford Tampa/St. Petersburg
Houston (Intercontinental)
Fort Myers/Punta Gorda
Fort Lauderdale
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Domestic Round Trip Fares (exclusive of all taxes & fees except passenger facility charges) Source: U.S. DOT Period: 12 months ending Q1 2016
www.gspairport.com
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REAL ESTATE DEALS AND DEVELOPMENTS ACROSS THE REGION
Plans on Pendleton Street include redeveloping several storefronts, which could be outfitted for retail and restaurants. Conceptual rendering provided by DP3
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Street is slated for redevelopment in the growing Village of West Greenville. The Mutual Home Store of Greenville property at 1256 Pendleton St. and two additional storefronts across the street at 1259 and 1261, totaling approximately 16,000 square feet, are under contract. Approximately 10,000 square feet are under contract with Branwood Properties LLC, and the additional properties are under contract with a local marketing firm. Branwood Properties is a group whose members are entities owned by attorney Jo Watson Hackl, independent real estate professional Cliff Carden, and UBJ publisher Ryan Johnston. Plans currently include five to six separate storefronts on the westbound side of Pendleton that could be outfitted for retail and restaurants. Tenants could move in as early as July. On the eastbound side, 5,000 square feet will be renovated as office space for the marketing firm. These projects in the Village of West Greenville benefit from the City of Greenville’s Façade Improvement
e Av is Lo
A piece of history on Pendleton
Program. The program provides for a one-time reimbursement for eligible façade improvements, including extePerry rior building improvements, signage, Ave Branw ood S lighting, and landscaping. Pace Jewelt ers, Community Journals, Textile Hall, The Anchorage, and others are program beneficiaries in the area. “The Mutual Home Store of GreenPendleton St. ville has been a vital part of the Village of West Greenville for many years, and the vision and leadership of its owners has resulted in access to jobs and quality products to community residents,” said Hackl, who sits on the board of Greenville Center for Creative Arts, which is located in the Village. “We are enthut Bhit siastic about the potential of the project ur hard. recession, the business Swas from 1944-67, the one storefront grew de n to help spur even more investment and Around that time, local artists started o to include neighboring buildings, two tte s a jobs in our community and we look to move into studioMspaces in the Village,S of which were Shoeless Joe Jackson’s t forward to more great things ahead for where space was more affordable than m a p s 4 n e w s . c o m former / © H E R Eliquor store space and a theater the Village.” downtown, changing the business where the marquee remains. Johnston, owner of several nearby dynamic. “As children we went to West Greenproperties, said he believes the new Noting the changes, the Griffin family ville on the weekends, like a Friday or space will provide opportunities for decided it was time to liquidate the Saturday night, and would play hidethose looking for a way to be a part of businesses. Griffin said he believes the and-go-seek in the stores,” Griffin said. the energy and entrepreneurial spirit plans for redevelopment reflect continMutual Home Store eventually in the Village. ued positive changes. spread to five other Upstate locations Hayne Griffin Jr. and his family have “Another contributing factor was all — Easley, Fountain Inn, Greer, Liberty, owned Mutual Home Store since his of the growth in arts and boutiques was and Mauldin. father founded it following World War not a good fit for us,” Griffin said. “It’s The Village of West Greenville store II. Originally named The Peerless Mart good for West Greenville.” catered to mill workers. With the 2008 >>
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REAL ESTATE DEALS AND DEVELOPMENTS ACROSS THE REGION
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The new development will benefit from the city’s Façade Improvement Program, which provides a one-time reimbursement for eligible improvements, including signage and lighting.
Greenville’s Wells Fargo Center reaches 100% retail occupancy Tropical Grille, a quick-serMutual Home Store once had locations in the Village, Easley, Fountain Inn, Greer, Liberty, and Mauldin, but couldn’t recover after the 2008 recession.
vice Cuban restaurant, will fill the space vacated by the Pita Pit on Main Street in Greenville, bringing the retail portion of the Wells Fargo Center to 100 percent occupancy. Scott Burgess and Lance Byars of commercial real estate firm Colliers International represented the owners of the Wells Fargo Center, CapRocq LLC, in the transaction for the 1,590-squarefoot space at 21 S. Main St. This will be Tropical Grille's first downtown location and its fifth overall, with restaurants currently on Woodruff Road, Pelham Road, SC-14, and Rolling Hills Circle in the Upstate. Burgess and Byars negotiated a 10-year lease for the space, according to Colliers.
Additionally, Burgess and Byars have secured a tenant for the last remaining open retail space in the Wells Fargo Center. The 978-square-foot space is now occupied by "a small office user," said Byars. Based in Arkansas, CapRocq purchased the Wells Fargo Center for $33.25 million. It is the company’s first asset owned in Greenville. The company also owns assets in Columbia and Charleston. The mixed-use building was built in the early 1970s, expanded and renovated in the early 2000s, and renovated again in recent years. It has 200,652 total square feet, including 154,273 square feet of office, 20,138 of retail, and 26,241 of residential. —Staff report
Developers plan to keep the original marquee from the former theater on Pendleton Street. 3.24.2017
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COVER |
THE CLOUD ISSUE
Huh?
AHEAD IN
A GUIDE TO CLOUD-SPEAK It’s a language all its own, geek-speak wrapped up in acronyms and esoterica. Welcome to the cloud, where mostly you’ll never understand what they’re talking about. But there are some terms you really should get familiar with.
aaS:
Immedion, Integral Solutions Group, Net3, and Servosity are among the Upstate companies reaching new heights in cloud services
Not what you think. It’s “as a service” and you can put just about anything in front of it. Infrastructure (IaaS), disaster recovery (DRaaS), software (SaaS), platforms (PaaS), or data centers (DCaaS).
WORDS BY LAURA HAIGHT
more. This refers to uptime and availability. What difference does a digit make? Quite a bit. A company promising 99.9 percent (3 9s) is estimating that your services will be down for 8 hours and 45 minutes a year. Sounds pretty good. But with 4 9s uptime, you get services all but 52 minutes a year. A company promising 6 9s is expecting downtime to be 31.6 seconds a year. There’s a calculator for this at uptime.is.
