One of the largest e-commerce companies in the United States opened its newest distribution center on Garvey Road in Elsmere.
Halloweencostume.com, along with its sister site FUN.com, a toy and collectible e-commerce website, is the tenant occupying the 285,000-square-foot warehouse.
FUN.com has licensing agreements with large companies such as Disney. This allows them to sell products for brands under the Disney umbrella, such as Star Wars and Marvel.
“90% of our business is just Halloween and Halloween costumes,” founder and CEO Todd Fallenstein said. The site will serve as the company’s East Coast Distribution Center.
“This facility can reach the entire East Coast from Boston to Miami with two-day ground shipping,” Fallenstein said.
Additionally, they own a nearly 200,000-square-foot facility in Mankato, Minnesota. The site is projected to store and ship three times the number of products to match growing customer demand, according to a company news release.
The warehouse is in a prime location for shipping and distribution. It’s only 6.7 miles from the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport in Hebron and 2.7 miles from Interstate 75.
“Northern Kentucky offers many logistical advantages to companies in a diverse array of industries with our transportation and air infrastructure that provide access to more than 54% of the U.S. population within a day’s drive and shipping around the globe,” BE NKY CEO Lee Crume said in a press release.
Fallenstein said the distribution center is looking to fill approximately 500 seasonal positions, both full-time and part-time, in anticipation of the Halloween season — the company’s busiest time of the year. The center looks to expand to almost 2,000 temporary and seasonal workers in the future.
“We’re the largest online retailer of Halloween costumes and this gives us just a lot of flexibility for growing and expanding our team,” Fallenstein said at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the center’s opening.
The massive warehouse is part of the C5 Airport East Logistics Center, a multi-building industrial warehouse campus. CORE5 Industrial Partners, a commercial real estate firm, developed the facilities. Plans call for the construction of five warehouses on the campus. Currently, three of the five are finished. FUN.com and Halloweencostumes.com occupy the development’s third building.
“The City of Elsmere has come a long way,” mayor Marty Lenhof said. “I think if you look around here, you can see a lot of development that three years ago, wasn’t even out here.”
Two more large warehouses will be built in the plot across the road. Construction has yet to begin.
