Officials at the California-based Gutterglove, Inc. announced Monday that they will relocate their company’s headquarters from Roseville, California to Franklin, Tennessee.
Gutterglove manufactures professional grade stainless steel gutter guards. Company officials will invest $720,800 and create 20 new jobs in Williamson County, according to an emailed Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development press release.
Company spokesman Matt Smith told The Tennessee Star on Monday that about 70 percent of Gutterglove’s customers live closer to Tennessee than they do California.
“The state of Tennessee has a wealth of talent in the manufacturing space, which was a huge driver for us,” Smith said.
Gutterglove officials invested more than $5 million last year into a new manufacturing and distribution operations center in La Vergne. They said in a press release last year that the La Vergne center will create 85 jobs.
The Star asked Smith if Tennessee’s conservative tax policies prompted the company’s move to the Volunteer State.
“Certainly, when we looked at our factory and then when we looked at where we would put it, we certainly wanted to find a place that was really supportive of business,” Smith said.
“I think for us we have been pleased across the gamut in terms of the folks that we interfaced with in Middle Tennessee, with their willingness and their interest in having us be a part of their business community and the broader community in general. Once we got our factory set up and felt so welcomed it was a natural thing for us to contemplate.”
According to new research by The Hoover Institution at Stanford University, the state of Tennessee is the second most popular destination for companies fleeing California.
The study found that from January 1, 2018 through June 30, 2021, exactly 25 companies headquartered in California relocated to Tennessee. Exactly 114 went to the Lone Star State. Some businesses that relocated to Tennessee include CKE (Carl’s Jr.), DARVIS, Educational Media Foundation, Harrow Health, JC Ford Co., Kaiser Aluminum, and Master Manufacturing Group.
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Gutterglove Installation” by Gutterglove.
CA has great social services. Just look at the success of San Francisco. Coming to a TN city near you.
That’s the price one pays for recruiting companies from other parts of the world with different ideological outlooks. Life has its trade-offs, as conservatives used to lecture us leftists on. Now, the conservatives need to follow their own medicine.
Other questions: do the employees of these migrating companies share the same desire as their EMPLOYERS to move to Tennessee?
Finally, just because a company moves from California to Tennessee to escape excessive regulation does not necessarily mean that they embrace other aspects of Tennessee like religious fundamentalism, a relative lack of essential social services, etc. One can remember where people moving to Oklahoma from California may have liked Oklahoma’s lower real estate prices, but were appalled at its relatively inferior public schools, mass transit, and other essential government services. Some of them decided to eventually leave Oklahoma for a place like New Mexico with a much more moderate political and cultural climate than Oklahoma.
And the Oklahomans cheered them as they left the state.
Before long we Tennesseans will have to move to California to escape the socialists relocating from there to here. Bigger is not better.
Too bad we don’t have a state government which keeps them from bringing their socialist ideas with them.
And this company is one of THOSE….everybody identifies by their pronoun.