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From forward-thinking futurists to finding new twists on ancient endeavors, the people behind these companies are breaking new ground to stay local and yet thrive in a global market.
A wave of change has hit the world, with rapidly developing digital technology disrupting the way we produce, sell, and consume goods and services.
This moment is fraught with both risk and opportunity, and Roanoke Valley entrepreneurs are responding with innovative approaches that sustain and even take advantage of their local roots while enhancing their work and products in groundbreaking ways. These game-changing businesses run the gamut from agriculture to technology and vary wildly in size and scope, but they all share a sense of adventure and willingness to experiment.
These businesses are changing the Roanoke Valley’s economic landscape and blazing a trail into the future.
Black Dog Salvage
Roanoke
Black Dog Salvage has become an icon of southwest Roanoke, occupying a key hub on the Roanoke River Greenway between Vic Thomas Park and Memorial Bridge, as well as a place in the popular imagination through its reality show “Salvage Dawgs,” now entering its ninth season. It’s easy to forget that from its 1999 founding until 2003, Black Dog occupied a key parcel near the Roanoke River at Reserve Avenue and Franklin Road.
After moving to its current location in 2003, Black Dog became the subject of “Salvage Dawgs” on DIY and Great American Country Networks, which it used to showcase not just its charismatic owners (and their dogs) but also other regional businesses and locations. The show propelled Black Dog Salvage to another level and made its home a destination for the television show’s fans.
“I had no idea it would be as successful as it was, or really what that meant,” says co-founder Robert Kulp. “Sometimes it doesn’t mean what you think it’ll mean. It may not mean as many sales as I’d hoped, but it has had a bigger impact on the community than I could have dreamed. I couldn’t imagine people coming from Chicago to Roanoke just because they’d seen the show about the store.”
Black Dog has served as an incubator for other entrepreneurs that started with booths before launching independent stores, such as Upcycled Gifts, the Shabby Farmhouse Girl and Underdog Bikes. The team’s latest project—and the subject of next season—is restoring the Stone House, built around 1911 by an Italian stone mason who migrated to the United States in 1867. The house will be renovated into a rentable cottage, where all the furniture is for sale.
Parkway Brewing Company
Salem
The Roanoke Valley’s craft-brewing scene has surged since the 2016 announcements that Oregon’s Deschutes Brewery and California’s Ballast Point Brewing would build here. Long before the West Coasters arrived, however, local craft brewers built a thriving local scene. The late Roanoke Railhouse Brewing Co. gave rise to at least three regional breweries, including Parkway Brewing, which opened in Salem in 2012—just in time to take advantage of a newly passed state law that allowed taprooms.
Parkway wasn’t Roanoke’s first brewery, but it was one of the first successful ones, penetrating the retail market and building a community around its taproom on Kessler Mill Road. More than five years in, the brewery has passed on to a second generation of management, a key moment that many beer manufacturers don’t survive.
Mike Pensinger, the brewery’s manager and brewmaster, has focused Parkway on growing steadily and sustainably, expanding last year into North Carolina and Ohio, with West Virginia and Maryland in future plans. Pensinger’s philosophy is simple: “Make good solid beer.”
“We don’t have to be on the cutting edge all the time,” he says. “Instead, we try to concentrate on the basics that make us that much better. It makes us that place that concentrates on the quality and level of our beer, creating an atmosphere and vibe for what Parkway is.”
That focus on the basics has kept Parkway solid and growing amid the rush of new, often smaller, more taproom-focused breweries that have opened in recent years. The brewery has also lent its labels to support local authors, including a session IPA devoted to Beth Macy’s “Factory Man” and a brown ale for Martin Clark’s “The Jezebel Remedy.”
Industrial BIODynamics
Salem
There’s money to be made in helping other companies save money. Industrial Biodynamics, a company that launched in 2013 at Blacksburg’s Corporate Research Center before moving to Salem last year, offers experiential training technology to prevent slips, trips and falls, which tend to be the number one or two cause of injuries in most industries. Industrial Biodynamics’s slip simulator—an apparatus with a slippery surface and safety harness— allows participants to practice the proper way to navigate conditions in which falls are most likely.
“It changes their perception and awareness of the risk,” says spokesman Christian James. “If you ask what people think is the biggest risk in any industry, workers will say something like getting a hand caught in a machine, not just falling in a parking lot, which unfortunately ranks near the top. When they get on the surface, they say, ‘Oh this is a problem,’ which causes them to focus in on the training about different techniques and best practices.”
Industrial Biodynamics also manufactures stationary and trailer-bound slip simulators that allow larger companies to train their own workforce. The company provides training on entering and exiting large vehicles like tractor trailer trucks and other large vehicles.
New Hope Support Services
Roanoke
The United States once dealt with mental illness by locking patients in institutions. Today, treatment has largely moved from the institution into the community, but many still suffer from a lack of support in dealing with their illnesses. New Hope Support Services, founded in Roanoke in 2008, works to provide that support to individuals and their families.
The company grew from one location to seven, providing services in Abingdon, Danville, Harrisonburg, Lynchburg, Martinsville, Roanoke and South Boston. It now employs more than 100 people who work with nearly 400 clients.
“We’ve served thousands of people over the 10 years in helping them to rehabilitate themselves,” says company founder Sherman Lea Jr. “We’re helping them stay out of hospitals, out of homelessness, out of incarceration and out of serious mental illness.”
