Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 4, 1994 TAG: 9410190007
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
It worked.
The 80,000-square-foot building has become an unofficial business incubator housing three established companies and two fledgling outfits plus the office for Bright Properties. Together, they employ about 30 people.
And, there's room for more companies, said Bright. The building is about 70 percent occupied.
"We were, and are still, looking for possible businesses to back," he said last week.
The warehouse, which has one-, two- and three-level sections, was built in two stages; the first in 1941 and the second in 1946-47, for a Southern States warehouse and store.
Bright and his brother, William, bought the property from Southern States in 1978.
It's mostly William Bright's money that is available as venture capital, said John Bright.
William Bright, a successful coal operator and manufacturer who lives in Summersville, W.Va., has among his holdings the Winter Place ski resort near Beckley, W.Va.
But John Bright, who is in his early 60s and semi-retired, is no slouch as a businessman. While still in high school in West Virginia, he created ads and calendars featuring his pet dog, Mickey, dressed as a variety of characters.
Bright made enough money with Mickey to pay his way through West Virginia University, where he majored in English. He then spent two years in the Army and used his G.I. Bill to get a master's degree in cinema from the University of Southern California.
He worked briefly for a New York photographer who took pictures of church altars and turned the photos into greeting cards.
Next, he set up his own business photographing churches and producing cards for churches to sell to their congregations for fund raising.
That got him into the business of making items for groups to sell to raise money.
Until the late 1980s, he and a now ex-wife ran Bright Crest Ltd. in the Roanoke warehouse.
Bright Crest was the outgrowth of a family business, Bright of America, in Summersville, W.Va. It did four-color printing and made items such as place mats, drink coasters, stationery items and refrigerator magnets.
The business was damaged heavily by flooding in 1985, but the damage was covered by insurance, said Bright.
After the flood, the company continued operating in Roanoke, but in a year merged with Bright of America. In 1991, that company was sold to Russ Berrie & Co. of Oakland, N.J., one of the nation's largest marketers of impulse gifts, such as stuffed animals, china dolls and candles.
There was about $2 million worth of Bright Crest products and materials left in the warehouse when the business was bought by Russ Berrie, and Bright said he spent the next couple of years on the road selling it.
When he'd gotten rid of all he could, he thought it was time to look for something to do with the building.
He said the Roanoke project allows him to stay involved in business and provides his brother with investment opportunities.
This is no giveaway, though, say entrepreneurs who have pitched proposals to the Brights.
Bright's warehouse is just off Elm Avenue at the intersection with the Roy L. Webber Expressway (581 spur).
The first floor sits three stories down from the expressway, which meant the roof-high banner offering venture capital was about eye level with motorists whizzing past downtown.
Greg Scribner saw it. So did Jerry Strayve.
But neither Scribner nor Strayve wanted Bright's money, at least not then. Since they became Bright's tenants, though, Scribner and Strayve have expanded into second businesses with financial backing from the Brights.
Both said they "were in the right place at the right time."
Scribner saw the sign about the time the lease was expiring on space in Vinton leased for his screen printing business.
"I'd never thought about moving in here," said Scribner. He had met Bright previously, though, so he decided to take a look at the warehouse. It was perfect; it even had a darkroom in place.
He moved in last Thanksgiving.
Earlier this year, Bright walked down the hall from his office to Scribner's and overheard a telephone conservation between a knitwear seller and Scribner about Scribner's desire to open a T-shirt "misprint" store when he got the money.
``[Bright] said, `Count me in on it,''' Scribner recalled. ``I'd never have asked him for it though.''
But that's how Scribner's Factory Outlet came into being.
Scribner and Bright bought the inventory from Stone & Co. of Martinsville, which was closing the store it had in a former car dealership on Virginia 419 near Tanglewood.
To that, they added the Turtle Tees line of shirts imprinted with area scenes including Grandin Theater, Jefferson High School and Mabry Mill and school-mascot shirts.
Then they went shopping for more stock for the 4,000-square-foot store that is designed to compete with the likes of national chains such as TJ Maxx.