N
early every business is engaging in some form of cloud computing whether they think of it that way or not. Software as a service (SaaS) like Office 365, Dropbox, or even Gmail is all cloud-based applications. But at some point, your business will get more serious about the cloud — usually when you face the need to invest in infrastructure and the very expensive subsystems to support and maintain it. Then you’ll look to one of the hundreds of providers – from small resellers to large multifaceted full-service providers – here, or the large global providers like Amazon Web Services or Microsoft’s Azure cloud. Larger providers, like the four we are profiling here, are consistently innovating to support new services and new technologies, and, most importantly, protect the yottabytes of sensitive data their customers place in their control.
9s: You might see references to “4 9s” or “5 9s” or
Hybrid, public, or private cloud:
The cloud is just another term for the internet. The public cloud refers to services available over the internet for purchase. Think Dropbox, Google Apps, and pretty much everything you use. The private cloud is made up of services you host internally in which, even though they may be publicly available, your company’s data and employee access is private and protected. A hybrid is combination of a public cloud provider (like Amazon) with a private cloud platform. The infrastructure operates independently of each other, but integrate using software and processes to make applications accessible.
VM: Virtual machine. Using virtualization technology, infrastructure as service (IaaS) providers can create server emulations. They are software-defined computers with the flexibility to scale up or down as needed.
Bare metal: A real server, not a virtual one. Scalability or elasticity?: Scalability is the capability of a system or virtual machine to add computing resources on demand. Elasticity is the ability of a system to dynamically adapt to workload requirements of a customer, for example, doubling available resources during peak hours but reducing them at night. Elasticity is more related to cloud applications, where scalability is an infrastructure feature.
Yottabyte: The largest data definition so far. In 2010,
a yottabyte of data — approximately 1.2 septillion bytes — would have required a data center the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined at a cost of $100 trillion. Today, however, it would only take enough 200GB micro SDXC cards to fill the Hindenburg zeppelin. Sources: Tech Republic, Stack Overflow, Gizmodo, and MIT.
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THE CLOUD ISSUE
| COVER
Hudson Denny, co-founder of Net 3, describes the firm as “solvent, self-funded, and not answerable to outside entities.” Photo by Jack Robert Photography.
Net3
Cloud services provider Offers Palmetto Virtual Data Center (PVDC), featuring custom-size servers, as well as cloud services including launch assistance, monitoring, management, scaling, and backup.
n3t.com Net3 Technology caught the technology wave in May 2009 and rode it to become a significant player in cloud providers in the region. Hudson Denny, Bryan Rice, and DJ Bissinger self-funded Net 3 because there was little interest during the heart of the recession from venture capitalists and private equity firms to bet on tech startups. Today, Denny describes the firm as “solvent, self-funded, and not answerable to outside entities.” When Net3 launched, the cloud was “about 20 percent reality and 80 percent smoke and mirrors.” “We knew we wanted laser-line focus on the cloud, where the cloud was headed, where virtualization technologies were headed, and where this hybrid model was headed. That was the track we started on and have been on ever since,” Denny explains.
Net 3’s premier product is PvDC (Palmetto Virtual Data Center). The company has three data centers where they co-locate: one in Greenville, one in Spartanburg, and one in Las Vegas, where they have gear in the SUPERNAP facility run by Switch. That facility, known as “Fort Knox in the desert,” is the only Tier IV gold-certified data center in the U.S., as rated by the Uptime Institute. That certification recognizes the facility as having met the highest standards for operational sustainability. Going bicoastal was an important decision for Net 3, and it was driven by customers who “needed us to take it to the next level”, Denny says. The company has 28 employees and 200 customers, spread out across the U.S. Roughly 70 percent are in the Southeast with 40 percent in the Upstate; another 30 percent are national. Two things set Net 3 apart from other cloud providers, according to Denny. First is the front-end portal. That gives clients end-to-end visibility — the
“single pane of glass” — via a management console that lets them see all their resources, applications, and status across data centers. Clients can dynamically shift resources, reallocating bandwidth or processing power, or even shifting resources between cloud providers. “If they’ve got an IT staff that is savvy enough to do it, they can run the entire experience from the portal. If they don’t, we are here for them,” Denny explains. And that’s the second differentiator: “white-glove service.” Large public cloud companies like Amazon’s AWS or Microsoft’s Azure cannot provide the personalized approach to every business. “It’s not that they don’t care about you,” he says. “They just can’t scale to that level.” But Net 3 does, providing a “consultative approach” that includes a conversant relationship with your business so they can advise you on how different technology decisions will affect your business. Denny, a Georgia native and 1995 Furman graduate, believes much of Net 3’s strength is in the time spent educating and consulting with their
clients. Companies move warily into cloud migrations, Denny says. “We typically see it as eating the elephant one bite at a time.” They may start with moving some files, shifting an application, or moving functions from aging equipment to eliminate the need to purchase expensive hardware. However they begin, Denny can’t remember any customer who hasn’t continued to move more and more services into the cloud — especially once they’ve been hacked or had a failure. One of Denny’s customer stories involves a local software company that lost its entire 150-plus servers. They failed over in a matter of minutes, or as Denny describes it “in the time it would take to get a bio break and get a cup of coffee.” The company managed the failover themselves from their portal without even involving Net 3. “When the smoke cleared, they decided to migrate everything from disaster recovery to full production,” Denny says.
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THE CLOUD ISSUE
Frank Mobley, founder and CEO of Immedion, has kept the company’s reach local to have a more personal relationship with clients. Photo by Jack Robert Photography.
CLOUD continued from PAGE 15
Immedion Data center services and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) Offers five levels of cloud offerings, colocation, and managed services such as storage, security, backup, and disaster recovery.
immedion.com Frank Mobley has spent his entire career in essential industries that demanded perfection every day, every hour. The founder and CEO of Immedion started in the telephone industry as a computer engineer, and he knows that there is no such thing as a service that never goes down. But understanding that reality doesn’t mean he and his 80-person staff aren’t working to better the odds every day. Immedion has seven geographically diverse data centers throughout the region and in Cincinnati, where it acquired two data centers in 2015. The company serves a large client list of some 600 customers. Despite a big footprint and scalable resources, Mobley describes Immedion as “a local company.” “We differentiate ourselves because we are able to sit across the table and talk about what our customers need to help them develop the right solution,” Mobley says. While technology does enable cloud 16
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providers to offer services to clients without regard to geography, Immedion has not jumped into that pool. “It’s tough for a national or international company to have that relationship [with their clients],” he notes. Although Mobley resists describing a typical client, there are some commonalities, including, somewhat surprisingly, that half of their customers are small businesses with fewer than 20 employees, including many one- or two-person operations. “We provide a lot of technical support to them,” Mobley says. Often those businesses are small IT shops. “Sometimes, there are very smart IT people who started a business and usually they are good generalists, but they get into something where they need a specialist. And we can help with that.” Vertically, Immedion’s customer portfolio mirrors the region’s industry footprint: tech firms, professional services firms, manufacturing companies, engineering companies, and health care. “Ten years ago,” Mobley says, “we would have been much heavier on the IT business side.” Trust is a major factor for cloud providers especially with high-profile, albeit infrequent, failures of global providers like Amazon. “When Amazon struggles,” Mobley says, “it raises the profile of all cloud providers.” “Some companies come knowing what they need; some have no idea what to do,” Mobley says. Spreading his arms wide, he says, “Often they come and say they need something like this, when they really need something like this.” He contracts to a small circle, fingers touching.
