These peaks & valleys are good for business.

• Author: Holloway, Constance
• Position: North Carolina

When Barbara and Eric Martin manage to take a break, they don't waste it by hanging out at the office water cooler. After all, their western North Carolina software company, just five miles from the Blue Ridge Parkway, overlooks a private, 27-acre lake.

"We can take a break and look at the fish jumping out of the water," Eric Martin says. He's president and co-owner of Business Systems of America, a manufacturer of business-management software in West Jefferson. The Martins, who honeymooned in western North Carolina in 1989, moved their high-tech operation from Charlotte to this tiny mountain town in 1992 after shifting the company's focus from "hardware stuff" to accounting and inventory-control software. With the aid of six phone lines and an Internet site, Business Systems of America sells to customers worldwide. Annual sales, Martin says, are "greater than $250,000 and less than $500,000."

"We can work out of our home," he adds. "Basically, we don't have to have an office. We don't need to have a facade. Why spend all that money on all the overhead and expense in Charlotte when you don't need it?"

The Martins are hardly the first business owners to pack up their operation and head for the hills. Thanks largely to advances in technology, more of these savvy execs - economic-development officials call them "mobile entrepreneurs" - can set up shop where they please. They're among the newest pieces in western North Carolina's vibrant tapestry of economic diversity.

"Our economic profile is quite diverse, with tourism, retirement, manufacturing, agribusiness and small-business development all playing a major role in the regional economy," says Rick Webb, executive director of AdvantageWest, a regional economic-development partnership. "Being closer to four other state capitals than to our own also means that our economy thrives off neighboring states and not the rest of North Carolina."

Long viewed as a great place to visit, western North Carolina also has a prosperous business community that might seem nonexistent to tourists bent on viewing autumn leaves or skiing. But major employers such as Champion International in Canton and ITT-Automotive in Morganton are among the region's dominant players.

Sonopress Inc., a manufacturer of audiocassettes, compact discs and CD-ROMs, opened its Weaverville plant in 1984. The company, like others that do business in western North Carolina, chose the region because of its growing economy, the Asheville airport and the accessible road system. The company employs 800 in Weaverville.

In recent years, BB&T moved its western regional headquarters from Winston-Salem to Asheville. Centrix, a maker of plastic-injection molding, also moved to Asheville, from Pittsburgh. More are on the way, including Expert Components, a German plastics manufacturer.

There's even a new hospital, of sorts, in the region. Memorial Mission and St. Joseph's hospitals are now operating as Mission+St. Joseph's Health System. They were the first hospitals in the state to be issued a certificate of public advantage, allowing them to form the partnership under the Amended Hospital Cooperation Act, passed by the General Assembly last year.

Thoms Rehabilitation Hospital, which gets most of its patients from the new health system, operates several joint ventures in the region. It supervises therapy services at Green Tree Rich, a 100-bed nursing home the two hospitals...