The outlet opened in March, and merchandise has become more and more varied. It now includes the Schiesser line of German-made men's and women's underwear, a variety of outer wear and even Eagle Brand snack foods supplied by the Eagle distributorship that moved into the warehouse June1.
Scribner's screen printing business, which was grossing more than $600,000 a year when it was relocated, employs 12 people, including Scribner's wife, Allison. The outlet store, which Scribner said is "paying for itself," has two full-time and four part-time employees.
\ Jerry Strayve, like Scribner, said he was looking for space when he spotted the "venture capital" sign.
Strayve had started Southwest Moving & Storage in July 1993. He said the business was a moneymaker from the beginning - it grossed more than $200,000 in its first year - and he thought it was time to move its base out of his southwest Roanoke County home.
When Strayve came to look at the warehouse space for his moving company, he started thinking about how ideal the warehouse would be for indoor-storage units.
"I'd never heard of indoor storage units before, but I found out later that it had worked in lots of places," he said.
In November, he talked to Bright about the idea and they presented a proposal to William Bright in December. William Bright sent Strayve back to do more research before he would give his backing, but he agreed to let Strayve advertise indoor-storage facilities as a way of gauging interest in the project.
Strayve put an ad in the telephone directory's Yellow Pages and bought one in a newspaper, and he got customers.
"I started filling up little nooks and crannies all over the warehouse," he said.
When he got 15 renters, he also got the Brights' financial support. Two weeks ago, he began installing 134 metal storage units. These represent the first phase of an eventual 400 units, that will rent for $39 to $100 a month, depending on their size.
The units are renting almost as fast as they're put in place, Strayve said.
Now Strayve and the Brights are considering expanding into records management and storage.
\ One of the requirements of a business incubator is to provide information, direction and counsel to new businesses.
Strayve said he got all of that, and more, from the Brights and John Jennings, director of the Small Business Development Center operated by the Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce.
"They're my angels," Strayve said.
Strayve first approached Jennings in August 1993 and asked for help developing a marketing plan for his moving company. The Small Business office worked on that and later with budget and cash-flow projections for the indoor storage business.
Jennings said it was exciting to be a part of the warehouse project.
"Part of what comes from a business incubator is the synergy that flows when several businesses are in place," he said. "That's beginning to happen there."
The creative juices are flowing so rapidly at the location that they're bound to swallow Earl Gurtner, district manager of the Eagle Brands distributorship.
Eagle Brands is a franchisee of Eagle Snacks Inc. of St. Louis.
The Roanoke location is one of five depots for Eagle Brands. The products are delivered here from a North Carolina plant and then distributed to businesses on nine routes to Lynchburg, Martinsville, Blacksburg and Lexington.
Gurtner, who joined Eagle in April 1993, said there had been a lot of turnover of salespeople so he began riding with the driver-salespeople and listening to their ideas for improvement.
They said they were spending too much time getting in and out of the Salem warehouse.
Then Gurtner spotted Bright's warehouse sign and remembered that he'd been in the building when Bright's business was operating.
"It was the perfect location for me," Gurtner said.
The Fourth Street location, easily reached by turning off Elm Avenue onto Fourth Street at Domino's Pizza, cuts almost 45 minutes off of each one-way trip his trucks make. The covered loading docks are spacious enough for nine trucks to be loaded at once, compared with only two trucks simultaneously at the former location.
He said the salespeople are happy and Eagle's business has doubled in the area.
And last week, Gurtner was talking about how someday he'd like to move his used-golf-club business out of his home and into a retail location. He has 4,000 clubs.
A golf shop might fit nicely, in fact, with some other ideas John Bright has for the property since a recent rezoning of the property from light manufacturing to C-2 designation allows it to be used for more purposes.
Also, a dead-end section of Mountain Avenue that runs in front of the outlet store is being closed so the warehouse property and some nearby vacant lots Bright and others own can become one two-acre unit.
"We can put in stores. We could put in a restaurant," Bright said. The previous zoning allowed only stores connected to manufacturing operations on the site.
Bright said his brother is especially interested in a restaurant.
"I'm not too excited about that," he said. "But it could work because it doesn't have to."
by CNB