‘Cool things’ abound in eastern North Carolina

Some of the “coolest things made in North Carolina” are produced right here in eastern North Carolina.

 Thanks to the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce for offering its annual online contest for citizens to vote to select the coolest products.

As previously reported, the silver medal in the 2022 competition was awarded to Crab Pot Christmas Trees, a homegrown Down East Carteret County small business located in Smyrna.

 

Neal “Nicky” Harvey, a former commercial fisherman, got a patent for his Crab Pot Christmas Tree invention in 2003. He sold his business in 2009 to Don Acree, and the company is now known as Fisherman Creations. 

Other eastern North Carolina finalists in the “top five” were George’s BBQ Sauce of Nashville (third place) and Artisan Leaf Design of Wilson (fifth place). 

George’s BBQ Sauce was invented in 1975 by George Stallings of Rocky Mount. He was fond of saying George’s is “good on everything except banana pudding.”

 

The company is now owned by Ashley Chappell Hassell, whose parents bought the company in 1992. Today, an eight-person team pours, packages and ships every bottle of George’s by hand – just 4,500 bottles per day.

 

“There’s no automation – there’s no line. It’s just people using their hands,” Hassell said. “We like the fact that we’re small. We know what’s going into our product, and our work family is there to love on each other. I don’t really see us ever going the big production route or moving out of Nash County.” 

Celebrity chef and television personality Rachael Ray named George’s as her “personal favorite in the Carolinas.” 

A small business in Wilson is helping “turn over a new leaf for tobacco” by pioneering an innovative purpose for the plant, wrote K McKay for Our State magazine. 

Aristan Leaf Design specializes in creating “hand-crafted tobacco leaf surfaces” – mainly tabletops and bar tops – that contain yellow, gold and brown tobacco leaves coated in epoxy resin.

 

Wilson was once the epicenter of eastern North Carolina’s tobacco industry, so the community has rolled out the red carpet for entrepreneurs and friends Sebastian Correa, Reggie Harrison and George Newsome. 

Correa told McKay: “We’re a creative company that’s able to straddle the past and future, since we built our business around a historically relevant product. Wilson is reinventing itself as an artsy little town. As the city moves forward and grows culturally, downtown will undergo a transformation.”

 Correa said: “The most difficult part about making art with tobacco leaves is actually finding beautiful leaves. No one grows tobacco for its aesthetic qualities, so I have to scrape and dig for usable leaves. Most of the tobacco I get now is probably from within a 50-mile radius of our shop. I have only a couple of weeks to get enough leaves to last through the year.” 

“We have local customers whose families were in the tobacco business for centuries and grew up on family farms. Some even have family leaves, laminated in plastic, that they’ll bring in for projects,” Correa said. “I love using their tobacco to make something that they can keep as a family heirloom and preserve the leaves forever.”

 

“Outside of the tobacco belts, I think the uniqueness of our products gives us the ability to market them as luxury items. I like to say that it’s easier to get a Lamborghini than it is to get one of our tabletops. While there’s a Lamborghini dealership in almost every major city, we’re the only ‘decorative tobacco’ company that I know of.”