Forget Amazon. Seattle is ripe for poaching many smaller businesses

Below the cluster of the biggest, highest-profile companies — and it’s not just tech, banks and hospitals — is a huge cluster of companies that not only don’t need to be in Seattle but also would benefit by being elsewhere.

The more nimble and adept economic development entities are already combing through lists of small and mid-sized companies in Seattle and making discrete pitches to businesses about relocating.

Landing companies of 100 or 200 workers, or even smaller, is a strategy better suited, and likely more successful, for non-Seattle communities in this region than trying to land, and swallow a Great White Whale prospect on the order of Amazon.

By BILL VIRGIN

http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/business/biz-columns-blogs/article180860001.html