We bought another building! It may be a short sentence, but it was a long process.
We’re pleased to announce that last October, we finalized the purchase of a second 7,000 sq/ft building across the street from the 12,000 sq/ft building we’ve utilized for over ten years. We explored numerous options for expansion, including building another facility, but ultimately, we were able to work with a local family that owned the building adjacent to us. This building has housed multiple businesses over the last 3 decades under their ownership, and it feels nice to become stewards of the building putting the space to good use.
You may be wondering why we’re just announcing this now, and the answer is simple: first, the building was not move-in ready and we’ve been putting a lot of time and effort into making the space usable, and second, we’ve been busy making splitboard bindings!
We completed the purchase and moved a lot of product and people to the new building during our busiest (and most challenging) production season to date. While we remain busy as we prepare for the upcoming season, now is as good a time as any to make the announcement. Splitboarding is growing and so is Spark R&D!
With the addition of the building, a new chapter begins for Spark R&D. We now have a campus! Well, kind of.
The new building helps us in 4 important ways:
1
More Machines!
First, it allows us to add more machines. More machines means more parts, and more parts means more bindings! We’ve moved the entire finished product warehouse, along with the shipping, customer service, sales, and marketing teams to the new building. This has freed up space for a couple of new additions to the machine shop with room for a few more. To date, we’ve already added another EC-400 horizontal milling machine with a 7-pallet changer along with an Automatic Lathe screw machine.