That’s why Immedion puts a lot of effort into its pre-sales engineering process. “We are helping them define solutions and identify what they need in terms of infrastructure or resources.” The scalability of the services is critical because they can start with just what they need and then add “on-demand or justin-time” services when they need them. How well does Mobley sleep at night? “The things that keep me up at night are the things out of our control,” he admits. “We are we are getting ready to go into storm season and we watch that very closely. We sweated through Hurricane Matthew last summer from our Charleston site’s perspective.” Immedion’s data centers have multiple generators and redundancies, employ geographically diverse failover if a region is impacted, and are audited twice a year to ensure they are SOC-2 and SSAE-16 compliant. Those are industry standards that certify companies have established and follow strict security policies and procedures that include security, availability, processing, integrity, and confidentiality. The company is celebrating its 10th year in business and has never lost a building. Mobley can only point to “a couple” of instances that affected an individual customer. But the threats in the last few years have increasingly not been from weather or power failures, but malware, ransomware, and other cyberattacks. “We can do everything we can, but we cannot guarantee 100 percent that you won’t be hit,” he says. Hardware and software can do a lot but there are “unknowns,” he says, that are very hard to protect against. The biggest unknown? Authenticated users.
THE CLOUD ISSUE
| COVER
Servosity Cloud-based backup and disaster recovery Sells mainly to managed IT service providers. Detects disk failure in real time and triggers seamless failover (switching to a redundant backup system).
servosity.com
Most cloud providers offer a portfolio of services orbiting the central proposition of cloud delivery. But not Servosity. Rather than broadening its focus as the needs of companies for ever-expanding services has grown, Servosity has stayed focused on one area: disaster recovery and business continuity. Client targeting is another differentiator. Rather than trying to reach a vast audience with diverse needs, Servosity sells primarily to managed IT service providers (MSPs). Servosity CEO and founder Damien Stevens describes the heart of Servosity as its proprietary software, which includes several components that are currently in patent review. The software uses operating system policies and programming to detect disk failures in real time and to initiate a failover that occurs seamlessly to the end user. Currently, the software requires action on the part of the MSP (which Servosity calls partners, rather than clients) to “push the button” with total recovery taking potentially 10 minutes, but future development of the software will get that down to “sub one minute on the order of seconds”. Steven’s says his ultimate goal is to make “the world’s servers uncrashable” through what he calls “autonomous self-healing.” “Uncrashable” really means “impactless” — where server failures would be corrected or ameliorated without human intervention and, potentially, without anyone realizing it had happened. It’s an “if-a-tree-falls-in-a-forest” proposition. But it appeals to their partners, which Stevens says number in the "hundreds" across the U.S. and the world. The average service provider client is a company with 10–50 employees. Servosity itself has 12 employees, who are engineers, software developers, and client support specialists. It also has two data centers — one in South Carolina, one in North Carolina — as well as multiple cloud partners. Clients can choose to buy the software only and use it on their own infrastructure; to buy the software and connect it to major cloud providers such as Amazon’s
Servosity CEO and founder Damien Stevens wants to make “the world’s servers uncrashable.” Photo by Will Crooks.
AWS or Microsoft’s Azure; or to have Servosity manage their cloud either by creating a private cloud on their servers or managing a client’s presence in the public cloud space. In addition to MSPs, other Servosity clients are data centers themselves who want to use the software to manage their failovers and recovery; and software companies that want to provide DR to their own clients. What seems absent is sales. In fact, the company does not even have a sales force. Stevens says prospective clients find Servosity on the web, are given a free trial period, and work closely with onboarding specialists. The sales cycle usually takes about 42 days. "It is a high-stakes decision," Stevens admits. And it demands a high trust factor, especially considering they rarely meet their clients. The idea of waiting for prospects to call may seem
lackadaisical, but it is successful. "Things can always work faster, but we've been blessed to grow about 100 percent per year," Stevens says, adding that 65 percent of prospects who speak with a Servosity staffer will become clients. Unlike other cloud providers, Servosity has not expanded to offer managed IT functions, and it doesn't monitor the servers housing data it is charged with protecting. If things go well, they will never even know that a disk error has occurred. With ransomware and other cybersecurity concerns, more and more businesses are realizing the file backups are insufficient to keep business up and running and looking for cost effective solutions. “Over 80 percent of small to medium businesses don’t have disaster recovery,” Stevens says. CLOUD continued on PAGE 18
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“We look at our clients as partners. We are notUBJ trying|to3.10.2017 compete with IT departments or displace them,” says Integral Solutions Group CEO Joe Strayer. Photo by Leland Outz.
CLOUD continued from PAGE 17
Integral Solutions Group
Technology and full-service IT provider Offers cloud services, managed service, AV and cabling, data center, and IT infrastructure.
