TENNESSEE SPOTLIGHT
Big Plants
Stay Close to Home
Stay Close to Home
The $1.6-billion-a-year Brunswick Boat Group isn't the only large manufacturer that keeps "coming back home" to Tennessee. In the past 12 months, a significant number of Tennessee-
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| Asurion, which relocated its corporate headquarters to Nashville in May 2003, tripled job creation goals for the year by adding more than 600 workers. The company plans to fill another 200- seat call center in Davidson County by fall 2004. At Asurion's technical and logistics center in Smyrna (right), employees repair and ship wireless phones. Above is the Asurion headquarters building in Nashville. Photos courtesy of Asurion Photo credit: Harry Butler, Nashville |
The project list reads like a Who's Who of the Fortune 500:
What makes Tennessee so attractive to top automotive firms and other manufacturers? Corporate consultants interviewed by Site Selection point to several factors, but chief among them are the state's transportation infrastructure; its Mid-South location on the border of the Midwest; the low cost of living and doing business; the state's competitive tax structure and one of the nation's best motor-freight networks for logistics.
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| Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen hams it up with two characters from the best-selling VeggieTales animated film series. Big Idea, producer of the popular children's series, is relocating its headquarters from suburban Chicago to Franklin, Tenn. With $50 million in revenues, the firm will employ 30 workers in Williamson County. |
In other words, say the consultants, volume manufacturers in Tennessee can get more products made and delivered more efficiently to more consumer markets in America than they could if they were located elsewhere in the U.S.
"Tennessee is likely to be included in any corporate location search involving the Southeast," says Gene DePrez, Americas practice leader for IBM Business Consulting Services' Global Location Strategies in Florham Park, N.J.
DePrez lists Tennessee's primary assets as accessibility to growing markets; transportation infrastructure; university resources; competitive costs for labor, real estate and utilities; and considerable "intellectual capital."
The numbers support DePrez. According to the Small Business Survival Index (SBSI), Tennessee is the seventh best state in the nation in overall public policy that promotes low taxes, limited government, restrained regulation and protection of property rights.
Entrepreneurs prefer Tennessee for one main reason: the state is very friendly toward small businesses. Tennessee has no state personal income tax, no state tax on capital gains and the ninth best rate for combined state and local property taxes.
The only areas in which Tennessee scores in the bottom half of the 50 states, according to SBSI, are in sales, gross receipts and excise taxes as a share of personal income (44th); adjusted unemployment tax rates (30th); per capita health care spending relative to the U.S. average (41st); and crime rates (43rd).
The same factors that make Tennessee a compelling draw for small business also make the Volunteer State attractive to large companies. According to a recent survey of corporate executives who read Site Selection, Tennessee has the sixth best business climate in the nation, trailing only Texas, Georgia, Alabama, Florida and South Carolina (see Cover Story on Page 746).
Since Phil Bredesen became governor, the state has steadily improved its ranking. In 2000, corporate executives rated Tennessee as having just the 17th best business climate. In 2001, it ranked 12th. And in 2003, it ranked seventh.
