The new Spector & Co. site might not look like much from the outside—a warehouse marked with the Canadian supply company’s name—but inside it’s humming with activity, as employees work between a showroom full of products sporting brand names like Netflix, Jelly Belly and Spotify, and a factory with the array of machines that made them.
The North Las Vegas facility is the Montreal-based company’s first location in the United States, where about 60% of its business takes place, according to Juan Martinez, vice president of branding and manufacturing growth for North America at Spector & Co., a top designer and manufacturer of promotional products.
“We’ve been in business for 70 years,” Martinez said at the 93,000-square-foot facility, which recently became fully operational. “So, we are pretty much one of the best companies in Canada and very competitive in the United States.”
The supplier, which works with distributors to provide branded products to various companies, uses multiple techniques to do so, including flat-screen printing, digital printing, debossing and laser-engraving.
Pens and books are probably the company’s most popular products, Martinez said, followed closely by bottles and bags. At the North Las Vegas facility, pens in the showroom read “Welcome to our Las Vegas Residency.”
The facility has locally hired about 25 people, whom Martinez called “the best of the best.” The company’s goal is to have approximately 50 to 55 employees by year’s end, he said. Spector & Co. cares about engaging with the community, he emphasized.
“The important part here is that all this equipment requires very capable and competent operators, and the team that we have worked with—all the hires that we have—have been amazing,” Martinez said during a tour of the facility, stopping occasionally to greet employees and ask about their work. “And they are very proficient already.”
Spector & Co. considered about 20 cities for its first U.S. facility, Martinez said, eventually narrowing the list down to San Antonio, Phoenix and Las Vegas.
Vegas eventually won out based on labor availability, direct flights to and from the company’s home base in Montreal, and the fact that one of the largest annual events in the company’s industry takes place here.
“Proximity-wise, it’s a perfect location,” said Ginny Lee, customer liaison at Spector & Co. “And it gives us a West Coast footprint.”
Martinez said he could see the North Las Vegas operation expanding to hire hundreds of employees within the next five years or so, if all goes according to plan.
The most complex aspect of the company and its expansion isn’t the expensive factory equipment it relies on, Martinez emphasized, but rather the staff that operate it.
“Expansion is always a big portion of what we do,” he said. “Again, we can install all the equipment or the electrical—the plumbing—[but] the most important component is those people that we’re going to be hiring, and the mindset that they have.”
One major advantage of a U.S. facility will be the company’s ability to fill orders without having to worry about customs slowing down their delivery. Being in Nevada will allow the supplier to speed up delivery to U.S. companies by several days or even provide 24-hour service, Martinez said.
With new space also comes new opportunities for innovation, which Martinez suggested is a priority of Spector & Co.
The company thought a lot about what it did and did not want to carry over from its Montreal base to the North Las Vegas site, Martinez said, along with new strategies it could implement. For example, both facilities might soon see the use of robotics, he said.
The days of learning one machine and retiring on that same machine are in the past, Martinez said, and a common denominator among new hires at Spector & Co. must be their ability to learn various machines and adapt as they evolve.
“We thrive on innovation,” Martinez said. “We get excited about it. The guys are super knowledgeable about things, and they are agile. A lot of the people that we hire over here—and that was something that I consciously was looking for—[are] people that can adopt technology very quickly.”
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This story appeared in Las Vegas Weekly.