Business is booming at Lakeshirts, which projects a 50% hike in sales next year, and the new warehouse now going up on Eighth Street in the Detroit Lakes industrial park is going to play a big role in that future growth.
“There’s a massive demand,” said Lakeshirts Marketing Director Mike Sidders. “We’ve not seen anything like this – it’s incredible.”
The big jump in projected sales for 2022 comes on top of higher sales this year as well, he said, due in part to pent-up demand from COVID-19 shut-downs.
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“Our company is seeing sales from people that are tired of the pandemic,” he said. “They’re traveling and seeing the best locations in the country to visit, they’re going to college football games, and college kids are back in school.”
The 21,000-square-foot, metal-framed warehouse is designed to hold up to 1,500 pallets of apparel, which will be stacked on a tall racking system, he said.
The 31-foot high warehouse is possible because the Detroit Lakes City Council granted Lakeshirts a variance to go higher than the 25-foot height limit set by the zoning ordinance.
The warehouse is designed to serve not only the Detroit Lakes production facility but also smaller Lakeshirts production facilities — one in Little Falls, Minn., and one in Buffalo, N.Y. And there may be others in the future, Sidders said.
“We have a number of satellite production facilities that we are establishing,” he added. Lakeshirts now employs about 750 people company-wide, “and we’re looking for a lot more people,” Sidders said. The location of the new production facilities is based largely on the number of available workers there, he said.
“We’re constantly hiring, we’re constantly looking for new people to join our company,” Sidders said. “Access to workers is critically important to us to keep on our growth trajectory.”
Sidders didn’t have information on the cost of the warehouse project, but said it is expected to be completed sometime after the first of the year. “We’re getting close,” he said.