integralsg.com The cloud wasn’t what Integral Solutions Group in Spartanburg was looking at when they first started operations as a managed IT company in 1987. But it found many of its customers facing facility issues. When they couldn’t find a good solution to their customers’ reliability and uptime requirements, they decided to build one. “We originally designed the data center as a colocation facility and began offering cloud services for customers that wanted some of those ancillary services like email,” says CEO Joe Strayer. “They wanted someone to give them a per-user price and provide a great service. That's where we started.” That was in 2010 and ISG has stayed true to its beginnings by focusing fully on their customers’ portfolio of needs. “We’re really in the high-touch business,” explains Strayer. IT staff in medium-sized businesses with 50-500 users are “overwhelmed,” he says. “They are pressured 18
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on personnel, challenged to innovate with technology to help the business compete better, and … are really pushed on reliability and availability. They don't have time to invest in the knowledge base to get that done. They look to us to do that for them.” ISG offers a lot of services that are outside the realm of most cloud providers, such as voice and data support, cabling and AV, and a collaborative meeting space integration service that even includes inviting prospective clients to run live meetings in ISG’s own meeting rooms to try out the audio and video experiences. “Integral’s play is to handle IT from beginning to end,” Strayer explains. That can include its cabling and infrastructure group working with architects during the design of a building to ensure that support for projectors, smart board, and integrated video conferencing is built in from the ground up. ISG has one data center in Spartanburg and partnerships that enable it to replicate data to national communication firm Level 3’s servers in Omaha, Neb., and Dallas. Its 600 customers are nationwide and it maintains sales offices in Spartanburg, Greenville, Charleston, and Columbia. The drive to move to cloud solutions, Strayer believes, is different for small-to-medium businesses and large businesses. For larger businesses, “it’s about realizing an expense cost versus a capital cost.” Breaking down the cost of servers, network gear, applications, and the personnel to manage and support them, a business must ask, “What do I have to do to get 20 seconds of downtime over a year of operation?” Strayer’s answer is to “go to a facility that was specifically
designed to do that.” But for a smaller business, reliability and availability are the key factors. A small firm is more likely to make the move to the cloud because they just can’t afford either the staff or the hardware to maintain the systems their business may depend on. ISG started a Virtual CIO service 18 months ago. “We look at our clients as partners. We are not trying to compete with IT departments or displace them,” Strayer states. But IT leaders are often so swamped by the operational day-to-day, that they can’t be “true to their mission,” which Strayer defines as “identifying ways to use technology to provide an advantage to the business.” The VCIO works closely with the IT leader to think three to five years out on life-cycle management, budget planning, and the strategic thinking that so often falls to the bottom of the to-do list. “The VCIO helps us tie our relationship closer together and, more importantly to the customer, helps us get a vision of the business so we can stay ahead of the curve,” explains Strayer. There are 96 employees, including five data center staff, six staff monitoring the Network Operations Center, and 30 integrators. “I tell customers the only way to guarantee security is to unplug the internet and keep all your computers away from their computers,” Strayer says. But that doesn’t mean that ISG is throwing their hands up in the air. The company is audited annually for SOC-2 compliance and has had only one exception in nine years. They have third-party companies perform penetration tests (PEN) to attempt to hack into their network and servers. With all of that, how does Strayer sleep at night? “I sleep well, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have the occasional bad dream.”
THE TECHNICAL SIDE OF BUSINESS
| DIGITAL MAVEN
Clouded Judgment Some questions to ask before you pick a cloud provider By LAURA HAIGHT president, portfoliosc.com
There are many reasons why your business could be looking at cloud providers. Most are financial, but operational components are closely intertwined. Since most of us are not technical by nature, the language of the cloud, the companies that thrive in it, and even your own IT staff may seem foreign. Still, it is important that you understand the business need that you are filling and how each cloud company will support and protect your business. So, here are some questions to ask each provider you’re considering.
QUANTIFIABLE AND COMPARABLE • UPTIME. Few things are more important than your access to your data. Your service level agreement (SLA) should outline what you are being promised, but you should ask your providers to also
provide data on their history of meeting or exceeding their SLAs. You’ll probably be told about a certain number of 9s. (See the sidebar on page 14 for a translation.) • CERTIFICATIONS: Cloud providers are not
required to pass operational audits or certification requirements. But if you are entrusting your business to them, you may find it important that they have voluntarily submitted to audits or reviews and obtained those standards. Look for two certifications: SSAE 16 and SOC-2. The first is a statement (an attestation) that requires the company to provide and attest to a description of services provided and operational functions and controls that affect their customers. SOC-2 is an audit that addresses five key areas of data center operations: security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy.
• ENCRYPTION: This is often misunderstood. There are many levels of encryption, but there are also different states that data may be in. Critical data should be encrypted both in transit (while it is moving from point to point, such as email being sent) and at rest (where it is stored, such as email archived in mailboxes). Be specific in your question and make sure you get a specific answer.
• DEPLOYMENT AND OPERATIONAL FLEXIBILITY: Companies don’t usually start out putting their entire business in the cloud. Usually, it’s a toe in the water: a single application, a development
server, etc. So
how easy is it to add to your environment, increase the workload, or swap services? Do you have a portal that gives you control? Can it be done dynamically? The answers may matter more to time-dependent companies.
• BACKUP AND RECOVERY: Joe Strayer, CEO of Integral Solutions Group in Spartanburg, says backup is immaterial; it’s restore that counts. Ask prospective providers how often they test backups. Also ask how long recovery historically takes. You’ll need to compare by a metric such as per gigabyte or server, but the answer is critical if you get hit with a ransomware situation. Another good question is how many recovery points are maintained. If you receive malware or ransomware, you want to be able to select a restore point from before the attack. Otherwise, you are simply recovering the same corrupted data. Can you choose different restore points and how far back are they maintained?
describe as “experts,” but what certifications do they have? CIO magazine lists 10 that can help you benchmark the expertise of the providers you’re considering. Read the article at bit.ly/ cloudcerts.
• WHO MAKES YOU FEEL THEY REALLY CARE? Let’s face it, there are a lot of “experts” who got their certifications and then took the rest of their lives off. Some experts are great with hardware, but not so good with humanware. The best way to assess this is to ask customers. Of course, the companies will provide you with carefully curated lists of happy customers to call. But you should try crowdsourcing opinions at networking events, on LinkedIn, or other social media.
• LAST FAILURE? Strayer suggests you ask: When was the last time you went down?
ers who get into the business, then realize they can’t spend a half a million to keep up with the growth,” says Immedion CEO Frank Mobley, noting, “Success adds expense.” You’ll want to confirm that your provider has the resources and the capital planning to be sustainable.
The perfect answer, of course, would be “never.” But dig a little deeper. Everyone has failures whether they are within their control or the result of natural disasters or a failure of a major infrastructure system. The key to any problem is not that it happened, but what you learned from it. Says Strayer, “Find a company that is open about failures, about what the cause of those failures was, and open about the steps they took to mitigate the problem and make sure it didn’t happen again, and I would trust that company with my data.”
