New Ash City Headquarters Combines Business Efficiencies/Eco-Friendliness

I recently had the opportunity to tour the massive new corporate headquarters and warehouse for Ash City in Richmond Hill, Ont., with congenial director of sales Bryan Vine.

It’s a pretty hard building to miss, but as much as it is a showpiece for that apparel company, it also combines eco-friendliness with business efficiencies, two aspects that often seem to collide in the green movement.

According to Ash City, the company recycles or re-uses all of its paper, plastic, glass, corrugated products, cutting trims, wooden pallets and garment poly bags and the tiles in the front lobby are made from 75 per cent recycled materials.

Ash City also utilizes computer terminals that are reported to consume about 50 per cent less energy than a traditional PC.

Large circulation fans are also used in place of air conditioning and the company donates second quality garments to charity, not only to help those in need, but also to divert tons of material away from landfills and incinerators.

Its reservoirs are also pretty cool – literally.

“The biggest thing is the gray water system that’s been installed. That is a system whereby rain water is collected and reused to water the property,” said Sareg McCulloch, Ash City’s director of marketing and communications.

“Water runs off of our building into a reservoir in which the water is stored and then recycled to water our lawn, our flowers, etc., etc.,” added Vine.

There is added value to this system, according to McCulloch.

“That chilled water system that we have in place is also helping to chill our server room. Water is stored and is routed to the server room whereby, in the summer months when it’s hot, it acts as a cooling system,” she said.

The building opened and January and close to 400 company employees had moved in by March and, according to Vine, green-friendliness and business efficiencies are working harmoniously.

“What it means for us is that we moved five separate warehouses into one warehouse. We had people dispersed and they’re now under one roof here,” he said. “We just amalgamated all of that. We are starting to see some definite efficiencies by doing that, which was the plan.

“Shipping, for example – by moving from five warehouses to one, we have a lot less manpower in regards to getting a specific order out the door,” he added.

“From an embroidery perspective, we had inventory in five different warehouses that we would pull to do a specific embroidery order. That’s all now in-house, so it’s just time and labour. Those are the two key factors.”

One of the obvious things that visitors will notice on a tour of the facility is that forklifts move around the warehouse on a series of connected tracks.

“That’s a specially-designed system to maximize aisle space. There are imbedded tracks in every aisle which allows the forklift to connect almost like a rail system. It works like a charm,” said McCulloch.

So, a company that uses renewable and recycled fibres in its e.c.o. collection, has apparently combined the best of both worlds in a new, glitzy facility.

“It’s the dawn of a new age for us,” said McCulloch. “This is a huge opportunity for us, having come together to be one great team, just internally pulling our resources together.”

Vine agrees.

“The atmosphere’s completely different. When I can walk over to check out embroidery downstairs in about 30 seconds as opposed to jumping in a car and spending 20 minutes on the road, it’s a completely different mindset,” he said, adding that the new facility has also been received well from customers.

“We’ve had a lot of our golf pros come through our building and be shocked at the size of our facility, the amount of inventory and certainly, the efficiencies that we have in place,” said Vine, adding that the new building also has a full showroom featuring all of the company’s garments.

That one-on-one time is valuable to the company, allowing it to explain the value of its value-propositioned line in the midst of a recession.

“That’s our goal, to show customers that we are value-propositioned, that they can make margin with our product, that we ship what has been ordered by the customer and hopefully, that customers will stick with us when this recessions ends.”

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