September 2019

Message From Our President 

Having been in both the private and public site selection business for most of my career, one element of fascination for me has been watching some companies (that SDG did not represent) make site location errors that have enormous short- and long-term cost consequences.

Reasons for not hiring qualified site selection consultants like SDG are many. Some companies will tell us that they believe the cost of hiring an outside professional are too expensive and will provide little value, when in fact, a professional consultant can save companies exponentially more money than the fees paid to the consultant. Other companies will say they are not interested in professional site selection services because “the State is helping us”. These companies are overlooking the fact that the State does not have the company’s best interest at heart; they are only focused on securing new jobs and capital investment for their citizens. Lastly, we often hear that other companies are providing site selection services for “free,” but as we all know, there is no such thing as a free lunch.

The fact is, site selection is much more than a real estate or incentives decision.  If companies are not represented by unbiased experts that engage in site selection activities every day, the exposure to overall business risk and  long-term costs will surely be millions of dollars, and likely billions for larger investments.  SDG continually strives to maintain our longstanding reputation of building strategic partnerships with our clients to ensure they select the best sites and generate the best financial outcomes.

In this Fall issue of the SDG newsletter, we’ll reflect on the top ten list of mistakes we see made by many companies in the site selection process. We will also reflect on SDG’s growing industrial site evaluation program and the status of our project backlog as we close out 2019. SDG remains focused on giving back to our community and the US and as such we enjoyed taking a group of South Carolina teachers to Bridgestone’s off-road tire facility in Aiken.

As always, we appreciate our client’s and prospective client’s review of our newsletter, our mutual pursuit of business success, and SDG’s focus on finding Optimal locations and providing Superior Service.

You can view the full email and read more of Mark’s comments here.