//Powered Up: The legacy and innovation of Hill Electric 

Powered Up: The legacy and innovation of Hill Electric 

It’s been decades since the Upstate was once a global hub of the textile industry — back when textile mills spread across the Upstate. Sadly, as mill after mill shuttered over time, their suppliers and vendors often did, too — collateral damage of a lost era of manufacturing.

However, there were those companies who, through innovation and a shift in business strategy, were not only able to maintain their operations, but were able to grow them, as well.

When Mike Davis first came to Hill Electric in the mid ’90s, the area around them in Anderson was still bustling with textile-based manufacturers. As manager of a local electrical distributor, Davis was recruited by Steve Kay, then-president of Hill Electric, to help grow the business through a vast, already-established network. The company, which was established in 1954, needed a broader customer base, and they believed that Davis could help connect them.

They had no idea at the time what a vital move that would be for the company.

“Neither of us knew that 80% of our business was about to go away,” Davis remembers. “Milliken closed, and Westpoint and Springs, and so did all the other textile mills. As [the book ‘Who Moved My Cheese?’] says, the cheese was moving, so we hit the ground full speed running.”

After pivoting to try new approaches to serve a dwindling customer base, Hill Electric eventually figured out its niche — to provide installation service and decades of experience to manufacturers for process machinery, auxiliary equipment, power systems and data communications systems. Generally, whether a manufacturing company is adding a new product line or retooling an older system, Hill Electric steps in to ease the installation process, and in doing so, the company, once facing obscurity with the loss of the textile industry, instead found a foothold in the Upstate manufacturing community.

Davis, as president, oversees around 100 employees at any given time, in a company where tenure among senior management averages around 20 years. The reason for that, Davis notes, is the company’s focus on being a “legacy-based” company — understanding its roots, its employees and its plan forward.

“We were founded by Walter Hill, who worked at the Portman Shoals Electric plant at Lake Hartwell — right here from the Electric City. We go all the way back to the textile industry, which raised so many families here for decades,” Davis says. “We were a product of that, and I take great pride in that because my grandparents worked in a cotton mill. I worked in a cotton mill. I’ve been there. I know what a staple that was for our Upstate community before it all went away.”

With that history constantly in check, Davis’ focus is primarily on ensuring that he’s created a plan of success far beyond his own tenure. That’s why Hill Electric has created a company scholarship for the children of its employees. And that’s why his partner — and likely successor — is already working within the company to understand every inch of the business.

“It’s not in our DNA to grow and grow and then try to sell; it’s in our DNA to grow forever,” says Davis. “I don’t know other companies in the Upstate where they could say, ‘I already know the plan. I know where we’re going to be.’”

Today, 65 years after its humble beginnings in Anderson, Hill Electric has found its way through innovation and diversification — offering decades of experience in the manufacturing industry to each of its clients at a time when they need it most.

“You think back 20 years ago when we were literally an 80/20 company with 80% of our business in textiles, and now — while we may have one customer that is heavier than another on a particular year — the diversification of industries our company gets to serve is huge,” Davis says. “It’s amazing the amount of machinery we get to see and touch and install, and every time we go do something different, we just say, ‘Well, next time we have to do that, it will be easy.’”

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