THE WARM FUZZIES
NOTICEABLY MISSING FROM THIS LIST IS COST. Cost is variable and is not always the
• CUSTOMER SERVICE: Who will answer the phone when you call? Who works in the data center? Strayer says, “There are two things I don’t want in my data center: water and people.” To that end, there are only five ISG employees authorized to be in the DC. Most providers have staff they
biggest driver. The cheapest provider may not be the best option for a small business making their first foray to the cloud. You can compare cost of disk, backup solutions, redundancies, and other factors, but customer care, experience, and expertise are wild cards.
• CAPITAL DEMANDS: Disk space is not cheap, and successful data centers need to be well capitalized. “We’ve seen a lot of provid-
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MOVERS, SHAKERS, AND DISRUP TORS SHAPING OUR FUTURE
| INNOVATE
Cultivating Connections Sustainable Agriculture program is sowing the seeds for SC’s future food production By REBECCA MCKINNEY Academic Program Director for Sustainable Agriculture, Greenville Technical College
A decade ago, I regularly attended an agricultural conference out of state. I started to realize that many people from South Carolina were there with me. We sat in classrooms where we were told, “You can’t grow that in South Carolina” (ginseng and goldenseal, which actually can be grown here, with the right microclimate) or “These funding sources don’t apply to you.” I began to wonder why we didn’t have our own organic conference that focused on our climate and soils, our regulatory structure, our needs. We had experts in our state who often did not have the chance to share their knowledge with others. I evaluated potential partners to create such an event. The timing wasn’t right for those relationships. I waited for someone else to realize that we needed our own organic organization. No one stepped forward. In late summer of 2011 — after I had finished the inaugural class of the S.C. New and Beginning Farmers Program and was again lamenting the need for a conference in our state — my husband said, “Why don’t you just do it?” That was the only push I needed. I founded the S.C. Organization for Organic Living (SCOOL) as the host organization for the S.C. Organic Growing Conference. Sustainable and organic growers in our state were amazingly supportive. My friend Daniel Parson, a local farmer, worked on the details with me. He secured Presbyterian College as a site, helped me settle on fair compensation for instructors (well above the going rate at similar conferences), and donated vegetables. Other friends — Mac and Robin McGee from Carolina Grassfed Beef and Steve Ellis from Bethel Trails — donated the meat. Anson Mills, purveyors of heirloom grain, delivered the Carolina Gold rice and Sea Island red peas that
have become a staple at our lunches. Whole Foods Market provided breakfast. The first S.C. Organic Growing Conference, held in March 2012, was truly a community event. We drew 120 people. In year two, we moved to Columbia, a more central location for our state — and grew to more than 160 attendees. In fall 2013, Samantha Wallace from Edible Upcountry — our media sponsor and frequent partner — suggested that we talk to chef Alan Scheidhauer at the Culinary Institute of the Carolinas (CIC) at Greenville Technical College’s Northwest Campus.
session to gather input about whether or not there was a need for such a program. The answer was a resounding and emphatic “yes.” We followed up by recommending farmers and other food production experts who would serve on an advisory board and help develop the program. In July 2017, our sustainable agriculture program will wrap up its first year. Our students range in age from 20 to 64. Each has a different vision for their agriculture-related business. They are creating their own sense of community within the program, offering help, advice, and friendship to each other. Those re-
We didn’t want to just build farming and food capacity; our mutual goal has been to develop a cooperative and supportive community of farmers and food producers. Maybe it was time to bring the event to Greenville. And so the following year, we offered the event in Greenville for the first time, with more attendees than ever before. CIC and the chefs have been great partners. Over the four years the event has been held at the Northwest Campus, attendees have commented that the food is the best conference food they’ve ever had — and if you’ve ever attended a local-food lunch or dinner at an agricultural conference, you’ll know that’s high praise indeed. The partnership with the institute has made the event flow more smoothly than we ever could have imagined. After hosting the event in 2014, Chef Alan mentioned that the college had been thinking about starting an agriculture program. As a first step, Sam and I helped schedule a community brainstorming
lationships are the driving force behind both the conference and the program. We didn’t want to just build farming and food capacity; our mutual goal has been to develop a cooperative and supportive community of farmers and food producers. The produce we provide for classes at the Culinary Institute of the Carolinas — 4,000 pounds last year — is a bonus. This year, we had 13 students of our own attending the conference. As we wrapped up the event (now known as Cultivate), we were reminded of the impact that knowledge can have on attendees’ lives. A young attendee spent her 13th birthday with us; it was the third year she’d been part of the event. Her mother said, “The conference has grown, and we’ve grown with it. The first year, we didn’t know anything. Now we have chickens, rabbits, and 12 raised garden beds.”
FFR RIID DAAYY
APRIL 7 7-10pm
3.24.2017
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OPINION |
VOICES FROM THE BUSINESS COMMUNITY, HEARD HERE
Borderline Behavior A new border tax would dampen Hispanic-owned business growth By RICARDO PARRA Owner, La Esperanza Bakery
As a South Carolina Hispanic business owner and member of the S.C. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the prospect of the first major tax overhaul in 30 years is truly exciting. Small businesses have long suffered under the weight of an outdated tax code that makes the cost of doing business more difficult every year. Unfortunately, our leaders in Washington have put a tax provision on the table that would punish local consumers and employers. The Border Adjustment Tax (BAT) was introduced to promote American jobs and products, but the proposed 20 percent hike on imported goods will be an increase that many businesses simply can’t afford. The options available to adapt to the BAT are not good: pass the costs along to customers, downsize, or close doors altogether. This is particularly bad news for Hispanic-owned businesses, which have been a true bright spot in our economic recovery. Today, there are more than 4.2 million Hispanic-owned businesses in the United States that contribute more than $668 billion to the economy every year. Immigrants are twice as likely as the native-born population to start a small business — truly a vehicle for economic growth. South Carolina’s Hispanic Chamber of Commerce takes great pride in working with local businesses that deliver value to their customers while employing local men and women. We support provisions that help level the playing field and increase competition to bring our products to market, but the Border Adjustment Tax is the wrong approach and will only make things more difficult. Consumers could see costs for everyday essentials like food, gas, clothing, and medicine increase by $1,700. Over the next 10 years, it would equate to a whopping price hike of more than $1 trillion on American families and small businesses. Hispanic
Helping Hands When You Need Them 22
UBJ | 3.24.2017
