Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 1, 1993 TAG: 9302010259
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
ROANOKE'S NICHE WITHIN A NICHE
THE IMPENDING shutdown of the Sears Telecatalog Center in Roanoke, at a cost of 1,200 jobs, is not without irony.The huge firm's catalog operation got into trouble, analysts say, because Sears didn't find a niche vis-a-vis its national competitors (other merchandisers) for mail-order business.
Yet from the Roanoke Valley's perspective, the opening of the center a few years ago had seemed a step toward the valley's developing one niche vis-a-vis its competitors (other cities) for jobs.
Much as piedmont North Carolina is emerging as a national banking center, supplanting some of America's traditional giants, Omaha, Neb., is emerging as the nation's telemarketing center. Within that context, Roanoke seemed on the way toward creating a niche for itself as a regional telemarketing center for the East Coast.
The continuing presence in Roanoke of the Orvis and Tweeds catalog operations attests that all is not lost - for either the mail-order business or for its place in the Roanoke economy.
Indeed, the mail-order industry countrywide is thriving. It's just that the prosperity is in targeted products for targeted audiences. The death of the granddaddy Sears catalog is generally attributed to its failure to keep pace with the times; in this age of computerized specialization, it remained the all-purpose catalog that it had been for years.
But the Sears closing does not change the factors suggesting telemarketing as an appropriate niche - one of several - for the Roanoke Valley to look to.
The valley is large enough to have sufficient numbers of prospective employees interested in and available for fluctuating, part-time hours. It is small enough for living costs, and thus labor costs, to be lower than in many bigger cities.
Omaha's telemarketing advantages are a no-accent work force and, if order fulfillment is also involved, a nationally central location.
Roanoke's advantages include not just its moderate-cost business environment, but a work force accustomed to telephone courtesy, and a central location - plus good highway and rail access - within the populous Eastern third of the country.
The shutdown of the Sears center changes none of the above. The Sears Telecatalog Center in Roanoke worked; it was the catalog itself that didn't.
For Sears, finding a niche within the retail sector has proved troublesome. For the Roanoke Valley, telemarketing remains an exploitable niche within the national economy. Meanwhile, there's another kind of niche to ponder: niches within the local economy.
Telemarketing jobs are not generally high-skill or high-paying. Many, as is the case at the Sears center, are part-time. Most of the jobs do not offer fringe benefits, such as health insurance.
But they are not valueless. For one thing, along with with an emerging fiber-optics industry, it may be that telemarketing could become part of a larger niche of telecommunications and telecommunications-dependent back-office operations in this region.
For another thing, telemarketers have come to fit a useful employment niche for many Roanokers. Many like and need the flexible hours; many like and need the supplemental income, especially if they get health insurance on another job.
While it would be foolish to try to reconstruct a local economy on telemarketing alone (or any other single industry) - and especially on a relatively low-skill, low-paying segment - it would be similarly foolish to ignore an industry that might find its niche in this region.
This is no time, in any event, to be looking down our noses at any sources of employment.