BRUNSWICK
It’s official, the largest online furnishing and home decor company Wayfair is headed to Brunswick, and with it upwards of 500 jobs.
Wednesday night the company signed the lease with Topsham-based developer Jim Howard of Priority Group Real Estate. Howard is purchasing the former 50,000-square-foot Navy Exchange building at 46 Burbank St., on Brunswick Landing and a $5 million renovation is already underway.
Jane Carpenter, head of public relations for Wayfair, said the Boston-based company plans to open in mid to late June and will have more than 500 full-time openings available.
“What’s going to be in Brunswick is going to be what we call business account management,” Carpenter said.
Business account managers will work with the company’s business accounts — whether it be hotels, schools or restaurants looking to buy furnishings. This location will have primarily business-to-business sales and services, but there will also be a kind of back office with support roles, some supplier operations and human resource and information technology roles on site.
“We’re planning to have more than 500 job openings in Brunswick. It’s really exciting,” Carpenter said, adding that the company is very competitive in its salaries and benefits. Every employee gets equity in the company, which offers 401k matching.
Carpenter said Wayfair felt Brunswick has a strong talent pool to draw from and said “Maine is such a great place,” with a great standard and quality of life. Based in Boston, she said she felt people at the company are well acquainted with how great Maine is.
The company has also announced it plans to bring another 450 full-time jobs to Bangor. “We have worked closely with the City of Bangor, L.L. Bean and Maine & Co. over the past several weeks to finalize our agreement to move into the building currently occupied by L.L. Bean,” a press release states.
The company did $1.3 billion in sales in 2014 and at the end 2014 had seen 44 percent year over year growth. According to its announcement about its third quarter 2015 earnings, the company’s total net revenue growth was already at 76.7 percent for year over year to $594.0 million.
“I think it’s quite an opportunity to be able to get a company from out of the state of Maine to come into the state and create that many jobs,” Howard said Thursday, adding that, with more than 500 jobs expected, “that’s pretty substantial. … When is the last time that happened?”
Howard said he is very pleased that he has Wayfair as a customer but said it took everyone working together to make that happen. Maine and Company, the state’s economic and community development office, Steve Levesque of Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority and the town of Brunswick all helped worked on the deal, which came together in about five months.
“They’re a great company,” Howard said.
“We are delighted to be a part of the redevelopment at Brunswick Landing and have worked closely with the Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority, the Town of Brunswick and Maine & Co. to finalize plans to join the Brunswick community,” a Wayfair press release states. “We are excited to work with the top notch talent in the Brunswick area to expand our operations.”
More details in tomorrow’s Times Record.
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