Manchester, Ga.-based manufacturer helped by
workforce training services

few years ago, shifts in the market presented company officials at Goody with some hard decisions. As with many other manufacturing businesses, prudent business strategy called for consolidating some of the company’s manufacturing capacity. Moves needed to be made in order for Goody to remain competitive in the global marketplace.

Goody got its start in 1907 on the lower east side of Manhattan when Henry Goodman, an immigrant from Ukraine, first started selling rhinestone-studded hair combs from a pushcart. Today, Goody has nearly a $100 million impact on the regional economy surrounding its factories in Manchester, Ga., a small, historic railroad town half an hour north of Columbus. Goody is the world’s leading marketer and manufacturer of brushes, combs and hair accessories, turning out enough bobby pins each year to circle the globe, and enough hair brushes to provide one to every man, woman and child in the 10 most populous American cities.

The company was investing $15 million in new equipment, and the people in the town of Manchester and Meriwether County were prepared to do whatever they could to help the company’s efforts to stay competitive. Goody is the only major manufacturer remaining in the Manchester area, and the company is critical to the prosperity of Meriwether and surrounding counties.

Its tremendous impact on the area’s economy – the company generates nearly 23% of the local tax base in Manchester – has made Goody one of the top manufacturing businesses in the state that officials recognize as needing to be preserved. With more than 700 employees in a town of 5,000, without Goody, local residents acknowledge, there is no Manchester.

“Goody’s one of the largest employers in the area, and they had run into a problem and needed some retraining of people on some new equipment,” recalls Dayton Preston of the Greater Columbus Georgia Chamber of Commerce, which is a part of the Valley Partnership Joint Development Authority that is made up of six counties and two municipalities including the city of Manchester.

“We called [Quick Start Director of Western Operations] Joe Bailey, and, as usual, Quick Start was right there.”

Quick Start’s training professionals then performed a project study at Goody and concluded that, as a result of all the new equipment being installed, the company had a serious need for training of their technicians and machine operators.

Company representatives held several meetings with Quick Start staff, and soon they had developed a training plan that covered basic electrical and hydraulic theory, application and troubleshooting, as well as programmable logic controllers.

“Quick Start helped us build skills in basic robotics, troubleshooting, and PLC,” says Bob Koon, Goody molding technical manager. “Quick Start was there to do the training whenever they were needed. They had two classes to accommodate our shifts, and sometimes training started at 3 a.m. Virtually everybody went through the electrical training, and what was most pleasing to me was that everybody enjoyed it.

“If Quick Start hadn’t been able to work around our shifts, we’d still be struggling along.”

Preston agrees. “It’s my feeling that they would not have been able to continue unless Quick Start had come in like they did. It was a win-win. We were able to keep those jobs and I think Quick Start was critical to keeping them here.”