The options available to adapt to the proposed Border Adjustment Tax are not good: Pass the costs along to customers, downsize, or close doors altogether. consumers wield tremendous buying power, but because the average median income is much less in Hispanic households than non-Hispanic households, the Border Adjustment Tax would have an unfair and disproportionate effect on the necessities on which these families rely. That’s why the S.C. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the S.C. Retailers Association, and more than 100 businesses and trade associations have joined forces in opposition. Supporters of the Border Adjustment Tax include mostly large multinational corporations that export much of their products to overseas markets. They will continue to gain advantages and make billions in profits each year while consumers are left in sticker shock. As for increasing competition by leveling the playing field? Any steep Border Adjustment Tax in the U.S. will likely be countered by countries that will impose their own taxes on American products. A lot of pain and suffering for no gain. Fortunately, some of South Carolina’s leaders in Washington understand that there are thousands of jobs provided by retailers every year, and that South Carolinians are dependent on affordable products sold by our local businesses. Sen. Lindsey Graham recently said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that the House tax reform plan “won’t 945 E. Main Street, Spartanburg, SC 29302 get 10 votes in the Senate,” mostly because of objec-
864-573-2353
Border Adjustment Tax What is it? Meant to encourage companies to keep their businesses in the U.S., the proposed BAT is a tax levied based on where a good is consumed rather than where it is produced. For example, if a corporation ships tires to Mexico where they will be used to make cars, the profit the tire company makes on the tires it exports isn’t taxed. However, if an American car company purchases tires from Mexico for use in cars made in America, the money it makes on the cars (including the tires) sold in the U.S. is taxed. In addition, the company cannot deduct the cost of the imported tires as a business expense. Source: Investopedia
tions to the Border Adjustment Tax. And Sen. Tim Scott, who sits on the Senate Finance Committee, which will play a critical role in any tax reform package, recently noted that the Border Adjustment Tax proposal is “going to be very difficult to get through the Senate.” He went on to say that a “20 percent negative impact when products come into the country means those who bear the burden the most are the consumers in the country.” Hopefully, President Donald J. Trump and our other congressional leaders will see the divisions and negative impact and kill the Border Adjustment Tax now, so we can move on to real tax reform that 26 Rushmore Drive, Greenville, SC 29615 benefi ts everyone.
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INSIDE THE UPSTATE’S NETWORKING AND SOCIAL SCENE
| SOCIAL SNAPSHOT
VOICE OF BUSINESS The Spartanburg Area Chamber of Commerce hosted S.C. Treasurer Curtis Loftis at its quarterly Voice of Business Brunch last Friday at the Spartanburg Marriott.
3.24.2017
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ON THE MOVE |
PLAY-BY-PLAY OF UPSTATE CAREERS
PROMOTED
HIRED
PROMOTED
HIRED
HONORED
GIVENS STEWART
TYLER DEESE
MICHELLE CAIAZZO
ASHLEY SPIVEY
GRANT COTHRAN
Named vice president of Colliers International. The title is a recognition of his commitment to Colliers’ clients’ successes and successful commercial real estate brokerage transactions. Stewart has been awarded and recognized on multiple occasions during his 15-year career with Colliers for his consistent performance.
Joined the firm as a staff accountant in their assurance and advisory services department. He attended Liberty University, where he holds a Master of Science degree in accounting with high distinction and a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting, graduating summa cum laude. He is currently fulfilling the one-year work experience requirement for licensure in South Carolina.
Promoted to account supervisor at Crawford Strategy. She most recently served as manager of special projects at Crawford Strategy. In her nearly three years with the agency, she has supported a variety of communications efforts on behalf of financial clients. She holds a master’s and bachelor’s degree from Virginia Tech.
Joined the team at Crawford Strategy from ABC affiliate WOLO in Columbia, where she served as morning news producer for more than a year. Spivey will support the financial services team by fulfilling marketing, advertising, public relations, and sponsorship needs for financial clients. She graduated from the University of South Carolina in 2015 with a degree in broadcast journalism.
Selected as one of DCI’s 40 under 40, a group of young leaders within the economic development field that aren’t afraid to disrupt industry standards and always raise the bar for achieving community prosperity. With more than five years in railroad intermodal freight management and site selection for Norfolk Southern, Cothran has helped to reduce truck traffic on local roads.
VIP JOHN WELTER Joined the Commerce Club as the general manager. He relocated to Greenville from Kansas City, Kan., where he has resided the last 25 years and most recently held the position of clubhouse manager at a local country club. Welter brings with him extensive knowledge and experience in the hospitality industry, both in private club and hotel management. Welter attended Edison Community College in Florida and holds the certified club manager designation with Club Managers Association of America.
Real Estate Coldwell Banker Caine recently recognized its top producing agents in property sales and listings in January. Circle of Excellence is awarded to agents who have accomplished $1 million in listing or closing volume, or four units listed or closed. January’s recipients include Brett Smagala, Pat Loftis, Cynthia Serra, Evon and Steve Hammett, Faith Ross, Francie Little, Holly West, Jacob Mann, Kiersten Bell, Marshall Jordan, Mike Dassel, Trey Boiter, and Wanda Stewart. Craig Bailey, managing broker of JOY Real Estate, has announced the top performing agents in the Greenville area for January. Brenda Ledford, Michael McGreevy, and Betty Jo Pearce have achieved the highest number of listings. Joe Singleton, Margie Poole, and Kimberly Banks have achieved the greatest sales volume.
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UBJ | 3.17.2017
Transportation Greenville-based transportation professional Carrie Mussman is joining 35 emerging transportation industry leaders from across the globe for the International Bridge, Tunnel, and Turnpike Association’s (IBTTA) 2017 Leadership Academy in Washington, D.C. Mussman serves as the ITS and tolls project manager for AECOM. The academy is designed to include all facets of toll agency operations, including administration, finance, marketing, customer service, communications, business development, and board relations and will benefit these emerging leaders.
Marketing Cargo, a marketing agency that specializes in helping big brands market to small businesses, has hired five new employees in the Greenville office: David Estrada, Elizabeth Matthews, Brandon Bradberry, Caitlin Price, and Dale Fenton. Estrada will work as Cargo’s production lead and will manage the digital, interactive, experiential, and hyper-targeted ad campaigns. Matthews is the agency’s new client engagement manager. Bradberry has been hired as a frontend designer. Price is the brand and business builder for Cargo. Fenton joined Cargo as a front-end developer. DOM360 announces two new-hires. Fifteen-year marketing and advertising veteran Ryan Alford has joined the agency as the new director of business development and client services. Alford joins the team in an expanded role for the company, with goals of increasing strategic and account service experience for the agency. Teresa Thomas returns to the Greenville area and the team with 30-plus years of HR and corporate administration experience, and will be responsible for the company's human resources, corporate, and accounting initiatives.
