Lexington [Henderson County] lands corporate HQ

[Rural King]

The Jackson Sun is reporting that Los Angeles based manufacturing firm HTI Technology and Industries has chosen Lexington as the location for their new corporate HQ. The firm specializes in electric motors. The paper reports that up too 100 jobs could be brought in/created by the firm's relocation with more details forthcoming in Saturday's paper.

This is great news for Lexington and Henderson County, which is a county that has been on the ball for years in regards to luring and maintaining in manufacturing base by investing in key infrastructure such as its industrial parks and airport that so many businesses look at as pre-resquite to even considering a location. It also shows that even smaller cities in Tennessee are getting into the HQ relocation picture due to our state's and local communities' pro-business environments.

[Rural King]

The Jackson Sun followed up the relocation of HTI Technology and Industries to Lexington today.

According to the follow-up story the company is going to have immediate openings for customer service, sales, marketing, engineering, and warehouse positions for their new Lexington HQ while hoping to add manufacturing and accounting positions in the near future via statements by the firm's president, Lily Lu. The firm specializes in electric motors for appliances.

Lexington Mayor Bobby Dyer cited the city's industrial and economic development boards along with civic and business leaders as reasons the city was able to lure HTI to Lexington. HTI President Lu credited the city's geographic location to its customer base, location near Memphis and Nashville, as well as the ability of the firm to fit in and grow well in relation to size of the city. Mr. Lu spoke very highly of their decision on choosing Lexington and the firm has already moved their first inventory into their new 40,000 sq/ft facility in Timberlake Industrial Park. There is already talk of the firm expanding this facility to meed their growing needs as well.

This just seems like a great addition to the Lexington/Henderson County economy. While the addition of 100+ jobs is not the 500-600 level that so many people set unreasonable expectations for when we get this sort of news, it is the sort of diversification a city and county wants and needs to bring in to establish stability to their local economy through good times and bad. Plus the owners of this firm sound like the sort of hard-working small businesspersons that make America great. Hopefully HTI will be very successful in Lexington and grow into a firm that can provide hundreds of jobs to the local economy at some point - all large employers started out small at some point and we often forget that fact I feel.