Mike Randle, Editor

Wow, 10 Years!

Our two boys were very young in 1992, when my wife Beverly and I decided to launch Southern Business & Development, a guide to corporate relocation and expansion in the American South. The family was vacationing in the Smoky Mountains in February of 1992 when I made the trek east on I-40, over the mountains to my first appointment in Salisbury, N.C. Beverly and the babies went home to Alabama that day. I went on to something I have been dedicated to for 10 years now.

The magazine has come a long way since. I remember the early years when I demanded that our page count equal some of the more established site books, such as Site Selection, Plants, Sites & Parks and Expansion Management, so that we wouldn't look so puny to our readers. To my amazement, our ad space was very high from the get-go, but the space our editorial content took up was very low. Simply put, we didn't know enough about what we were writing at that time. We struggled editorially early on.

So how did we manage to put so many pages out? We used 14, 16 and even 18-point font for our stories, when the normal font is nine and 10-point. It was like we were adjusting our type for readers with 40-4,000 eyesight. I thought it was reasonably acceptable for a startup until I received a call in 1993 from a big-time ad agency exec in Atlanta who questioned me, "We love your magazine, but are all of your readers blind?" I replied, "No, we're just filling space that our advertisers have generated." He said, "Why don't you get more writers." We did.

I am proud to write that SB&D made a profit the first issue and has every year since. After 10 years, you'd think we'd have a bad year. That hasn't been the case. Furthermore, I may own one of only a handful of businesses in the U.S. that has never had an uncollected invoice. That should tell you volumes about the character of economic development organizations in the South. They do what they say they will do. We have reciprocated. We've paid every invoice over the last 10 years, too.

The idea of a Southern site book read by folks from outside the South is a niche that we created. It's a good one, but it's unlike any publication in print. SB&D is something that's needed. It's something that's used. It has value, something that, considering what's happening in today's economy, will not be a product that will be weeded out. Quite simply, this magazine is a success and it's my favorite publication I've launched in 20 years of publishing. Yes, this is my 20th Anniversary of owning this publishing shop. Twenty years ago, at the age of 25, I founded the Birmingham Business Journal.

As for you folks looking to the South for a site for your company, I hope you will continue using SB&D and sb-d.com for the next 10 years. After a couple of years of faking our credibility with 18-point type, we are now, without question, the No. 1 source for site selection answers in the American South. We now know more than anyone else knows about this great region. That's not a boast. It's like the Eagle Scout. We earned the designation through millions of hours of research, thousands of appointments and visits to over 1,600 different Southern markets. There is no source -- no person, no consultant, no earthly entity that knows more about the American South than us.

I would like to make sure site searching execs know this one thing: When Southern economic development practitioners side with you during your important search, you will not have a better friend. The sites and the economic development agencies and practitioners representing those sites found in this edition and in others, are the finest in the South. As a reader and site searcher, it's important for you to know that we have no salespeople working for this magazine -- never have in 10 years. So, what you are reading are handpicked sites that we want in our publication. No one works for us who is selling pages and information to collect commissions. The sites you see here, are, for every practical purpose, invited to be in SB&D, not conjured and sold.

There are so many people to thank who have helped get us to our 10th Anniversary that it's impossible to list them here. In fact, the number is in the thousands. Some help us more one year, others help us more the next. They help us bring you what you need in a Southern site search: information about the South that is critical and unavailable from any other source.

After making it 10 years I'd like to write, thank you prospects, especially those site searchers from the Northeast. Thank you consultants, especially Leak and Goforth. Thank you fair competitors, such as Site Selection, Plants, Sites & Parks and Expansion Management. Thank you Southern politicos, especially Ned Ray McWherter and George Allen, Jr. Thank you administration (Gene Stinson and Kelly Bentley) and members of the Southern Economic Development Council. Thank you advertisers, especially Orlando Central Park (has run a full page in every edition for 10 years), Winston-Salem Business, Inc. (my first sale and an organization that continues to trust us), Alagasco, Harrison County Development Commission, Tennessee DECD, Greater Richmond Partnership and Gibson County, Tenn. (advertisers who have run with us almost every edition for years). Actually, there are dozens more I'd like to thank but I don't have the space.

Finally, thank you Beverly for trusting me. Thank you mom and dad and all of my family. Thank you New York media, primarily the New York Times and Wall Street Journal for throwing up the white flag, finally -- I wrote to you 10 years ago that the South is dominating the world's economy and I was right and you were wrong. Thank you God. I'm set to go for the next 10 years.