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It would seem that anyone who has been peddling purple prose to newspapers, magazines and customers for over half a century would run out of things to say. There had to be millions of vowels and consonants bumping against each other, tons of words on paper over that period of time, especially if you throw in a few books. Typewriters have come and gone. Computers have been new, gotten old and been replaced. Burnout would be a natural conclusion when a
writer felt he had said it all and had nothing new to write about. Fortunately, that hasn’t been the case.
Each time I do a story there is something fresh and encouraging
waiting for me to explore. For a while now, I have been writing some
stories for Commercial Network, the business magazine published in
Chattanooga by Bill Raines. Business
can be a dull subject for the average person not wrapped up in stocks
and bonds, real estate and acquisitions.
Business is more than dollars and accounting.
Behind every business deal are individuals.
And each has a story. It’s fun.
For a few brief minutes, I share the interesting moments in the
lives of the people I am going to write about.
Their lifetime translates to notes I scribble on a tablet and
will later translate into word pictures in hopes that readers will be
able to travel with me over the road that individual took. When I talked with Ricky Crook about his
business The Meeting Company, he told me how he started sales by working
with his grandfather. It
was a warm feeling to visualize him as a barefoot boy of seven in bib
overalls riding on the tailgate of his grandfather’s truck, ringing a
cowbell to hawk their fresh farm produce. Maybe the recent stories in the September issue
of the magazine impressed me exceptionally. We all worry about economic disaster.
The economists make dire predictions.
More to home is the threat of unglamorized, big business
devouring competition and making the market place an entity controlled
by business giants with no faces. Wal-Mart
is the emerging dominant company on the world market.
When they move into a community like a steamroller, they present
the specter of a Gargantuan crushing everything in sight.
The little mom and pop stores become history.
Loyal customers who have traded at their neighbor’s grocery or
hardware store abandon their friend to save a few nickels at the
glittery new supercenter. Theme of the September Commercial Network
magazine was small business. We
wanted to see how they faced the competition and survived.
Their stories were inspiring. Chuck Pruett comes from a family which operated
the Pruett food store chain successfully, and gradually reduced to two
stores in the Chattanooga-Signal Mountain area.
Chuck saw a new avenue—organic and healthy foods.
He built his Greenlife Grocery on the faith that people want food
uncontaminated by herbicides and pesticides.
When the giants advertise healthy produce and meats, they promote
his business. Mike Hanan’s grandfather was an East European
immigrant who migrated to Chattanooga and built Jacobs Wholesale Paper
Co. Mike now serves
customers in the shadow of the giants, and does it profitably.
His company is one of the very few, if not the only one
furnishing full coverage health insurance.
And costs threaten this for him.
But he has a happy crew. George and Charlie Cooper still have three
salesmen knocking on doors to sell products from Cooper Office Supply, a
company established in 1931 by their father.
Don’t tell them there is no future bucking Office Depot and
Staples. They sell service. Randy Shuford was a high school student at
Baylor who came each afternoon to work with his grandmother at Mom’s
Italian Villa. He runs the
family business now, serving pizza with that special taste from his
stone fired oven. Pizza Hut
and Domino’s might be quicker, but they can’t compete on taste and
atmosphere. His home country of Greece was embroiled in war
and occupation by Germany when Ronnie Tomras was born in 1931.
His father immigrated to America and Ronnie joined him in 1949.
He is the perfect example of what people can do with hard work in
the free enterprise system. Selling
hamburgers, ham sandwiches and omelets from Ronnie’s Grill, he has put
a son through medical school to become a neurosurgeon in Atlanta. No industry is more world wide and consuming
that the telephone and telecommunication horde.
Ringgold Telephone Company is an oasis in northwestern Georgia, a
reminder that individuals still exist and make a difference for
customers. They offer
everything from phone service to the internet to cable vision to a link
with eBay. Founded by Jim Evitt, Sr., in 1912 with one Western Electric
switchboard and a few battery powered wall phones, the company is
managed to day by his granddaughter, Alice Evitt Bandy, with the same
personal attention. Anyone gloomy about the future of small business
in America would only have to look at these individuals. They give something the big boys can’t. Service. Personal
attention. And that extra
bond of friendship. Come to think of it—Wal-Mart
didn’t begin as a giant in the retail business. Sam Walton had to start it with one store in 1962 in
Arkansas, with a lot of hard work—and a dream. Commercial Network magazine can be seen on its
web site: www.comnetmag.com.
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