August 04, 2015

Shelby Group International Will Move Headquarters to Collierville

By:  Cindy Wolf
Commercial Appeal
 
 Memphis-based Shelby Group International, which manufactures personal protective equipment, plans to move its corporate headquarters to Collierville and its distribution facility to Piperton.
           
As an incentive to build its headquarters in Collierville, the company was given a 10-year property tax and personal property tax reduction using the town’s payment-in-lieu-of-taxes program.
           
The Industrial Development Board granted the PILOT, which allows the company to pay 25 percent of its personal property and property taxes.
           
The company also received a retention PILOT from Shelby County under the same conditions. A retention PILOT is granted as an incentive for a company to remain in its current location.
           
SGI plans to build a two-story, 45,000-square-foot office building on Schilling Boulevard. The investment, counting personal property, will be about $10 million.
           
SGI will open a distribution center in Piperton, in Fayette County, which is one of the places it considered building its headquarters, Janet Geyer, assistant to Collierville’s town administrator told the Collierville Board of Mayor and Aldermen, which ratified the PILOT.
           
"SGI owners are strongly committed to Tennessee and especially the Memphis area," Geyer.
           
She told the board SGI will move 103 full-time employees to Collierville. The median salary is $63,984.
           
The company, which sells its products under the name MCR Safety, was started in the Collierville garage of Hilliard Crews, who at the time worked for FedEx.
           
He moved his business in 1974 to Shelby Drive, where it flourished and finally outgrew its home. In the last five years, in spite of an economic downturn, the company sales growth was 12 percent, Geyer said.
           
It manufactures products under brand names Memphis Glove, Crews Glasses and River City Garment. Crews merged the companies to form SGI, but does business as MCR Safety.
           
Collierville has only granted three other PILOTs in the last six years. Those went to Carrier Corp. and FedEx; a PILOT to Strike King Lure Co. is pending.