John DeMoss wasn’t happy with his team’s 500-square-foot space on Georgia Avenue. It was a bit cramped.
“There were three of us, a conference room, a sofa and a server in the middle of the room that doubled as a space heater,” DeMoss said.
He decided to move his financial services firm, DeMoss Capital, to a 6,500-square-foot space inside the Harrington Building on Main Street, a historic structure that the partners believe formerly was a furniture store and a boarding house for travelers passing through the nearby Chattanooga Choo-Choo station.
His move to Main Street was motivated in part by a desire to expand the business at a time when revenue was increasing six times over, and in part to capitalize on the growing excitement surrounding Main Street’s redevelopment, he said.
“We really wanted to be a part of what is happening on the Southside,” DeMoss said. “We thought we could take the lead by being one of the first service firms on Main Street.”
Since founding the firm in 2007, DeMoss, who serves as president, took on Travis Flenniken as vice president of investments, and hired Lee Glover from Marietta, Ga., as vice president of private client services. Kay Hughes, operations manager, rounds out the team at what DeMoss describes as a “family office.”
The difference with DeMoss Capital, he said, is the fact that the company subsists off flat fees for its services, rather than commissions. The fee-based system, which removes the incentive to sell clients a product they may not need, has grown in popularity with both advisers and clients, the partners say.
Glover, who has previously worked under a commission-based system, called his new job at the pure fee-based firm “a refreshing change.”
“It helps us sit at the same side of the table as the client,” Flenniken added. “Legally we’re fiduciaries, with the legal obligation to do what’s in the client’s best interest.”
Flenniken pens a twice-monthly financial column that appears in the Business section of the Chattanooga Times Free Press on Wednesday.
Part of sitting down at the table with a client is having an upscale room in which to sit. With that in mind, DeMoss hired Collier Construction to renovate and update the workspace.
During preparation for the move, workers discovered old Bull Durham tobacco ads on an interior wall – a wall that used to be on the building’s exterior before a previous renovation enlarged the structure. The ads are significant because the brand was once one of the world’s most recognized around the turn of the 20th Century, according to Duke University, around the same time the Harrington Building was constructed, in 1900.
DeMoss decided to keep the decorations to preserve as much of the structure’s character as they could.
The ancient timbers underneath the floor needed to be replaced, so the team turned the old floor joists into a six by 15 foot conference table, as well as a table in the entrance hall.
While their space is much larger than their previous digs on Georgia Avenue, DeMoss said that firms like his have to be careful about managing their growth.
“You can lose sight of individual clients in a growing firm,” he said. “Working together as a team helps to deal with that issue.”
The firm also is determined not to lose touch with their new Southside neighbors. As part of joining the Main Street community, the partners have agreed to donate 50 percent of their profits to a different charitable cause each year.
But they also want to have a little fun, and will host a charity poker event as part of Main Street’s 24-hour celebration in December, DeMoss said with a slight smile.
“We just really enjoy being down there,” he said.