CONTRIBUTE: New hires, promotions, & award winners may be featured in On the Move. Send information and photos to onthemove@ upstatebusinessjournal.com.
| NEW TO THE STREET / THE FINE PRINT
PLAY-BY-PLAY OF UPSTATE CAREERS
Open for business 1
Presented by
Photo provided
1. Let People See is now located at 241 N. Main St. in downtown Greenville. Learn more about the video production company at letpeoplesee.com.
2
Photo provided
2. Autumn Leaves recently opened at 352 Pelham Road. This is the assisted living facility’s first location in South Carolina. Learn more at autumnleaves.com/ communities/greenville. CONTRIBUTE: Know of a business opening soon? Email information to aturner@communityjournals.com.
PuroClean Disaster Restoration awarded March Small Business Award The Greenville Chamber presented PuroClean Disaster Restoration with its March 2017 Small Business of the Month Award. PuroClean President Emily Perkins and team accepted the award at the Chamber’s monthly board of directors meeting on March 16. PuroClean Disaster Restoration is a disaster mitigation company in Greenville that responds to residential and commercial property damage caused by water, fire, mold, and biohazard. A member of the PuroClean franchise system, they are an IICRC Certified Firm with IICRC Certified technicians, and 100-percent woman owned and operated. Owner and President Emily Perkins has lived in Greenville since 2006. She and her team have been rescuing homes, buildings, apartment complexes, and their owners since 2009. PuroClean is a proud sponsor of Greenville’s You Go Girl Women’s Only Triathlon, created to encourage and support women and their families to live life guided by courage, perseverance, focus, and teamwork. 3.24.2017
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Conversations with Upstate Professionals
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INFORMATION YOU WANT TO KNOW
THE WATERCOOLER Social Chatter RE: VAULT & VATOR TEASES SPEAKEASY MENU PRIOR TO IMMINENT OPENING
RE: CITY OF GREENVILLE LAUNCHES ONLINE DOWNTOWN REBORN VISUAL GUIDE
RE: GREENVILLE’S WELLS FARGO CENTER REACHES 100% RETAIL OCCUPANCY
“Vault & Vator, we’re looking forward to having #Kirktails soon, but thank you for the recipes to sip on while we wait!”
“‘Greenville’ to me is a city lucky enough to be nested inside a beautiful park halfway between the ocean and the mountains. We aren’t a city with a park; we are a city inside a park. There is no other place on Earth as lucky as we are.”
“If you haven’t had Tropical Chicken Grille, what have you been doing with your life?”
RE: FIRST LOOK: BARISTA ALLEY BREWS UP ARTISANAL COFFEE IN DOWNTOWN GREER
“We needed something like this to happen. Exciting for the southern part of Greenville!”
“Another great reason to move to Greer!”
RE: J.C. PENNEY CLOSING EASLEY STORE
“Learn more about your new favorite coffee shop, Barista Alley, in this great piece from the UBJ.”
“It’s sad that they are closing. I would like to see a more upscale restaurant come to Easley.”
Euphoria Greenville
RE: STONE PIN BOWLING ALLEY ALMOST READY TO RUMBLE “If you build it, we will bowl!!!”
Michael Badeaux’s Engineering Upstate Real Estate
RE: ABBOTT’S FROZEN CUSTARD HEADED FOR DOWNTOWN SPARTANBURG “Oh yeah, one more. Can’t live without...”
Michael Plante
Tami Allen
Mary MacDonald
Thomas Riddle II
“This is awesome, new businesses moving here. I just hope we don’t become the ‘tacos and ice cream’ mecca.”
“So excited for this coffee shop to open! Local friends, check it out.”
Blaine E. Alexander
Tab Pratt Wilson
RE: REDEVELOPMENT PLAN ANNOUNCED FOR CONESTEE MILL
Tim Sterr
Luisa Heredia
RE: ALDI OPENS NEW STORE ON SPARTANBURG’S WEST SIDE “Aldi and Lidl are opening hundreds of stores all over the USA, and people are going nuts!"
Eva D. Smith
TOP 5:
MARCH 17,
VOL. 6 ISSUE 2017 |
11
DIGITAL FLIPBOOK ARCHIVE The layout of print meets the convenience of the Web. Flip through the digital editions of any of our print issues, and see them all in one place. upstatebusinessjournal.com/past-issues
1. Stone Pin bowling alley almost ready to rumble
2. City of Greenville launches online Downtown Reborn visual guide
Josh Moore, Greenville Real Estate
E IT'S TIM
TO
QUIT ING TALK TING ART VO A ND ST A TALK
WITH TED
AMBER E SC CH O OF TH PITTS, CE
3. Vault & Vator teases speakeasy menu prior to imminent opening
4. Konduros is new SCBIO president and CEO
Photo by
ks
Will Croo
GET THE INBOX CONNECT We’re great at networking.
5. First Look: Barista Alley brews up artisanal coffee in downtown Greer
*The top 5 stories from the past week ranked by shareability score
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UBJ | 3.24.2017
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EVENTS YOU SHOULD HAVE ON YOUR CALENDAR
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FYI Friday: Dave Edwards
Spartanburg Marriott 299 N. Church St., Spartanburg 11:30 a.m.–1 p.m.
Cost: $15 members; $25 nonmembers For more info: bit.ly/2mIxmmf, 864-594-5000
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Making It in Real Estate: Starting Out as a Developer
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Cost: Free to members; $15 nonmembers For more info: 843-743-6073, bit.ly/2nEWawn, southcarolina@ uli.org
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TD Convention Center 1 Exposition Drive 8 a.m.–5 p.m.
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EDITOR
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APRIL 14 THE PERSONAL FINANCE ISSUE Keeping your bottom line top of mind.
onthemove@upstatebusinessjournal.com UBJ welcomes expert commentary from business leaders on timely news topics related to their specialties. Guest columns run 700-800 words. Contact managing editor Jerry Salley at jsalley@communityjournals. com to submit an article for consideration. Circulation Audit by
UBJ milestone jackson Marketing Group’s 25 Years 1988 Jackson
Dawson opens in Greenville at Downtown Airport
1988
Jackson Marketing Group celebrates 25 years
Got any thoughts? Care to contribute? Let us know at ideas@upstatebusinessjournal.com.
