In January 2020, Traditional Medicinals committed to invest $29.7 million to establish an herbal tea manufacturing and processing operation in the Summit View Business Park in Franklin County. “It was incredibly important that we found a location which embodied our company values,” Kellison said in a statement about the expansion.
The Roanoke Region might not have made such a big impression on Traditional Medicinals if the company had come calling a couple of decades earlier. For years after Norfolk & Western Railway moved their headquarters out of Roanoke following a 1982 merger, people continued to hold onto the idea that the city was a railroad town.
Roanoke needed a new brand.
The Making of a Mountain Town
Around the mid-2000s, RRP’s board began talking about how livability was an increasingly important factor for business executives considering a new location and professionals looking to move. They brainstormed about what attributes set the Star City apart from areas of similar size.
To Doughty, the answer was clear: abundant outdoor amenities. The Roanoke Region, after all, is home to the Appalachian Trail (including McAfee Knob in Roanoke County, billed as the Trail’s most photographed spot), the Blue Ridge Parkway, Virginia’s second-largest lake (Smith Mountain Lake), rivers, and miles of urban greenway. “We’ve had these assets,” she said, “and we treated them like wallpaper instead of an economic sector.”
Doughty wanted to change that.
In 2009, RRP hired Eshelman as its first director of outdoor branding. His first responsibility was cataloging information about how to access the region’s outdoor offerings — think where to put in a kayak on the James River in Botetourt County or how to get to McAfee Knob. For the first time, Roanoke created a comprehensive directory of outdoor amenities at Roanokeoutside.com.
Next, the ROF organized a marathon. The organization set the race, now known as the Foot Levelers Blue Ridge Marathon, apart by staging it on a mountainous course. “Everybody has a marathon, but ours goes uphill,” Doughty said.
The inaugural race was held in 2010 and, according to Doughty, helped to showcase Roanoke’s abundance of outdoor delights. “That was a brand-building event,” she said.
The next year, the ROF launched a festival that would eventually become known as the Anthem Roanoke GO Outside Festival (GO Fest). After having a respectable attendance of 4,500 at the inaugural event, the festival has grown each year, with over 35,000 visitors turning out to try the kayaks in the 50,000-gallon inflatable pool at 2019’s GO Fest. “I would say, in our unscientific poll, that it’s the favorite event of the year in Roanoke,” Doughty said.
With many outdoors businesses and organizations setting up booths, the GO Fest showcases the area’s outdoor community. It also serves to introduce novices to the outdoor lifestyle. For Doughty, though, the main payout of the GO Fest is the business it brings to the region. Case in point: Wombat Camper.
In 2018, Eshelman invited Brad and Julie Meilak, founders of a new off-road travel trailer business, to exhibit a prototype at the festival. “We had a great time,” Brad Meilak recalled. “We met lots of people and we thought, ‘Roanoke is a pretty cool place.’”
As it happened, at the time the Meilaks attended the GO Fest, they were living outside Philadelphia and trying to figure out where to next hang their hats. They liked the city so much, they decided to make a home there. The couple arrived at the beginning of 2020 and quickly set up a workshop for Wombat Camper, which they plan to launch in 2021.
While the GO Fest had to go virtual in 2020 due to the pandemic, Doughty hopes it will return in its usual form in 2021 and again provide an opportunity for the region to make connections with outdoor businesses, “particularly national brands that want to be associated with the event.”
A Long Courtship
Over a decade ago, Lisa Soltis, an economic development specialist for the city of Roanoke, reached out to executives at North Carolina-based regional retailer Mast General Store thinking the Star City’s outdoors amenities might be a good fit for Mast’s offerings, which include old-time hearth and home goods as well as outdoor clothing and gear.
