NASHVILLE – A renowned manufacturer of quality road cases, Upstate Case Manufacturing was founded in upstate New York. The company has since relocated from Utica, NY to Nashville, TN. Owner Bill Whittaker is now celebrating the company’s 25-year milestone at its new home in Music City.
Whittaker started up his business when he was just a 24-year-old lighting director in Utica. At that time, he was part-owner of a regional lighting company located 240 miles north of NYC that he had started back in high school. He learned to build cases for his own gear. In 1991, he bought his partner out of the lighting business and started a second company that just made road cases. He needed cases to support his lighting operations. He ran both companies while continuing to tour all over the country.
Bill worked in this manner up until 2002. He explains how life was back then. “I would be on a leg of a tour and come back and pick up the case company. That worked okay for a while. But I would come back to the shop, and things would have changed. I would get everything back to normal, then leave on the road again.” By 2002, the case company was starting to grow some legs, and Whittaker left the road as well as the lighting biz, to devote 100 percent of his time to his road case operation.
During his youth, he found he had a soft spot for Nashville and it’s people, as he spent considerable amounts of time working for folks in the area. In 2014, his business was busting at the seams, and he knew he needed a larger facility. He decided he was tired of shoveling snow and dealing with the politics of business in New York State. Nashville was never far from his mind. He pulled up stakes and relocated to Tennessee and a 2,000 square foot warehouse, where he couldn’t be happier.
“I’m still ecstatic that we moved to Nashville,” he says. “It is so much easier doing business in Nashville. There’s literally no business politics to stress over, no bad people looking for their cut, just nice people.”
Since the company relocated, it has expanded significantly. They now turn out more than 500 road boxes per year. Whittaker is proud to make all the road cases for the Tennessee Titans football and the Nashville Predators hockey teams. “Every one of the cases we build for them is a custom job,” he notes.
Their highly regarded Flylite cases for chain hoists is their bread and butter. Upstate Case built more than 2,500 of them by the time he exited NY. Upstate has a reputation for building strong rigging cases. They are in such demand that Bill cannot keep an inventory in house, but that doesn’t stop him from working as hard and long as it takes to keep the customer’s timelines intact. He still enjoys constructing cases himself in between manning the phones. With 25 years under his belt, he sees nothing but bright skies for his company’s future in Nashville.
For more information, please visit www.upstatecase.com