When a person has been diagnosed with a chronic mental illness, New Hope assigns them a staffer who spends six to 12 hours each week helping them to organize and manage their life. That includes regularly taking medication but also assisting them with basic life skills such as budgeting and time management. That support helps the client to build and keep a routine, which can in turn keep them in a job, off the street and out of the hospital.
ORIGOConnect
Roanoke
Distracted driving is a problem, not just for commuters on Interstate 81, but for companies who routinely rely on non-commercial drivers to push their business.
“The crash statistics are just too high,” says ORIGOConnect President Clay Skelton, “and the problem is not going away. People are distracted by their phones, their tablets, whatever they have in their vehicle. It’s becoming more and more pervasive. It’s leading to lots of crashes and deaths in Virginia.”
That’s where ORIGOConnect comes in. The 11-employee business makes a product that gives supervisors the ability to monitor what wireless devices are in a vehicle. If authorized devices are detected, fine, but if not, the driver’s supervisor receives a text message reporting the rogue device. The company also makes an application that can be downloaded to a phone which prevents it from being used while the vehicle is in motion.
Skelton says the company’s customer base is not businesses that employ people whose job is to drive, but those who must drive to deliver a service. Think sales reps, plumbers, electricians, delivery people and landscaping workers. ORIGOConnect’s portfolio already includes a number of Fortune 100 companies, and with more states moving to ban the use of smartphones while driving, that number is likely to increase even more in the future.
Patchwork Farm
Copper Hill
Farming is one of humanity’s oldest jobs, yet it continues to evolve. Since owners Bryan and Amy Willoughby broke ground just off the Blue Ridge Parkway in 2009, Patchwork Farm has produced a wide variety of biologically grown produce and become a staple of the Grandin Farmers Market. After nearly a decade of steadily tweaking their business model, the Willoughbys are making a big shift in 2018, stepping away from the farmers market to focus more on supplying customers directly from their farm, as well as selling to restaurants and to wholesalers.
That change was made possible by five high tunnels—low tech, passive solar structures with a double layer of plastic wrapped around a steel frame. There’s no supplemental light or heat, but the system allows farmers to stretch their growing season, and paired with rotating seasonal crops, it’s allowed Patchwork to grow vegetables year-round. The Willoughbys built a barn with a refrigerator room that allows their customers to order and pick up produce directly from the farm. They supplement their variety of seasonal vegetables with an array of other locally-produced products from other vendors, including kombucha and honey.
“Floyd is known for its grassroots community of cottage businesses,” says Amy Willoughby. “We felt like, if we had an outlet to support those other businesses, it could be a natural fit. If the same people were trying to get those foods somewhere else, it could make it easier to have them all under one roof.”
Besides its on-site and wholesale operations, Patchwork also supplies a number of Roanoke Valley restaurants, including Local Roots, Lucky Restaurant, Fortunato and Bent Mountain Bistro.
Sterling ES
Salem
Say you’re a large utility, government agency or business, and you need to invest in a new technical system—uploading paper and electronic files into online “cloud” storage, for example. You don’t have the in-house expertise to do that, so you call Sterling ES. The Salem business facilitates industrial connectivity, linking specialty manufacturers to larger clients such as American Electric Power and the Virginia Department of Transportation. Owners Reid and Lisa Garst and their six employees act as fixers and troubleshooters, drawing from their manufacturer network to provide customized solutions.
Sterling maintains a core list of about 10 manufacturers but works with a total of about two dozen, providing sales, service and support to a broad range of several hundred customers in Virginia, the Carolinas and West Virginia.
“More often than not, a company will come to us and say we need something that does this or that,” says Reid Garst. “We take one component or integrate several into a system that will accomplish their goal.”
The Garsts launched the company in Richmond in 1996 before moving to Salem two years later. The Roanoke Valley provides a central location with access to the Mid-Atlantic region, and they’ve incorporated the beautiful scenery of Virginia’s Blue Ridge into their marketing as well. (Editor’s note: Sterling ES was purchased by the BRAAS company in early April.)
St. Pierre Woodworking
Floyd
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, the saying goes, and Bill St. Pierre has proven it by building a business out of repurposing wood otherwise destined for landfills and scrap heaps. Whether it’s an old tree cut out of a park by the city of Roanoke, or a chestnut beam dug from the bottom of a silted pond, St. Pierre specializes in finding overlooked, high-quality lumber and turning it into premium furniture and other wood products. He’s responsible for the gorgeous wood bar at the Deschutes Taproom in downtown Roanoke, as well as the woodwork and trim at the refurbished Virginian Railway Station on Williamson Road by the railroad tracks.
St. Pierre started the woodworking business in 2004 on the side from his primary job as a construction superintendent, but it has grown to full-time status, employing four workers, not counting St. Pierre and his wife. Some of his lumber comes from government sources: He recently received a magnolia tree cut at the White House, as well as a huge elm tree from Elmwood Park. He often recovers wood from old barns that have been torn down.
“Nothing here is just an ordinary piece of wood,” St. Pierre says as he gestures toward stacks of lumber stored at his shop near Check. “It all has a story to tell.”
The wood creations of St. Pierre have generated attention and accolades, including winning best new small business at the Roanoke Chamber of Commerce in 2017. St. Pierre also appeared on “Salvage Dawgs” in season 3, and sharp-eyed viewers will spot him operating an excavator in the show’s opening.
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