When news broke that Sechey would be closing its King Street location, many people understandably viewed it as another retail story.
It’s not. Charleston didn’t simply lose a storefront. It lost one of its entrepreneurial leaders.
When Sechey closed its King Street non-alcoholic beverage business, Charleston and South Carolina lost Emily Heintz, a founder who helped grow more founders.
Those fortunate enough to know Emily Heintz understand that her impact has never been measured by the number of bottles on a shelf or the size of a retail space. Long before many people recognized the potential of the non-alcoholic beverage industry, she built a nationally recognized brand and helped put Charleston on the map as a place where innovative consumer companies could thrive.
I first met Emily when she joined SC Forge’s inaugural commercialization cohort. It was clear she wasn’t simply building a company. She was becoming the kind of entrepreneur every innovation ecosystem hopes to produce. She is someone who creates a successful business, and helps others build theirs.
South Carolina rightly celebrates recruiting major employers. We announce new manufacturing plants, data centers and automotive investments. But we pay far less attention to the homegrown entrepreneurs building companies one customer, one employee and one risk at a time. Innovation ecosystems are not built by buildings. They are built by people.
Every successful startup community has founders who become its connective tissue. They answer late-night calls from first-time entrepreneurs. They make introductions that never appear on a balance sheet. They convince investors to take one more meeting. They mentor without expecting anything in return.
Eventually, they stop being known only for the companies they founded. They become leaders.
That is what Charleston risks losing.
Leadership like Emily’s doesn’t disappear because a business changes direction. Every time an ecosystem loses one of its most recognizable founders, it loses something harder to replace than a storefront. It loses experience, institutional knowledge, trusted relationships and someone whose success gave other entrepreneurs permission to believe they could succeed here.
That is the invisible economy.
It doesn’t appear in employment reports or tax receipts, yet it may be one of the most valuable assets an entrepreneurial community possesses. Silicon Valley continues producing successful companies because experienced founders stay. They invest, mentor, advise, serve on boards and then help build the next generation.
Success compounds because leadership compounds.
South Carolina has made remarkable progress over the past decade. Universities, investors, economic development organizations, incubators, accelerators and commercialization programs have helped entrepreneurs transform ideas into companies.
But building companies is only the first chapter. Building leaders is the real objective.
When entrepreneurs become mentors, investors, civic advocates and champions for the next generation, they become exponentially more valuable than they were on the day they opened their doors. Founder retention should matter just as much as business recruitment. We compete aggressively to attract the next company. Perhaps we should devote equal energy to ensuring the leaders we’ve already developed remain engaged in our communities.
Emily Heintz has contributed far more to Charleston than a successful retail concept. She demonstrated thoughtful entrepreneurship, elevated conversations around an emerging industry and became the kind of collaborative leader every healthy innovation ecosystem depends upon.
Her career reminds us that entrepreneurship isn’t simply about creating wealth. It’s about creating leaders. Leaders create ecosystems.
The closing of one storefront on King Street is not, by itself, an economic crisis. But it should remind us that the true strength of South Carolina’s innovation economy has never been measured by the number of startup companies we launch. It is measured by whether the leaders those companies produce continue investing their time, experience, wisdom and influence back into the communities that helped launch them.
We can continue spending hundreds of millions of dollars recruiting companies built somewhere else. Or we can invest just as intentionally in the entrepreneurs who have already chosen to build their futures here. The goal isn’t to stop recruiting large employers. It is to stop overlooking the leaders we are already creating.
Because when South Carolina loses an entrepreneur like Emily Heintz, we aren’t just losing a business. We’re losing the people capable of building the next generation of S.C. businesses.
Christopher J. Petrella is the founding director of SC Forge, a nonprofit commercialization and capital formation platform based in Mount Pleasant.