BusinessTN

It’s a good time to be a single professional in Tennessee.

In October, preeminent third-party employee relocation provider Primacy Relocation proclaimed three of Tennessee’s “big four” among the top-30 best cities for relocating singles—with Nashville topping the list, Memphis ranking #12 and Knoxville coming in at #30.

The Memphis firm regularly doles out such proclamations based on its extensive wealth of statistical records. And who’s to question their findings? The company has quietly grown into a world-leading relocation firm.

"The talent that was here that started the business, which started with people from the transportation industry,” says Chief Financial Officer Sherrie Hollis, “moved the right people in (to Memphis) and grew the company purely organically.”

Along with providing expert relocation services to companies from their own Bluff City backyard and around the state (TVA, First Horizon, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital), Primacy also reaches the farthest corners on the globe. Need an employee relocated to Shanghai, China? In-state clients moving people around Tennessee account for about 3.2% of revenue, says Hollis, while clients that move people into the state account for 2.4% and business clients that move people out makes up 1.4%.

For high-profile relocations like Target, Nokia and Nissan and a wealth of others, Primacy administers programs for employers throughout the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia. Such an extensive portfolio makes them a behemoth in the moving business and earns the company plenty of green, as well. But it is also positioning Primacy in a select corner of a growing segment of the information market, as its databank provides an immeasurable resource for consulting purposes.

“We don’t provide information for public consumption, but for our clients we offer consulting based on 1,000 pieces of data we track for everyone we touch,” Hollis says.

This information can be used to help clients not only determine how to open new operations, but where.

“We do quite a bit of benchmarking and policy consulting to be more competitive in the market place,” says Hollis, who notes that Primacy is seldom approached by municipalities looking for strategic ideas to make them more attractive to expanding businesses.

As a bonus, Primacy is strengthening its branding by solidifying itself as an arbiter of important international business trends. For instance, more than half those relocated in 2005 were renters, something predominantly indicative of single employees. And the best cities for relocating singles not coincidentally also had larger tallies of Starbucks coffeehouses.