Grassroots of Tarboro

Attracting big businesses and factory-type employers to our town is an idea whose time has past, We need to come up with new Thinking Out of the Box ideas to bring jobs, entreprenuers and income producing methods to the people of Tarboro. What about all of those TOURISM dollars? Let's get people to spend them here!

I don't see a large employer coming to Tarboro, there's not a vast highly educated workforce here for some fancy company and the global economy makes it too expensive for big factories in America most of the time. We need to work on small-medium size businesses. For Tarboro, we need a niche, something to draw people to us & that will help to create an industry, jobs, growth, etc.

I've been fascinated by the Watermark Association of Artisans located in Camden, NC just east of Elizabeth City. It started, back in 1978, as a group of 35 women who formed a cooperative in hope of selling their crafts locally. The organization now receives 93 percent of its $1 million annual income from its wholesale manufacturing and distributing efforts. Watermark's fact sheet estimates that the organization has pumped $16 million into the local economy since 1980.
Read the linked article and anything else you can find on this amazing grassroots endeavor. There's no reason why we can't do something similar here in Tarboro.

In our wholesale business, our top-selling product is made by a family business in New York. We are their primary distributor and sell enough of their product to keep them doing VERY well. What we pay them could more than support a family business here.
If there was a local family that could produce the same product, the money we send to New York could stay right here in Edgecombe County.
I often wonder how many other local businesses "import" a product or products that could be made right here.
Think INSIDE the box for this one... what jobs can we create with the existing local demand?