Downtown move for Keep Supply comes amid record revenue

Coming off a record-breaking year for revenue and employees, industrial parts and equipment distributor Keep Supply is in expansion mode.

The company announced earlier this month its plans to relocate downtown over the summer to 117 Park Central Square from its current location at 601 N. National Ave., Ste. 102. Keep Supply will more than double its footprint with the move, said CEO Josh Burch. It plans to lease roughly 34,000 square feet in remodeled space on portions of the second and third floors of the 110,000-square-foot downtown building owned by Davis Properties.

Burch said annual revenue for 2024 rose to $51 million, a roughly 60% year-over-year increase. Additionally, the company’s employee count is nearing 100 – a number he expects the company will cross this month. Keep Supply, which distributes industrial parts and equipment for food, beverage, chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturers, finished 2023 with 67 employees. It also has a 10,000-square-foot fulfillment center at 3107 E. Chestnut Expressway, where five employees work, and which it will keep with the move.

According to Keep Supply’s website, the company’s customers comprise myriad industries such as industrial and commercial refrigeration, meat processors, cold storage facilities, chemicals and pharmaceuticals and farms. Clients include Associated Wholesale Grocers, Butterball, Hiland Dairy, Reddy Ice and Tyson Foods.

Company president Drake Hughes told Springfield Business Journal during a December CEO roundtable discussion that the plan for 2025 is to reach $84 million in revenue but added hiring will slow a little this year to focus more on efficiency. Burch said Feb. 19 that he expects the company to add 15 employees before year’s end.

With the move, the company expects to expand its workforce by roughly 100 positions over the next several years. Burch said Keep Supply will not utilize any state incentive programs to aid in hiring efforts. .

“Realistically, we’ll add people across all the functional areas of the business,” he said, noting departments comprise brand and marketing, finance, operations, people and culture, sales and technology. “We’ve got to continue to invest in technology positional hires as we continue to focus on enhancing automation internally, optimization and enhancing the customer experience.”

Noting the company’s geographical distribution market is over 70 countries, Burch said the current trade environment for Keep Supply is stable. He said being involved in the industrial refrigeration industry, which is tightly tied to the food supply chain, has been a great place for the company to grow.

“We’re helping to maintain refrigeration processes for some of the larger food manufacturers in the country,” he said. “That space has also given us a lot of opportunity to put focus on creating a differentiated customer experience.”

Heading downtown
Even when Keep Supply moved in 2023 to its current 14,000 square feet on National Avenue, leadership recognized it was a short-term location to lease.

“The National space has been really good for us. It’s been a great space functionally for us and it fit our personality,” Burch said, adding a move to a larger existing building rather than new construction always was the goal.

“As we continue to grow and expand, we’re getting tight in that space,” he said. “We’re just looking for space that not only accommodates us now but gives us the ability to keep growing over the next few years.”

Burch declined to disclose estimated relocation and renovation costs or its five-year lease rate with Davis Properties. He said renovation work in the building is yet to begin.

“We’re still in the early stages,” he said. “We’ve been looking at the design and the layout and working through that.”

Ben Vickers, business development manager with the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce, learned last summer that Keep Supply was interested in expanding and connected with Lindsay Bauer, the company’s director of people and culture.

“They were still pretty early on in the stages, and they weren’t sure exactly how much space that they would want. Keep Supply has some pretty big goals,” he said. “When a company’s in that kind of growth mode that they’re in, they don’t really want to extend a ton of capital to build something new.”

Vickers said around the same time he was speaking with Keep Supply, the chamber heard MSU planned to vacate the 117 Park Central Square building.

“That’s one of the few buildings in town that would really work for what Keep Supply was looking for,” he said, adding that led to a walkthrough of the facility.

By December, MSU exited the Park Central Square building, which it had used since the early 2000s, said Emily Letterman, public relations strategist. The facility housed the Center for Resource Planning and Management and some classes through the school’s colleges of business and education, among other uses.

Letterman said MSU also vacated the Levy/Wolf Building at 110 Park Central Square, relocating services between the two buildings to MSU-owned facilities on campus. University officials estimate the school will save around $1.3 million annually in rent for the two downtown buildings.

‘Outside the box’
While Keep Supply recognized the potential, they knew renovations would be necessary. Vickers said the company and Davis Properties worked out lease terms, which will result in upgrades to the building.

“It’s downtown revitalization at its finest and now the amount of hires that Keep Supply is going to do in the next couple of years, the amount of space that they now have available, it’s going to be 150-plus people right on the square,” Vickers said. “It’ll be much more modern.”

Vickers said he’s grateful Keep Supply chose to “think a little outside the box” in finding a new headquarters.

“We have to diversify the workforce that’s down there and the types of businesses that occupy the square,” he said. “And you need a diversified mix in order to drive the foot traffic.”

Keep Supply’s move this year follows the 2023 relocation by longtime Springfield architectural firm BRP Architects to the Heer’s building on Park Central Square. The firm occupies 7,272 square feet on the first floor of the building, roughly 30% larger than its former space at 319 N. Main Ave., according to past reporting.

Burch said most of Keep Supply’s teams will occupy the second floor, while the brand and marketing department, which includes a studio to develop videos, among other content, will likely be on the third floor. That floor also will include some shared space for company gatherings, along with a game room and kitchen.

“There’s a lot of things that we do within our culture to have fun, and I think that’s a big part of our success and growth,” he said. “So, we definitely will create some space where that can continue.”

Noting staff will have dedicated parking in a nearby private garage on East McDaniel Street, Burch said the company was thrilled to find space downtown that it can customize to fit its needs.

“We believe that the downtown area has an awful lot to offer our team in terms of places to go, things to do when they get away from the office throughout the day,” he said. “It’s going to be an energizing and fun place to be, and again, that’s really consistent with our culture and our personality. We will be excited to be a part of it and hope that we can bring some value to the neighbors in that area once we get over there.”

Digital Editor Geoff Pickle contributed.