By John Howell Sr.

The number employed at Batesville’s Framed Picture Enterprise rises weekly as company officials consolidate their Memphis poster operation into their sprawling Highway 6 West facilty.

“We grew by 45 workers this week,” human resources director Dennis Herb said January 9, totaling the number of previous employees called back from layoff and newly-hired workers.

Factors contributing to the growth are complex, but the energy and enthusiasm that drives Framed Picture Enterprise president Ed Brucker as he leads a visitor through the plant appear to have spread to co-workers in the production lines.

The number employed that fell “as low as 80 people” had risen to 200 last week, Brucker said. Competition from China had lured away production of the framed art and framed mirrors traditionally produced in the Batesville facility, he said. To reverse the outflow to offshore production, Framed Picture identified weaknesses.

“Nobody wants to hold inventory,” Brucker said, and “Chinese prices went up.” Framed Picture squeezed the turnaround time between order and delivery and positioned itself to respond quickly to changes in interior fashion trends.

Meanwhile, as corporate giant Blockbuster restructured to meet online competition for video rentals, Brucker saw attractively-framed, inexpensive movie posters as a natural complement to Blockbuster customers’ movie interest.

He convinced the owners of four Blockbuster franchises to test market his concept in their stores. The demand for posters attracted Blockbuster corporate attention and soon landed Framed Pictures’ posters in stores nationwide.

Last Friday as he accompanied a visitor through the plant, Brucker fielded yet another call from Blockbuster. Could Framed Picture also produce posters for online purchase at Blockbuster.com? In three weeks?

“That’s huge!” Brucker exclaimed when the call had ended.

An order produced overseas could take a month to complete, another month in transit to the U. S. and almost another for nationwide distribution, Brucker said.

Brucker said that posters aimed at local favorites also strengthened Framed Pictures’ offering to Blockbuster — Ole Miss and Mississippi State posters in Mississippi stores, Florida Gators posters in south Florida, and so on.

The same flexibility and market response that appeals to Blockbuster also opened doors to other major corporate customers including Bed, Bath & Beyond, Borders, Home Decorator, Target, and others Brucker said.

The consolidation that has brought the poster production under the same Batesville roof as production of the traditional framed interior art has been facilitated in part by loans from public sources, including $500,000 from the City of Batesville’s revolving economic development fund.

Among the manufacturer’s assurances in return for the loan was the addition of at least 100 workers.

“We blew past that pretty quickly,” Brucker said.

Production at Framed Picture is housed in the Highway 6 location as well as a former Panola Mills warehouse on Pearson Street where construction of frame components begins with four by eight sheets of medium density fiberboard (MDF).

The MDF is cut, molded and shaped into a variety of lengths, shapes and contours from which the frames will be built. The frame components are joined to art, mirrors or posters at the other facility.

Vertical integration of its production — owning the process from start to finish without having to rely on outsourcing segments of the production — has been another strength that contributed to the company’s survival while it developed a strategy to counter competition from imported manufacturers, the Framed Picture president said.

The expansion is not without growing pains. Hispanic workers transferred from the Memphis facility spawned rumors that Framed Picture would displace local workers will illegal workers.

“Twelve people drive down daily,” Brucker said. “All have Social Security cards.”

As of January 9, 60 local people had been added to the payroll and more were to be hired.

Brucker recalled that in 1984 when all of its manufacturing was located in Memphis, Framed Picture Enterprise began looking for another location at about the same time that the former occupant of the Highway 6 facility — the “girdle plant” — closed down.

When officials from Batesville, including then-Mayor Bobby Baker and former South Panola Area Chamber of Commerce CEO Charles Ray Nix came to visit Framed Picture Enterprise’s Memphis location, their message was, “We’ll come get you.”

Twenty-five years later, Batesville has completed the move.