DELAWARE CITY – The Delaware Logistics Park has landed its next tenant: Newacme, a retailer and distributor of trampolines, salon equipment, pet supplies and more.
The Newacme warehouse will create between 15 and 20 jobs when it opens in mid-April, but Newacme LLC Chief Executive Manager Reed Liang said the plan is to hire more than 34 employees over time to handle and ship products to customers all over the country. Newacme will invest between $1.5 million and $2 million in the site for racking, equipment, furniture and utility infrastructure.
On Monday, the state’s investment board, the Council on Development Finance (CDF), unanimously approved a job performance grant of up to $44,540 for the creation of 34 jobs. Positions include warehouse associates as well as managers.
Newacme will occupy a 217,000-square-foot building in the logistics park being developed by Kansas City-based NorthPoint Development. With access to the Wrangle Hill Road interchange on Route 1, Liang told the Delaware Business Times that Newacme will be primed to target its East Coast customers.
“We needed more land, and after doing the cost calculations, we determined our budget was under $250,000. We were looking in Allentown and in Baltimore, but we realized that Delaware was the most inexpensive place to stay,” Liang said. “This will also save time transporting our commodities to the East Coast.”
Founded in 2011 in Oregon, Newacme originally started as an international trading company for various products to third-party vendors like Amazon, Walmart, Wayfair and Overstock. But over time, the company invested in factories in China and started manufacturing its own products to sell to third-party websites and consumers directly. Newacme sells trampolines, nail and barbershop equipment, furniture, and pet supplies through factory-direct brands like ExacMe, BarberPub, and Mcombo.
Newacme has warehouses in Los Angeles, Memphis and Dusseldorf, Germany. But company research shows that 60% of its customers are on the United States’ East Coast. With roughly 54 million people living within a 200-mile radius of the Greater Philadelphia region, Liang said the new facility will serve as a key distribution center in the company’s growth plan.
“The warehouse has high ceilings and space available to store our goods. As we move forward, we can see it can be equipped for any future use we have,” he said. “But now, it will be used to ship to our customers directly. The pandemic has been good for business, as more people are relying on shopping online. We are excited to come to Delaware, especially after seeing their business-friendly approach in their work.”
This is the third major company that has eyes set on the Delaware Logistics Park in the last year. Northpoint is redeveloping the 190-acre former AkzoNobel property at 1386 School House Road into a complex of four industrial buildings with 2 million total square feet of distribution and fulfillment space. The developer bought the land in an estimated $10 million sale in 2018, according to county land records.
Dart Container, maker of the ubiquitous red Solo Cup as well as other Styrofoam and plastic food packaging containers and cutlery, announced it would be the first tenant last summer. The company pledged to bring between 60 to 70 jobs to the facility. Amazon recently confirmed reports that it would use a half-million square-foot building at the site as a last-mile distribution center.
“Newacme’s choice to locate in Delaware – along with other recent distribution center projects such as Dart Container and Amazon – confirms Delaware’s value proposition as a strategic and cost-effective place for industrial and distribution development,” Delaware Prosperity Partnership President and CEO Kurt Foreman told DBT. “Delaware’s diversity of companies in this space is an added benefit to our growth in ecommerce and logistics – and in job opportunities for Delawareans.”
