DELAWARE CITY — With the low whir of a battery-operated chain saw, Snow Joe President Eddie Cohen and Chief Operating Officer Paul Riley Jr. easily cut the ribbon in front of the company’s warehouse in the Delaware Logistics Park.
The snow removal and garden equipment manufacturer signed a lease in February for a 207,837-square-foot warehouse, marking its fifth location in the United States and third on the East Coast. Launched in 2004 with the electric snow shovel, the company has since expanded to snow blowers, lawn mowers, power washers, lawn sprinklers and more.
“Snow Joe’s thriving e-commerce business has propelled our rapid expansion over the years, and we continue to invest in our infrastructure to raise the bar for our customers,” Riley said at a ribbon cutting ceremony on Tuesday. “Our state-of-the-art distribution centers across our network operated by our amazing associates enable us to deliver for our customers day in and day out. We could not be any more excited about our New Castle location.”
Snow Joe has been on a rapid trajectory ever since its founder and CEO Joseph Cohen first took his savings — with his family’s support — and designed his own snow blower to be built in China, according to Forbes. The company plans to hire up to 100 employees for the New Castle location.
The warehouse is stacked with boxes of product, with capacity at 9,500 pallet positions. Snow Joe has 30 employees at the time, and the robotic forklift pickers connect on horizontal line grooves in the middle of each aisle, ensuring the machinery doesn’t hit the racks. Pallet stacking is automated as well.
Snow Joe selected New Castle for its latest warehouse to target the mid-Atlantic market, as the company has facilities in Mahwah, N.J.; Salisbury, N.C.; Lacey, Wash.; and Houston, Texas. But the company plans on turning its Delaware operations into a hub for its rock salt products, with an anticipated volume of 3 to 4 million bags.
While the family owned a chain of hardware stores, Joseph Cohen quickly realized the time was right to tap in the online sales market. Amazon was lifting off, and when Snow Joe listed some of its snow removal products online, so did the company.
Roughly 70% of the company’s sales are on e-commerce platforms like Amazon, but in recent years Snow Joe has been making its way in brick-and-mortar retailers like Walmart and Home Depot. Winter season can see as many as 14,000 orders.
Sun Joe, the law and home care product line, was launched in 2009, as Joseph Cohen realized that snow removal products sold quickly one-quarter of the year. That product line now comprises about 50% of the company’s total business.
What makes the Snow Joe and Sun Joe products unique is that they run on electricity or batteries, typically in intervals of 24 volts. The snowblower today requires 96 volts, or four 24-volt batteries.
“We’re also starting to see 5% of the market share per year transition to battery power,” Riley said. “Really, the batteries are the focus as we think about the next three to five years. How do 150 different tools operate on the battery that you have on that chainsaw?”
Snow Joe enjoyed success in the last two years, benefiting from people spending more time at home and looking at taking care of their space more. It reportedly shipped 12 million units in 2020 and has reached 1.2 million customers as of April 2021.
Shipping for Snow Joe depends on the season. The company can move between 100 and 5,000 items. In the wintertime, that can go as high as 30 to 40 truckloads of product.
Snow Joe also marks the fourth and final warehouse for the Delaware Logistics Park off U.S. Route 13. The logistics park replaced the 190-acre former AkzoNobel property near Delaware City, and the 207,837-square-foot warehouse was the smallest of the four. Other tenants include Amazon, DART and Newacme.
Combined, the Delaware Logistics Park brought 2 million square feet of distribution and fulfillment space. NorthPoint Development bought the land for $10 million in 2018, and poured funding into the site to attract distribution-focused tenants near the Route 1 interchange.
“When we signed pre-leases for some of this space, it validated that our theory was right that this area was ripe for warehouse distribution, specifically the I-95 corridor near Philadelphia and New Jersey,” NorthPoint Development Vice President of Development Jeremy Michael said.
Michael added that NorthPoint continues to look for new prospects in Delaware after the success with the Delaware Logistics Park.
“We’ve looked at different opportunities south of here, but with the toll [at Biddle’s Corner] it’s going to take something major to move the needle there,” he said. “But Delaware is a great place to do business, with the tax climate and with the help of the officials.”
