posted October 22, 2004
Stephen Culp, CEO of Chattanooga's SmartFurniture, is featured on the November 2004 issue of Inc. Magazine that hit news stands October 12.
Mr. Culp said relocating to the Tennessee Valley Corridor made sense on both a personal and professional level. Silicon Valley, where he went to school and first developed the SmartFurniture prototypes, hit a peak in the late 1990s, he said. Upon returning to Chattanooga in 2001, Mr. Culp said he realized the area was just beginning another major renaissance. He said the Tennessee Valley Corridor has a vision and is executing a plan based on that vision to help new high-tech businesses achieve success.
"With its entrepreneurial climate, growing technological infrastructure, reasonable cost of living and doing business and status as a formidable distribution hub, Chattanooga and the Tennessee Valley Corridor made a logical choice for planning and launching Smart Furniture," he stated.
SmartFurniture presented their business plan at the Annual Tennessee Valley Venture Forum on November 17, 2003 and secured funding from the regional Southern Appalachian Fund in August of 2004.
The patented, modular and tool-free Smart Furniture system was originally conceived by Mr. Culp at Stanford University in 1998 to meet the demand for attractive and versatile storage and display solutions in changing residential, office and retail environments. The Smart Furniture model leverages web technology and patented product design to save the company and customer time, space and money.
Smart Furniture is sold online, providing customers with custom solutions at a mass-production price. It ships flat packed, but has an expandable, modifiable Lego-like system designed to provide homes, offices and stores easy access to custom shelving and display solutions in a fraction of the normal time.
The Tennessee Valley Corridor is an economic development organization strategically linking the technology-rich Tennessee Valley from North Alabama through Tennessee into Southwest Virginia and Southern and Eastern Kentucky. The Tennessee Valley Corridor and the Research Triangle in Raleigh, N.C., were honored recently as the co-winners of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s 2004 Excellence in Economic Development Awards.
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