Lovingston, VA – A quiet back road off Rt. 29 in rural Virginia flanked by a stunning mountainous backdrop leads to the small town of Lovingston, VA. Main Street is only a few hundred yards long and mid-way down is an unassuming, 100 year-old house. A colonial style porch, complete with wooden swing, guides one to the front door, which when opened reveals the last thing you’d expect: a high-tech firm.
This unlikely locale is the headquarters for Oak Tree Systems, Inc., a decade old company that designs web-based administrative software (www.trainingforce.com for corporate and for-profit training. David Bryant, Founder and President, was raised in the area before heading to D.C. in the 80s, where he put in torturously long work weeks as a programmer for a consulting company. In the mid-90s, Bryant started his own software company in Richmond, Virginia before eventually moving the operation to his rural hometown in 2002.
“As the son of a farmer, I’ve always been a small-town boy at heart,” Bryant said. “As soon as the Internet and other technology permitted our dot-com to make the move to a more rural environment, we bid city life goodbye.”
Bryant manages the company along with his wife, Kim. In their spare time, they run what they call a “hobby farm”, a 20-acre ranch where they built their home.
“This was Dave’s childhood dream and we’re making it happen,” Kim said. “We think it is just too funny that we are geeks by day and farmers on the weekend. Only in this day and age could both be possible.”
And they aren’t alone.
Experts say the Bryants' viewpoint is becoming more common among high-tech entrepreneurs, many of whom are ditching the fast pace, inflated costs and traffic often associated with big city settings.
Denise Stuart, Chief Executive for inward investment company York-england.com, said they succeeded in attracting 79 businesses to the rural York and North Yorkshire regions of England by marketing the benefits of moving high-tech companies to the country.
“Our successes range from Phosys a cutting edge photography software provider, to Red Hat Hire, a plant and tool hire company, to Forgene Services Ltd, a Bio-Technology company who provides equipment for DNA and cell work,” Stuart said. “There does not seem to be a defined pattern, which is great news as it creates a wider job offering for local residents in areas that have predominantly been agriculturally driven or acted as commuter hubs for the larger towns and cities in the surrounding areas.”
She said the majority of the rural business parks in North Yorkshire are located in renovated farm buildings, in an area offering low pollution, low crime rates, beautiful landscapes, and “the opportunity to become a member of the community rather than a face in the crowd”.
Getting employees away from the often stressful city life and dreaded daily commute helps to create a highly motivated, high-spirited workforce, Stuart added.
Businesses in rural areas have a main advantage: Lower Costs.
Another perk of life outside the big city for these companies is that the cost of living is generally much lower than in urban centers. Office space can be leased for less; lower cost of living means lower wages, and less money is wasted on the commute thanks to low traffic levels, which also helps the environment.
"Because our overhead is so low, our prices reflect that," Robert Smith, head of RSA Public Relations, told the Associated Press in a 2005 interview. His company is based in Rockton, Ill., population 5,500, located about 95 miles northwest of Chicago.
This fact actually puts rural companies at an advantage to their urban counterparts. With the Internet, Webcasts and global teleconferencing making up for physical remoteness, companies looking to cut costs might find a move to rural America to be highly beneficial.
But there are also disadvantages: Travel & Hiring There are some experts that say a video relationship with clients can not make-up for a face-to-face relationship and physical presence at meetings. Costs to send employees to present business proposals or to semi-annual meetings for rural companies can become a huge cost issue.
Some CEOs, like Smith, plan vacations around visits with his clients, according to the AP article titled “High-tech Firms get Small-town benefits”.
Smith said he can get his clients the same level of publicity they would with “slick, big-city firms” at a fifth of the cost.
"There's this false sense of security. A lot of them think they want someone in the big city," Smith said. "That's not as important as it used to be. They see that we're just one phone call and one e-mail away from the same people.
“Why pay $10,000 for that when you can get it for $2,000?"
Bryant, whose company is based in a remote part of Virginia (population: 3,623) says his firm’s main challenge is hiring. “We are in such a specialized field that hiring full-time staff for our needs is nearly impossible in a town this isolated. So, we rely heavily on outsourcing and consultants. The upside is that it’s forced us to be a very ‘lean and mean’ organization, which has been great for profits and minimizes HR headaches.”
Could this mean an end to the “brain drain” in rural America?
As small and large firms move to the country and offer consulting, service and products at lower prices, they are able to attract many of the jobs outsourced by national companies that might have gone to foreign countries such as India.
If more jobs were to open up in these rural areas, it could help slow the exodus of the single, educated youth to urban centers, where the majority of the jobs are thought to exist.
For people who wish to maintain a rural lifestyle, or start one in order to get away from the rush of the city, there are companies such as Rural Sourcing Inc. (RSI), which helps to promote national outsourcing to rural America rather than sending the same jobs outside the country. They bring together educated, capable workers and promote their services to large companies looking to outsource.
RSI’s stated goal is to retain high tech service and support jobs in America through “domestic sourcing”, or building a network of highly skilled professionals from rural communities throughout the country and connecting them to outsourced jobs with large companies so they can live at home.
RSI founder, Kathy Brittain White, explained to CIO Magazine: "I know firsthand the capabilities and work ethics of individuals from rural areas and how many are underemployed. But because of family and personal reasons, they have to stay in the area."
“[The inward investment of companies to North Yorkshire] has created greater diversity in the economic offering of the area, heightening the opportunity to retain local graduates through the provision of high quality professional jobs on their doorstep.” Stuart said.
A lot of hype has been made about the Internet enabling companies to outsource work all over the globe, so why not to our own rural communities? Entrepreneurs such as Bryant and Smith are proving that the move is possible, profitable and beneficial to them and their local communities. The slow lane, high-tech lifestyle is becoming a global trend that could mean a renaissance for rural areas as jobs move to where the capable workers are rather than vice versa.
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High-Tech Company, Slow Lane Lifestyle - To learn more about this author, visit Cyril Graze's Website.
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