Like a number of businesses in its region, Western Carolina Electrical Supply once derived much of its revenue from the furniture industry.

However, in recent years much of the furniture manufacturing has gone overseas, primarily to China, explains Western Carolina's president Lyle Jensen. Just a few large furniture manufacturers are still based in North Carolina, he says, as well as some smaller, niche companies.

“But furniture has just about all been outsourced to China and that has crippled our town,” Jensen says. “We used to be the furniture center of the world and that's not the case anymore. So we've been trying to re-tool ourselves. We're still heavy in furniture, but it's different than it used to be.”

Ironically, many of the buildings left vacant by those departing companies have, to an extent, provided some new business.

“The new tenants will often have to renovate those facilities and that has helped [us],” Jensen says. “And some have been turned into warehouses for Chinese furniture.”

Western Carolina works with suppliers such as 3M and Cooper Wiring and employs 18 people at its two North Carolina locations: Wilkesboro and Lenoir, which is about 90 minutes from Charlotte, Jensen says, “in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.”

That foothills location may be a large part of the re-tooling Jensen refers to. For one thing, Google has come to town—literally. The search engine giant recently opened a facility there, bringing with it some 200 jobs.

“That's a big feather in our cap. They've built a tremendous facility about a mile down the road from us,” he says. “And once that is finished, they're going to build another [facility] that may be two or three times as large on the same plot of land. We're getting a lot of peripheral business from that job.”

Where a company of Google's size and influence goes, others either follow or at least seriously consider the idea. Various companies have been exploring the region, Jensen says, and as a result Western Carolina is looking more seriously at getting involved in construction, both residential and commercial.

While residential building, in particular, has been in decline nationwide, parts of Carolina think they may be seeing an upswing. For example, builders have been marketing the Appalachian Mountains region as an ideal area to build a summer or retirement home, Jensen explains.

“There's a lot of high-end development going here in the foothills as well as up in the mountains,” he says. “We're attracting people from all over the country now, so we'll be taking a look again at trying to profit from this expansion.”

While Jensen shares many of the same concerns as his fellow electrical distributors, he remains confident about 2008 and his company's future.

“We've never tried to be [just] the guy with the cheapest price out there. We try to have a good competitive price and have quality stuff on the shelf,” Jensen says. “The company has been here since 1953 and we've always stressed that. We have to battle the big guys every day, but I think we do OK with it.”