KEY PEOPLE IN MANUFACTURING
Sam Campbell, 50
* Company: President, Chattanooga Bakery
* Claim to fame: The company introduced a new peanut butter MoonPie during a peanuts health scare.
* He said: "It's worked just great because an awful lot of retailers have taken us on, knowing our peanut butter supplier is a reputable one."
David S. Ware, 51
* Company: President/CEO, Tennessee Galvanizing
* Claim to fame: The 17-year-old company recently received the 2009 Governor's Award for Environmental Excellence.
* He said: "We brought our hazardous waste emission down from 4.8 million pounds a year to zero, and we're the only company in North America that can make that claim. We did it by putting in new machinery, some things that we invented and some things we purchased."
Jeff Brakebill, 43
* Company: Owner, Frankenstein Mills, maker of Aretha Frankensteins pancake mix.
* Claim to fame: Epicurious and AOL voted the pancake mix into the Top 10 new food products at the New York Fancy Food Show last year. Aretha's came in fourth on the Epicurious list and 28th on AOL's out of 180,000 food products.
* He said: "It gave us a measure of national credibility and introduced us to the national market."
Josh Deans' career is in hot water. For the past 15 years, his company, Dynasty Spas, has manufactured hot tubs from its Athens, Tenn., plant.
Sales have been good, he said. But recently, the heat has been turned on. Even in the current slumping economy, Dynasty has hired 75 new employees since January, bringing its total to 250.
"We were up 10 percent last year because we're diversified in the products we build," Mr. Deans said.
Dynasty manufactures about 100 models seating two to eight adults. The company also makes a swim spa that doubles as a lap pool.
"They're the newest thing out there and are good for exercise as well as keeping the kids entertained -- a happy medium," Mr. Deans said.
Mr. Deans said lighting and stereo systems -- "all the bells and whistles" -- set his company's spas apart from the competition.
"We were the very first to do that and now are the largest. It really took off and others companies are copying us," he said.
Eight lines sell under the Dynasty name, including Garden Leisure, Shoreline and Bahama. It's an international business making more than 70 spas every day to ship to 250 dealers.
"Our industry is small with a lot of room to grow," he said. "There's a lot of opportunity out there for us right now."
Dynasty was built from scratch by Mr. Deans' father, Mike, who is now CEO of the company.
"We were in the business before in California, working for another company," Josh Deans said. "The business we were working for opened a manufacturing business in Etowah, Tenn., and we moved there and liked it.
"Then we decided to start out on our own. We knew how to do it. We built our own tools and molds ourselves."
And they knew where they wanted to locate their company.
"We liked it here -- a great work force and good people," Mr. Deans said.
