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Editor’s Note: This is the second in a three part series stemming from Chamber President Marshall Ramsey’s discussion at the Women in Business Meeting Friday.

Part II

Our community was built on producing.

First with agriculture, due to the location of the railroad tracks; then furniture, due to the proximity of High Point, North Carolina (still known as the furniture capital of the world) and then a steady growth of manufacturing of all kinds due to the intersection of Interstate 81 and 25E that landed Morristown smack in the middle of it all.

Through the journey, city and county leadership chose to invest in not one, but three industrial parks.

“For our community, 25 percent of jobs are in manufacturing. That’s fifth in the country, highest in the state of Tennessee. Jobs in manufacturing will go down, due to technological advancements, but investment will continue to go up,” Morristown Area Chamber of Commerce President Marshall Ramsey said on Feb. 3.

He was addressing the first meeting in 2023 of Women in Business, hosted by the Chamber and HomeTrust Bank and held at the Tennessee College of Applied Technology.

The recent grand opening celebration of Greenworks left Ramsey impressed with robot welding.

He also addressed the decades-old rumor that Hamblen County might lose one of its largest employers.

“MAHLE’s not leaving, but the company will become more efficient. Lines that used to have 12 workers per shift now have two,” Ramsey said.

“If you look at automation and how it will affect the community: the good thing is that the wages for operators on those automated lines continue to go up. The lower skilled, lower wage jobs are transitioning to other places, like China and Mexico. Mexico has the logistical upper hand, with regard to faster shipping times. We are also seeing other third-world countries begin to get competitive in manufacturing.”

Why should we be concerned about what is happening in Ukraine?

“Wars affect our local manufacturing base,” Ramsey said. “What is happening in Ukraine is affecting the supply of steel and steel components, for example. We have 14 international companies from seven countries here, so everything going on in the world that you see on the news affects our community a lot more than others. There are probably only four communities in the country that are affected more than us. That drives a lot of what we do.”

With regard to recruiting new industry, Ramsey advises moving ahead carefully.

“Use caution when looking at employment numbers as a ‘working base’ for a large facilty. Are those who are unemployed actually willing to work? If you’re trying to hire now, you know a good portion of those (categorized as ‘available’) do not want to go back to work,” he said.

Communities that are trying to decide to grow with tourism or industry, for example, need to identify available workers realistically.

A number of 1,500 available workers, according to state employment statistics, may be 300 actual workers, when factoring in education and training requirements, skill sets and those who are unwilling to work.

“So why would you want a facility that would require 3,000 workers?” Ramsey said. “You have to explain to your community, ‘It’s nice to want those things,’ but is that really the right thing for your community?”

It’s also tempting for a community to think along the lines of, “We want everything coming and going.”

Not so for Hamblen County.

In a typical year, the Chamber will submit 52 projects to the city. Comparitively, on average, the Chamber receives 100 requests from companies wanting to locate here. Half of those will offer low wages, be non-environmentally friendly, not fit in with the makeup of the community in general or are direct competitors with industries already located here.

“Out of those 52, we’ll get 12 who are really interested, and out of those 12, we’ll get a Greenworks,” Ramsey said.

“Our actual growth comes from existing industries. Eighty to ninety percent of new jobs come from people you already know. Last year, we had 650 new jobs, $175 million in capital investment – 500 of those jobs came from existing industries,” he said.

“For us, existing industries are dependable. You know them, you love them, you work with them, they’re your family, they support the community,” Ramsey said. “Some newer industries will promise to be involved with schools and noprofits, TCAT and Walters State, but once they get here, they’re just going to exist.”

So when someone asks, ‘Why didn’t we get this or that?’ I answer, ‘A lot of times, you don’t want them,’” Ramsey said.

When it comes to assessing growth in Morristown, especially retail growth, Ramsey advises to disregard Facebook.

“Nine times out of 10, the social media experts don’t know,” he said.

So, Why is Target not here?

“They need more population, higher wages,” Ramsey said. “Retail goes to people, traffic and money. Target wants 50,000 people within a 5 to 7-mile radius of each store.”

“By the way, Target has never visited Morristown. We try to tell them: ‘Texas Roadhouse, Longhorn, three Wal-Marts, nine Subway stores, five McDonalds in the third smallest county in the state – what are you missing?’ We’d like them to visit, pull over in the parking lot of the west end Wal-Mart and watch the traffic go by,” he said.

East versus west – which one gets the next retail development?

East is considered ‘fully developed’ as far as available retail space, according to Ramsey.

Traffic counts on 25E have been consistent at 22,000 to 26,000 vehicles per day. Once the 66 Connector opened to Exit 4 of Interstate 81, The Merchants Greene area went from 17,000 vehicles per day to 39,000.

So the decision to open or relocated a locally owned small business is not for the faint of heart. Rents are higher in the more-cars-per day areas, but the reward may outrank the risk.

Something that concerns Ramsey is that small business owners do not ask the Chamber for numbers.

“Come to us early and talk. You drop a pin on an address and we can tell you how many people, dogs, cats and hamsters are within five miles of that location,” he said.

There’s also something that the average consumer can do to encourage those coveted chain retailers.

“If you want a specific store to locate to Morristown, and you frequently shop there, always give them your zip code. That tells them how many potential customers they have here. The Targets of the world look at those,” Ramsey said.