Forget startup businesses, Chattanooga is home to many 100-year-old stalwarts

A worker moves appliance parts from a press at the Whirlpool manufacturing plant on Thursday, Oct. 6, 2016, in Cleveland, Tenn. The plant gave tours of its facility for National Manufacturing Week.
A worker moves appliance parts from a press at the Whirlpool manufacturing plant on Thursday, Oct. 6, 2016, in Cleveland, Tenn. The plant gave tours of its facility for National Manufacturing Week.

Turning 100 in 2017

› MoonPie brand made by Chattanooga Bakery› Dixie Foundry in Cleveland, which grew into today’s Whirlpool appliances› Hubbuch Glass, which began as a mirror-making business in Chattanooga› The Chattanooga Mill making recycled cardboard today for WestRock Chattanooga› Citizens Savings & Loan offers consumer loans and has grown to 19 offices

Chattanooga aims to nurture startup businesses.

Chattanooga is home to Tennessee's biggest business incubator on the North Shore and a 140-acre Innovation District downtown, anchored by the 11-story Edney Innovation Center that caters to creative workers in Chattanooga's "entrepreneurial ecosystem." GigTank programs run through the summer, Startup Week Chattanooga is held every October and business accelerator programs are regularly conducted by The Company Lab, the Lamp Post Group and LaunchTN.

While startups may be sexy, the U.S. Small Business Administration says only about half of all businesses survive more than five years, fewer than a third last beyond 12 years and only a tiny fraction of 1 percent are still in business after 100 years.

But for all its focus on new business startups, Southeast Tennessee is still home to stalwart businesses that launched 100 years ago - and are still going strong.

During 2017, the century-old businesses and brands included the MoonPie made by Chattanooga Bakery; Whirlpool appliances, which has century-old roots in Cleveland, Tenn.; Hubbuch Glass, which began as a mirror-making business in Chattanooga; Citizens Savings and Loan Corp., a consumer finance company that opened on the first floor of the Volunteer State Life building when it was built in 1917, and WestRock Chattanooga, which celebrated its 100th anniversary of its North Chattanooga mill - one of the first mills in the South to recycle cardboard.

A century of making paper

Bales of recycled cardboard boxes go in one end of the sprawling plant on 40 acres at 701 Manufacturers Road and rolls of recycled paperboard come out the other.

"We were environmentally conscious 100 years ago," says Pat Cowan, general manager of the WestRock Chattanooga Mill.

The plant's output is sold to customers, including Southern Champion Tray located next door, to make such things as cardboard tubes, the dividers in wine cases and the pink-hued boxes that hold doughnuts, cakes and other bakery products.

The mill's huge machinery is steam-powered. Some working parts were installed in 1947 and pieces of the original, 1917 paper-making line are still in place, too, says mill maintenance superintendent Jackie Hancock.

"It's old technology, but it is still working," Hancock says.

"The Chattanooga Mill is a world-class facility," says Steve Voorhees, the CEO of WestRock, a $15 billion, publicly-traded company based in Norcross, Ga., that employs some 45,000 people in more than 300 facilities.

He cited data from the survey company, Gallup, to back it up.

When the mill's business customers were asked by Gallup if they'd recommend the Chattanooga facility on a one-to-five scale, he says the Chattanooga WestRock Chattanooga Mill got a 4.74 score.

"World class is 4.7," Voorhees says.

MoonPies first made for coal miners

About 1 million MoonPies are made a day at the Chattanooga Bakery, a business at 900 Manufacturers Road that's been privately owned and operated by the Campbell family for several generations. The company president is Sam Campbell IV.

The MoonPie was born in 1917, when a Kentucky coal miner asked the bakery's traveling salesman, Earl Mitchell, Sr., for a snack "as big as the moon" as a way to tide miners over between meals. Mitchell reported back to the bakery, and it came up with the 5-cent MoonPie: two soft, four-inch graham cookies, with a layer of marshmallow between, dipped in chocolate.

"It was filling, fit in the lunch pail and the coal miners loved it," the company says.

The Aug. 21 total solar eclipse that cut a swath across the United States in 2017 lit up sales of MoonPies.

"We did more sales in the two weeks than we did in all of 2016 online," MoonPie General Store President Alex Brener said.

Chattanooga Bakery Co. baked as many MoonPies as it could, but the company had to temporarily shut down its website for about a week in August when demand outstripped the company's production capacity.

Little has changed at Hubbuch Glass

Hubbuch Glass at 855 Central Ave. is named after Otto Hubbuch, who started the company in 1917. He moved the business to its current location in 1927 - and not much has changed since then.

Until 1962, Hubbuch primarily made wood-framed mirrors, including for the Read House Hotel, a landmark in downtown Chattanooga.

Mirror-making stopped when the Chattanooga pollution board got on Hubbuch because chemicals from the silvering process were rising into the atmosphere. Also, other companies, particularly those in North Carolina, were producing cheaper versions.

Hubbuch, then under the direction of son Bill Hubbuch, moved from mirrors into making storefront and bathroom glass.

In the late '60s, Bill Hubbuch wanted to do a "1 million dollar job," says Don Johnson, Hubbuch's current president and co-owner. So Hubbuch lowered his bid on what would become the "gold building" on Pine Street next to the freeway. It took three years to complete and finally opened in 1970, serving as offices for BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee. The gold building recently underwent a multimillion dollar renovation and reopened as the Westin Hotel.

Today, Hubbuch makes most of its money in aluminum windows. It cuts the frames and makes the windows on site.

The 15-inch DeWalt radial-arm saw used to cut the frames was put in place in the '50s. The storage bins where the glass is kept are also original. You can even follow the original yellow line painted on the floor that takes you to the pick-up area.

Citizens Savings & Loan is oldest local lender of its kind

Citizens Savings & Loan was formed in November 1917 and opened the next month on the ground floor of the then new 10-story Volunteer State Life building as a general savings and loan company.

The Chattanooga-based lender has grown over the past century to now include 19 branches in Middle and East Tennessee. While the savings and loan name has been retained for 100 years, Citizens is not a savings and loan as they are known today. Rather, the company is a consumer finance company offering traditional installment loans from $1,000 to $20,000 to help with purchases of cars, boats, furniture, appliances and other borrowing needs.

Citizens is headed by Pat St. Charles III, the company CEO since 2003 and only the third president of the company in the past 60 years.

Whirlpool's Cleveland roots 100 years old

Whirlpool's new plant that opened in 2012 in Cleveland, Tennessee is the corporation's largest maker of premium cooking products, including free-standing double ovens and a handful of brands that are household names: Whirlpool, Amana, Maytag, Jenn-Air and KitchenAid.

Whirlpool's roots in Cleveland go back 100 years, since July 2017 marked 100 years since Dixie Foundry lit its furnaces and drew "first heat."

Cleveland's Dixie Foundry progressed to become known nationally and internationally as Magic Chef. Maytag bought Magic Chef in 1986. And then in 2006, Whirlpool bought Maytag.

Whirlpool is one of the area's key companies in the appliance industry with roughly 1,500 employees at its Cleveland plant and another 600 working at a call center.

Business at the Whirlpool facility in Cleveland is steadily improving as the housing market regains momentum after the recession, company officials say. Tennessee has the second biggest presence of Whirlpool workers nationwide behind Ohio, which has five plants.

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