Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 30, 1994 TAG: 9405060003
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV6 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Medium
Jim Vivian, president of MarkeTec Inc., a Blacksburg consulting company, has taken over managerial duties from Sarge Hoopes, who will return to Aiken, S.C., to handle other business interests.
The store, which opened early last year, was the first downtown antique outlet to be announced when the Pulaski Main Street program, under then-director Roscoe Cox, began pursuing such businesses.
It also was Cox, who stepped down as the Main Street program director last month, who got Vivian and Hoopes together. Vivian will lease the store and seek additional dealers for it.
Vivian has more than 25 years of experience in establishing marketing programs and departments for such companies as Hubbell Lighting in Christiansburg, and American Greetings, Jax Publishing Inc., HFC Corp., the J. Walter Thompson Co. and others, mostly in Ohio and New York. He has a bachelor's degree in math and physics and a master of business administration degree in marketing.
What does he know about antiques? Absolutely nothing, he cheerfully admitted.
``What I could bring is more of a marketing promotion, since I look at Pulaski as a sleeping giant, I think, that just needs a little bit of a push,'' Vivian said. ``There's a lot of untapped potential here.''
Vivian said he would rely on the antiques professionals to make sure he brings reputable dealers into the center. ``There's enough of those around here,'' he said. ``I can wear a lot of hats and do a lot of other things they can't ... My thing is going to be beating the sticks, getting more dealers in there. I want that place to be noisy!''
He said he would be working more with the dealers than the public. ``I'm going to be a different kind of manager than Sarge,'' he said.
Besides filling the building, Vivian plans to increase its schedule from three days a week to seven.
``With Disney going into Northern Virginia, I look for Interstate 81 to be even more busy,'' he said. ``It's virgin territory. ... If I didn't think there was potential, I should be committed for coming in here.''
Vivian has lived in this part of Virginia for about 15 years, and it is the first place where he has put down roots. ``The people talk to you here. In New York and Cleveland, they don't talk to you; they just tolerate you,'' he said.
Within minutes of reaching his agreement with Hoopes on the Pulaski Antique Center, Vivian was in the Renaissance Restaurant sipping coffee and bouncing new ideas off others at his table.
``Each community has to have a sense of identity, a focus, because if they know where they've been, they know where they're going,'' he said. ``They have to make downtown exciting again. I think people are looking for nostalgic items. They yearn for simpler times when there wasn't so much crime, and greed wasn't as prevalent, and this community could be a forerunner of that.''
He paints a picture of Main Street as the antique center, of intersecting streets with other themes, with old-fashioned soda fountains and other marks of Pulaski's past enticing tourists off the highway.
``All this isn't feasible right now,'' he said. ``But that all comes with growth.'' Vivian said he wanted to be part of that growth for Pulaski.
by CNB