Hickory Farms' HQ Moving to Chicago

Excerpts from the Mar 3, 2017 Toledo Blade story

Chicago:

The new [Hickory Farms'] headquarters is on the city’s West Loop, just south of the Willis Tower, Chicago’s tallest building.

Hickory Farms’ parent company, Modjule LLC, is also headquartered in Chicago.

Though Hickory Farms’ headquarters had remained in metro Toledo, a sizable chunk of business previously left for Illinois.

In 2006, officials announced they would close a warehouse and distribution center in Maumee and consolidate operations at a new 250,000-square-foot facility in Joliet, about 40 miles southwest of downtown Chicago.

At the time, company officials said nearly 90 percent of their vendors were in Iowa, Wisconsin, or Chicago.

Ms. Pearse said Thursday that many of Hickory Farms’ suppliers remain in the Chicago area.

Talent:

Diane Pearse, who took over as the firm’s top executive early last year ...

“We need to attract talent that has experience in retail product development and merchandising, we have to attract talent that has experience in retail marketing, we have to have talent that has e-commerce marketing and e-commerce sales experience,” Ms. Pearse said. “That quite frankly isn’t the focus for Toledo. Toledo is a manufacturing town.”

Toledo:

“We were not aware they were even planning to move,” said Calvin Lawshe the city’s director of economic and business development. “We would have been at the table trying to keep them here.”

While Mr. Lawshe said he wouldn’t question Ms. Pearse’s decision — and acknowledged that Toledo will never be Chicago — he did say that downtown Toledo is in a renaissance period.

“We’re changing and we’re becoming more attractive to young people,” he said. “The ability to live downtown, near water, near work, I think is attractive.”

Mr. Lawshe also said he has not heard similar concerns about attracting top talent to Toledo from other business executives.

HF management:

Hickory Farms is refocusing on growth after the company’s previous ownership attempted to squeeze out as much profit as possible with little thought to the future.