Get customers what they want when they need it. That’s the rationale Clickstop and CEO Cari McCoy used as the driving principle to construct a 47,000-square-foot warehouse in Simpsonville, South Carolina, earlier this year. It’s the second physical location for a company that has grown exponentially in Urbana, as highlighted by its placement on the […]
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Get customers what they want when they need it.
That’s the rationale Clickstop and CEO Cari McCoy used as the driving principle to construct a 47,000-square-foot warehouse in Simpsonville, South Carolina, earlier this year.
It's the second physical location for a company that has grown exponentially in Urbana, as highlighted by its placement on the CBJ Fastest Growing Companies list 12 consecutive times. But as the business found out through increased demand, it has become harder for customers across the country to get the items they order quickly – especially as supply chain issues further complicate matters.
“As part of our strategy, we believe in holding a good amount of inventory, so having a second warehouse location creates greater capacity for us to hold more at any given time,” Ms. McCoy explained to the CBJ.
A new warehouse, she said, will accomplish several goals: First, Clickstop will be able to hold more inventory than ever before; and second, broadening out to South Carolina allows the manufacturer to provide fast shipping to substantially more customers – not just for online orders out of the Midwest.
“With our expansion to the East Coast, we will be able to reach nearly 80% of the U.S. within one to two business days, which is a gamechanger,” Allen DeHeck, vice president of supply chain for Clickstop, said in a release. The warehouse should also reduce inbound and outbound shipping costs.
And why not just expand operations in Iowa?
“It’s about speed at that point,” Ms. McCoy said. “We took a close look at our top customers and the top targets we want to win as customers, and identified a handful of locations that would put us in closer proximity. We eventually narrowed it down to the Simpsonville area.”
While Clickstop looked at sites up and down the East Coast, they determined the Carolinas were a better geographical fit, and Ms. McCoy noted good relationships with the Simpsonville Area Chamber of Commerce throughout the process ultimately pushed the deal over the line.
The bulk of inventory in the new facility will be US Cargo Control products — Clickstop’s flagship brand that specializes in trucking and transportation, rigging and lifting and moving supplies — with a secondary emphasis in EcoFoil and Fasteners Plus (Clickstop’s fastest growing ecommerce brand) products.
“Our niche has been very utilitarian, unglamorous products because we specialize in selling them online,” Ms. McCoy said. “Those are not typically industries that are very tech savvy.”
Clickstop currently has two other business units slightly deviating from this model.
Acquired in 2017, Pepper Joes started as a seed company. Within a couple of years, Clickstop started growing a few seedlings with a hydroponic system inside their main building, before eventually running out of space.
The business now grows thousands of seedlings inside of a greenhouse on the Urbana property — ranging from tomatoes and cilantro to some of the hottest peppers in the world — along with other mature plants. Some peppers are turned into ground powders, spices and seasonings that help contribute to Clickstop’s environmental mission of zero plant waste.
“It’s not uncommon to walk into the greenhouse and see somebody taking a bite out of a ghost pepper," she said. “Most people on the team are passionate about gardening and/or eating insanely hot foods.”
Running the greenhouse is still a learning experience, she said, with the team turning for guidance from outside consultants and the agriculture department at Iowa State University. By the end of the year, they hope to hire a greenhouse specialist.
Clean Laundry, the only non-ecommerce business unit owned by Clickstop, is a laundromat licensing company frequently popping up with new storefronts in Iowa City, Coralville, Marion and Cedar Rapids. The brand has since gone nationwide. Operating under a business model similar to franchise licensing, Clickstop owns the branding and assists with business administration components like finance and human resources.
If business continues at the same pace, further expansion will be necessary, Ms. McCoy said. At this time, only preliminary work is being done to assess where another facility could be located and what its needs could be.
The Simpsonville warehouse will create 12 new jobs that are a mix of full-time and part-time positions. Four people are working there now, one of whom relocated from Iowa.
