
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 27, 1994                   TAG: 9404280006
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

NEW PIPELINE

DURING the 1980s, the state's Department of Agriculture used the slogan "We have it made in Virginia" to successfully promote peanuts, ham, gourmet jellies and a cornucopia of Virginia food products to the rest of the world. Now the Virginia Economic Bridge Initiative, headed by Lt. Gov. Don Beyer, has dusted off the concept, if not the slogan itself, to promote goods and services available from numerous, somewhat obscure businesses - mostly small, mostly in Southwest Virginia - to the rest of the state.

The bridge initiative was set up in 1989 with the hope that some big employers in urbanized (and costly) Northern Virginia might be enticed to move or open satellite operations in rural Southwest Virginia, where economic development has lagged behind other parts of the state (and where costs of doing business lag, too). That hope is ongoing, as are efforts - cooperatively orchestrated mainly at Virginia Tech and George Mason University - to link business opportunities for the two regions.

More should be happening; the program should be expanded. But this is to say it's a good idea and a worthy effort.

More recently, the bridge program's infrastructure has been expanded to include the Virginia Procurement Pipeline - another good idea.

It is a user-friendly computerized database of information about made-in-Virginia wares of hundreds of companies, many of which are virtually unknown outside their hometowns. Floppy disks containing this information will soon be distributed to the state's 100 top procurement officers in both private industry and government.

The hoped-for result, obviously, is that when filling future purchase orders, procurement officers will shop via the pipeline, channeling business to Virginia companies whenever they can.

And the potential is considerable. Literally thousands of small companies and entrepreneurs in this region and elsewhere in the state produce everything from high-tech services to specialized nuts and bolts. But often they don't have advertising budgets and can't afford to send sales representatives out to call on procurement officers. They generally depend on word of mouth and just plain luck to become known and to make sales so they can thrive and grow.

The pipeline can serve as their sales reps. It costs small businesses nothing to get listed in the database, and costs the state's top procurement officers nothing to have and use the information. The program is sponsored by Tech, George Mason, the state's Center for Innovative Technology, a handful of community colleges and Appalachian Power Co. - all of which have an interest in fostering economic development.

A test run has already paid dividends for Southwest Virginia. One example: Mobil Corp., with national headquarters in Northern Virginia, had previously purchased all of the uniforms for dealers and employees of its 12,000 service stations through out-of-state firms. With the help of bridge and pipeline facilitators at Tech and George Mason, Mobil discovered Lebanon Apparel Corp. in Russell County.

Voila! A two-year, $3.2 million contract for the Lebanon firm to make uniforms. That's a made-in-Virginia success story, and it's not peanuts.

by CNB