After close to five or six years at the s1 Main Street location, we had to move. We had five full time (in house) staff members, and the inclusion of Metal Gear (powerlifting gear) pushed the offices into the weight room and the weight room next door (double rent). Sales were still growing in the single digit range but we were out of room.
Seriously, we were maxed out and couldn’t add another product without a discontinued one and had no more room for another desk. The weight room was also jammed. We would have stayed as finding anything in London, Ohio isn’t easy (we looked off and on for two years), and we simply couldn’t afford the rent in Columbus.
An issue with flooding the back warehouse area wasn’t going to get fixed (slum lord), and it was now costing time (pumping all the water out) and money on lost inventory.
We had to move. As has happened SO many times to us, right when all hope seemed to be lost, a friend heard of a place that just started looking for a new tenant. We all looked it over, and it was the bottom level of a house structure and two open storage bays across the lot. Twice the rent was hard to swallow but doable if we pulled out my payroll. This would also give us room to hire two more people, and we almost had the sales to support that.
We took the leap. A decade in business to get here but it was worth it. A real office and a far better warehouse set up than we had - and twice the room for the weight room. On the door to the weight was a logo that read s2 (that is how the name started. Jim Wendler called it the s2 compound because all three buildings were not connected.
Soon, I will post about the expansions we made while in this location, but first I need to note we didn’t look into how much it would cost to connect the office and warehouse internet, network cables, and phones. Ya, that was a costly error that involved a telephone poll, but we managed. The best part is after years of being jammed into one area all 5 of us had our own office.
While this move came with more flooding, bats, mice, possums and raccoons it was a good move.
Pics of the office building, weight room, and warehouse.
