South Carolina

For Rita Patel and Marcus Munse, both architectural designers with degrees in architecture, the 2008 housing crisis brought an unexpected opportunity. With construction down, the couple joined Rita’s family in the hotel business she’d grown up in before designing a hotel of their own. “Being lovers of preservation and historic architecture, Marcus and I looked into the benefits of restoring historical properties in Columbia,” Rita says. The couple merged three historic buildings to open Hotel Trundle in 2018 with 46 guest rooms, making it the only independent boutique hotel in the city. Since then they’ve expanded the space to include two additional guest houses, with three more on the way; in 2025, over 10,000 room nights were booked.

Hotel Trundle has been using Google Ads from the start, and now they run a successful mix of brand awareness and Performance Max campaigns which account for nearly 54 percent of site visits. Gemini helps Hotel Trundle compete, providing analysis of ad campaigns and their overall marketing strategy. “We don’t have the big budget of a franchise hotel, which can be challenging,” says PR & Marketing Director Raven Yonemura. “But Google products help us be a player." Google Workspace keeps the team connected; with Google Meet, managers can still participate in critical meetings even if they’re offsite. Website performance is tracked with Google Analytics, which has helped the team spot and take steps to remedy a bot attack. As Hotel Trundle continues to make their mark on Columbia, they’re also lifting up other area businesses, with local art on the walls, locally made mattresses on the beds, and a local payroll company. “It’s not just the beautiful things you see and taste; it’s who’s behind the scenes,” Rita says. “We try to invest in the community and bring those artisans and makers out so that our guests can see what we have to offer.”

During his 28 years as a U.S. Air Force pilot, Darren Hartford had the opportunity to travel the world–and experience many different tea and coffee cultures. So when looking for his next career after retiring from active duty in 2017, he decided to buy a small premium tea business, Oliver Pluff & Company. Darren took over in 2018, and says his military leadership skills have come in handy as a business owner. “It’s about being able to make a decision and move,” he explains. “The ability to adapt and plan on the fly, to take a problem and just figure it out–those are things the Air Force taught me that you also use in a small business.” Based fittingly in Charleston, a historic port during the tea trade–Oliver Pluff teas are hand-packaged in the company’s signature tins and recreate blends from previous centuries. The tea is sold through their website, which also carries coffee, toddies, accessories, and more.

Implementing Google Workspace, and moving away from paper tracking, has significantly improved Oliver Pluff's efficiency. “You can share documents and ideas without three different apps running, and keep it all in one spot,“ Darren says. Google Sheets helps them collaborate in real time and easily track inventory, and the team shares Docs and photos in Drive. Google Meet helps Darren meet “face-to-face” with retailers, suppliers, or marketers, and make deals without the added expense or inconvenience of traveling. And Gemini in Google Meet supports him with scheduling and notetaking. Darren also runs Google Ads, and credits Performance Max campaigns for contributing to the 46 percent spike in e-commerce sales they saw in the year after starting them–and the continued growth since. Now seven years into his new command, Darren has doubled employees and quadrupled revenue–and Oliver Pluff’s first storefront is expected to open in downtown Charleston in spring 2025.

When Charleston Crafted co-founder Sean McBride moved to Charleston, he fell in love with both the city and his future wife, Morgan. She started a DIY crafting blog and encouraged him to try his hand at carpentry–so he built the decor for their wedding on their screened porch. Soon they were taking on home improvement projects together, and as they shared what they learned with readers on their blog, a business was born. Today, Charleston Crafted is their full-time job, with diverse income streams that include corporate sponsorships, ad revenue through Google partner, Mediavine, and sales of woodworking plans that let fans recreate Sean’s projects in their own homes. Revenue went up 223 percent from 2020-2023, and traffic to their website grew 32 percent annually.

They use Google Analytics to drill down on what their visitors want to learn and turn those insights into high-performing new projects, blogs, and video ideas. “We're able to create new content based on what people are looking for from us,” Sean says. “Without Analytics, we would just be guessing.” Google Sheets gives Morgan a simple way to keep track of all of their sponsorship data, content ideas, and revenue forecasts so they can plan, budget, and manage their business with confidence. And because Google Workspace tools like Sheets are available from anywhere and updated in real time, Morgan and Sean stay on the same page whether they’re at home or at the hardware store. “Google Sheets is our intranet basically,” Sean notes. At 14,000 subscribers, their YouTube channel provides their audience with a library of helpful how-to videos that DIYers can follow along with. “YouTube is such a highly searchable platform. It has helped us grow our reach by making it easy to find content about any topic we’ve ever covered,” Sean explains. He adds, “We’re going to keep building this business,” with support from Google tools.

After a 23-year-long career in manufacturing logistics, Charlotte Groce was stressed and burnt out. She thought, “If I can put 70 hours a week into someone else’s business, why don’t I put it into my own?” She left her demanding job and was volunteering at a food pantry when a newspaper ad seeking pergola dealers grabbed her attention. She purchased the franchise territory and formed Palmetto Outdoor Spaces in 2012. The company, which offers all manner of porch shades, shutters, screens, and indoor shading, has since grown to nine employees. Charlotte began spreading the word with print ads, but a few classes through her local SCORE Business Mentoring program turned her marketing strategy around. Managing her own Google Ads campaigns since 2014, Charlotte now works on optimizations with help from the Google Ads support team, and attributes about 30 percent of the company’s growth to Google Ads.

A Google Business Profile has also been valuable to the company, accounting for about 80 percent of their leads. With so many people improving their homes during the pandemic, Palmetto Outdoor Spaces’ revenue grew 58 percent from 2019 to 2022. Now Charlotte’s been checking out training resources on Grow with Google’s YouTube channel. She’s learning about Google Analytics to increase quality leads as she expands the indoor shading part of her business, as well as more about managing Palmetto’s own YouTube channel. “You can learn anything you need to about Google,” Charlotte says. “There are so many tutorials and videos, so much information.” Most of all, she’s proud to be creating something greater than profits for her two sons and the community. “It's so rewarding knowing that I'm contributing to the lives of my employees and supporting their families and livelihoods,” Charlotte says. “When your employees are happy, the customer’s happy, and then success follows.”

As a first-generation American, Harold Hughes learned that community comes from shared experiences, finding his home at university football games. He quickly realized that fan experiences–whether sports, music, or other entertainment–could be enhanced for both organizers and fans by technology. Harold founded Bandwagon in 2016, initially to address secondary ticket sales. “When tickets are resold, organizers expect a different person to attend. Multiply that by 70,000 fans, and suddenly marketing is way off,” he explains. Using their consent-based Glassbox Technology, data from fans’ ticket sales helped organizers create better fan experiences. From the outset, Harold used Google Workspace tools like Gmail to help Bandwagon overcome biases many startups face. “I had different emails for our marketing, operations, and customer service; they were all me,” Harold chuckles. Bandwagon now has seven team members, and Google Analytics helps them pivot to introduce new capabilities.

Inspired by non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in the virtual sports collectible market, Harold realized that live events could generate thousands of versions of unique fan experiences: “Each of those vantage points, each experience–that was non-fungible." Bandwagon pivoted in 2020 to become an outsourced NFT producer, allowing fans to connect directly with their favorite artists and athletes. ”We’re leaning into user-generated content, minting them as NFTs, and using them as Proof of Experience™,” Harold explains. As they see 200-percent year-over-year (YoY) growth, and look to the emerging metaverse and blockchain for authenticating live event experiences, Harold remains focused on lifting up his hometown of Greenville. “We point back home with every bit of success we get. We let folks know that everyone who works here, every product we build, was built in South Carolina,” Harold says.