By sherry Jackson | staff | sjackson@communityjournals.com
Solve. Serve. Grow. Those three words summarize Jackson Marketing Group’s guiding principles, and according to owner Larry Jackson, form the motivation that has kept the firm thriving for the past 25 years.
Jackson graduated from Bob Jones University with a degree in video and film production and started his 41-year career in the communications industry with the U.S. Army’s Public Information Office. He served during
Vietnam, where he said he was “luckily” stationed in the middle of Texas at Fort Hood. He left the service and went to work in public affairs and motorsports at Ford Motor Company in Detroit. After a stint at Bell and Howell, where he was responsible for managing Ford’s dealer marketing and training, the entrepreneurial bug hit and he co-founded Jackson-Dawson Marketing Communications, a company specializing in dealer training and product launches for the auto industry in 1980. In 1987, Jackson wanted to move back south and thought Greenville would be a good fit. An avid pilot, he
learned of an opportunity to purchase Cornerstone Aviation, a fixed base operation (FBO) that served as a service station for the Greenville Downtown Airport, providing fuel, maintenance and storage. In fact, when he started the Greenville office of what is now Jackson Marketing Group (JMG) in 1988, the offices were housed on the second floor in an airport hangar. “Clients would get distracted by the airplanes in the hangars and we’d have to corral them to get back upstairs to the meeting,” Jackson said. Jackson sold the FBO in 1993, but says it was a great way to get to know Greenville’s fathers and leaders
>>
2003 motorsports Division acquires an additional 26,000 sq. ft. of warehouse space
1998 1998 Jackson Dawson moves to task industrial Court
>>
Chairman larry Jackson, Jackson marketing Group. Photos by Greg Beckner / Staff
MAY 19 THE INTERNATIONAL ISSUE Upstate, meet the world. World, meet the Upstate.
1997 Jackson Dawson launches motorsports Division 1993
1990 Jackson Dawson
acquires therapon marketing Group and moves to Piedmont office Center on Villa.
APRIL 28 CRE QUARTERLY ISSUE The state of commercial real estate in the Upstate.
events@upstatebusinessjournal.com
NEW HIRES, PROMOTIONS, AND AWARDS:
1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
UBJ milestone
with a majority of them utilizing the general aviation airport as a “corporate gateway to the city.” In 1997, Jackson and his son, Darrell, launched Jackson Motorsports Group. The new division was designed to sell race tires and go to racetracks to sell and mount the tires. Darrell Jackson now serves as president of the motorsports group and Larry Jackson has two other children and a son-in-law who work there. Jackson said all his children started at the bottom and “earned their way up.” Jackson kept the Jackson-Dawson branches in Detroit and others in Los Angeles and New York until he sold his portion of that partnership in 2009 as part of his estate planning. The company now operates a small office in Charlotte, but its main headquarters are in Greenville in a large office space off Woodruff Road, complete with a vision gallery that displays local artwork and an auditorium Jackson makes available for non-profit use. The Motorsports Group is housed in an additional 26,000 square feet building just down the street, and the agency is currently looking for another 20,000 square feet. Jackson said JMG has expanded into other verticals such as financial, healthcare, manufacturing and pro-bono work, but still has a strong focus on the auto industry and transportation. It’s
also one of the few marketing companies in South Carolina to handle all aspects of a project in-house, with four suites handling video production, copywriting, media and research and web design. Clients include heavyweights such as BMW, Bob Jones University, the Peace Center, Michelin and Sage Automotive. Recent projects have included an interactive mobile application for Milliken’s arboretum and 600-acre Spartanburg campus and a marketing campaign for the 2013 Big League World Series. “In my opinion, our greatest single achievement is the longevity of our client relationships,” said Darrell Jackson. “Our first client from back in 1988 is still a client today. I can count on one hand the number of clients who have gone elsewhere in the past decade.” Larry Jackson says his Christian faith and belief in service to others, coupled with business values rooted in solving clients’ problems, have kept
2009 Jackson Dawson changes name to Jackson marketing Group when larry sells his partnership in Detroit and lA 2003
2009-2012 Jackson marketing Group named a top BtoB agency by BtoB magazine 4 years running
him going and growing his business over the years. He is passionate about giving back and outreach to non-profnon-prof its. The company was recently awarded the Community Foundation Spirit Award. The company reaffirmed its commitment to serving the community last week by celebrating its 25th anniversary with a birthday party and a 25-hour Serve-A-Thon partnership with Hands on Greenville and Habitat for Humanity. JMG’s 103 full-time employees worked in shifts around the clock on October 22 and 23 to help construct a house for a deserving family. As Jackson inches towards retirement, he says he hasn’t quite figured out his succession plan yet, but sees the companies staying under the same umbrella. He wants to continue to strategically grow the business. “From the beginning, my father has taught me that this business is all about our people – both our clients and our associates,” said his son, Darrell. “We have created a focus and a culture that strives to solve problems, serve people and grow careers.” Darrell Jackson said he wants to “continue helping lead a culture where we solve, serve and grow. If we are successful, we will continue to grow towards our ultimate goal of becoming the leading integrated marketing communications brand in the Southeast.”
2011 Jackson marketing Group/Jackson motorsports Group employee base reaches 100 people
2008 2012 Jackson marketing Group recognized by Community Foundation with Creative spirit Award
pro-bono/non-proFit / Clients lients American Red Cross of Western Carolinas Metropolitan Arts Council Artisphere Big League World Series The Wilds Advance SC South Carolina Charities, Inc. Aloft Hidden Treasure Christian School
CoMMUnitY nit inVolVeMent nitY in ol inV olV V Ve eMent & boarD positions lArry JACkson (ChAirmAn): Bob Jones University Board chairman, The Wilds Christian Camp and Conference Center board member, Gospel Fellowship Association board member, Past Greenville Area Development Corporation board member, Past Chamber of Commerce Headquarters Recruiting Committee member, Past Greenville Tech Foundation board member David Jones (Vice President Client services, Chief marketing officer): Hands on Greenville board chairman mike Zeller (Vice President, Brand marketing): Artisphere Board,
Metropolitan Arts Council Board, American Red Cross Board, Greenville Tech Foundation Board, South Carolina Chamber Board
eric Jackson (Jackson motorsports Group sales specialist): Salvation Army Boys & Girls Club Advisory Board
November 1, 2013 Upstate bUsiness joUrnal 21
20 Upstate bUsiness joUrnal November 1, 2013
AS SEEN IN
NOVEMBER 1, 2013
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