The Shoals Entrepreneurial Center (SEC) is a private, non-profit corporation whose mission is to provide young businesses a sheltered environment for developing the management, financial, and technical skills necessary to become self-sustaining members of the business community.
The SEC is one of the few multi-faceted, architecturally designed, incubators in the nation. The Florence Center was established in 1992 and has since been the incubator for 85 business clients. Seventy-eight of these clients are still in business. SEC has graduated thirty-one incubator clients to the Shoals area business community. The SEC currently has three locations including a shared commercial kitchen facility. A fourth manufacturing/industrial incubator is scheduled to open in 2003.