Office products company opening LV distribution center

Friday, July 21, 2000 | 11:10 a.m.

Fellowes Manufacturing Co., an 83-year-old office products and business supply manufacturer, is building a distribution center and light-manufacturing plant in Las Vegas.

Doug Campbell, director of distribution for the Itasca, Ill.-based company, said a 303,000-square-foot center will open by the end of September at 2880 N. Lamb Blvd., near Cheyenne Avenue.

About 50 employees will work two shifts at the plant, Campbell said.

The center will be managed by Byrne Gallagher, currently warehouse operations manager for Fellowes. He and Campbell introduced themselves to Las Vegas-area business people Tuesday at a meeting of the Nevada Development Authority.

The company's Las Vegas center will manage distribution of Fellowes products to 13 Western states. Campbell said the center would ship about 45 million pounds of freight a year from Las Vegas.

Campbell said two employees would be transferred to Las Vegas from Illinois, but the rest of the work crew would be hired locally.

Gallagher said hiring would begin in early to mid-August with full staffing to be accomplished just before the facility opens. He said the company has not finalized pay scales for the Las Vegas plant.

The privately held company decided on Las Vegas after executives toured Reno, Southern California's Inland Empire region and Phoenix. Campbell said company officials chose Las Vegas because of the advantages of its outbound freight scheduling and a favorable labor market.

"Las Vegas is a consumer market, so most of the trucks come into town full and leave empty," Campbell said. "This works favorably for us and our shipping needs."

He said Southern California is a big market for Fellowes, but Nevada's tax advantages also played a role in the decision to locate in Las Vegas.

Fellowes, which opened in 1917 as the Bankers Box Co., expanded over the years from a filing and storage materials manufacturer to a wide range of products, including computer accessories, electronic office products, paper shredders, binding and laminating equipment, records storage boxes and desk accessories.

It's now the market leader in paper shredders and record storage products. The company has more than 1,500 employees worldwide.

The company has seven subsidiaries and operates in 10 nations on four continents, shipping to more than 100 countries.

The office equipment and supplies market is a $150 billion-a-year industry in the United States, growing at a rate of between 4 percent and 6 percent a year, according to Hoovers Online.

Several different companies concentrate on specific niches in the industry. On the retail end, the top competitors are No. 1 Office Depot, followed by Staples and OfficeMax, which together hold 19 percent of the market share followed by large dealers (17 percent) and national wholesalers (16 percent).