Worcester Business Journal

wbjournal.com | March 10, 2025 | Worcester Business Journal 21 A love letter to my small business friends BY JULIE BOWDITCH Special to WBJ A er reading Renee King's Feb. 10 column "Small business struggles: Are we next?" and reflecting on other companies' closures, I have found myself with many feelings to process: sadness they are struggling, frustration the economy does not support their longevity, and curi- osity around how I can take a more active role in their sustainability. I felt compelled to put my feelings into words; feelings that might resonate with my neighbors. is is my personal love letter to small local businesses: "We see you. We hear your pleas for our business. We love the character and dimensions you bring to our neighborhoods. We admire your cre- ativity and grit and dedication. We adore your products and services! We are trying desperately to support you. We feel like imposters each time we click the "Checkout" button online, knowing how much you are suffering. But our resources are thin as well; both time and money. We agree our region needs you. Our hearts break when we hear about another closing, changing the landscape of our beloved home. We ask one another, 'What could we have done?' By no means is it as personal to us as it is to you, the founders, proprietors, and employees, but we grieve along- side you and blame ourselves acutely. We conspire over solutions bigger than us; system-wide changes to result in better outcomes. Please know we love you. Know you have shaped our celebrations and memories. Know you have trademarked our homes and hearts. Know we still admire you when you close your doors, maybe more so because we recognize the depths of that decision. It doesn't dimin- ish your success." Opening a small business takes invention and energy; closing takes introspection and courage. It's what happens in between that we need to reexamine. To our city leadership: We plead with you to support these spaces and the humans behind them. We are terri- fied Worcester will turn into a wasteland of big brands. We beg you to show up with more proactivity, regardless of any membership or political status, networking or En- glish-language skills, or your personal preferences. is problem doesn't have a grassroots solution. If it did, we would save them all. It's going to take collective commitment and deep investment from local government and power hitters in the region. It will take a conscious choice that we don't want our city to lose its fingerprint of entrepreneurs and artists, visionaries and makers. Corporate greed cannot define the next era of Worces- ter. We need to come together with intention and creativ- ity. We must honestly ask, "Do we care about the people and places who are Worcester, who made this city a desti- nation, or were they just a steppingstone in our growth?" Julie Bowditch is executive director of nonprofit e CASA Project Worcester County. Who will be our next EMC? Julie Bowditch I n his story "e incredible shrinking EMC" on page 10, WBJ Managing Editor Eric Casey partially confirms what's largely been an open secret in the Central Massachusetts business community: e tech company EMC Corp. started 46 years ago in MetroWest is a shadow of what it once was before Texas-based Dell Technol- ogies announced plans to purchase it in 2015. Since then, the company has sold more than $100 million of EMC's Central Massachusetts properties, and its workforce is down at least 30%. Even though Dell EMC still has a substantial presence in the region, particularly in Hopkinton, the company is a far cry from when EMC was being run by its founders and was a more engaged partner in the community. Hard driving co-founder Richard Egan was a highly visible leader, as was his college roommate at Northeastern University, Roger Marino. ey were the E and the M of EMC, and company officials of all stripes served on a variety of boards for community organizations over the years. Some industries transform more quickly than oth- ers, and the computer business is rife with big names that have risen high, but later fallen by the wayside (remember Wang and DEC?). Once synonymous with the communities in which it was founded, EMC remains a significant local player, but it is now part of a much larger tech company headquartered in Texas, with the need to evolve at warp speed to stay up with the competition. At one time, the Norton Co. was deeply woven into the fabric of Worcester's identity, and while its successor Saint-Gobain has done a solid job of remaining a corporate citizen in the region, to- day's manufacturing facilities don't employ nearly the numbers they did half a century ago, as its 50+acre Worcester campus today is undergoing a complete reinvention. But when one community leader recedes in its impact, another rises to take its place. Fred Eppinger, the former president and CEO of Hanover Insur- ance Group, made it a personal mission not only to turn around the company's fortunes, but to get the Worcester insurer involved in the community, notably helping to revitalize its downtown. As EMC has stepped back, major MetroWest employers like Natick soware company MathWorks have taken up the mantle. For example, the MathWorks Foundation is the largest grantmaking foundation in Central Massachusetts, with about $270 million in assets and $10 million in annual grants, according to Guidestar. And behind the Hanovers and MathWorks is the next wave of high growth companies with the prom- ise of becoming solid corporate citizens: Founded in 2015 using technology developed at Worcester Poly- technic Institute, the electric vehicle battery recycling company Ascend Elements is building out a global footprint while maintaining its local connections. Commonwealth Fusion Systems in Devens is looking to solve the world's energy problems, while showing a healthy engagement with its neighbors. Growing companies provide the jobs we need to keep our regional economy booming, but we also need those organizations and their leaders to be part of the fabric of the community. The Worcester Business Journal welcomes letters to the editor and commentary submissions. Please send submissions to Brad Kane, editor, at bkane@wbjournal.com. W W

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