Top 40 distributor HALO Branded Solutions (asi/356000) is moving forward with a large-scale expansion of its corporate headquarters in Sterling, IL.

Executives for the industry’s third largest distributorship said Tuesday that they’ll be adding 253,300 square feet of warehouse space and 23,500 square feet of office and meeting space. The large-scale improvements come just 16 months after HALO completed its new corporate headquarters – a sign of HALO’s continued acceleration in sales and profits, executives said.

Bird’s-eye rendering of the HALO headquarters.

“The space is being added to accommodate our continued growth,” Terry McGuire, HALO’s senior vice president of vendor relations, told Counselor. “The new space will allow us to provide state-of-the-art distribution to the growing number of global brands that rely on HALO for innovative promotional and employee engagement solutions.”

When finished by spring 2020, the expanded space will be capable of accommodating an additional 350 employees at the Sterling headquarters, where about 600 employees already work. To date, HALO has made progress on the project, having added 380 additional parking spaces and begun warehouse construction. The distributorship anticipates that the warehouse will be complete by December of 2019. The office space will be done by May next year.

HALO CEO Marc Simon, Counselor’s 2019 Person of the Year, said that the company originally intended to expand, within five years, the recently completed headquarters. Success, however, accelerated the timeline. “Favorable market conditions, acquisitions and the addition of several major clients during the past two years have provided us with the opportunity to expand our headquarter campus much earlier than anticipated,” Simon said. “We were fortunate to have the support of the City of Sterling, Sterling’s local economic development team and our financial sponsors, TPG Growth, to accelerate our expansion.”

Marc Simon, HALO

Sterling Mayor Skip Lee is excited to see HALO growing. “HALO has been an excellent corporate citizen,” Lee said. “They have a strong community focus and they treat their employees very well. We are extremely pleased with the many contributions they make to Sterling and the surrounding communities.”

Winter Construction of Freeport, IL is doing the building. “The Winter team won international design awards for our current space and we were confident in their expertise,” Simon said. “The innovation and employee-centric design of our addition will allow us to serve our clients with sophisticated distribution solutions, while providing our valued staff with a comfortable and functional work space for years to come.”

Owned by private equity platform TPG Growth and HALO management, HALO’s 2018 North American promotional products sales tallied $605 million, a 45% increase over 2017. So far in 2019, sales are up again year-over-year. “The growth is driven by the full year impact of strong acquisitions we made in 2018, organic growth and our ability to draw industry account executives to the robust HALO support model,” McGuire told Counselor.

In recent years, HALO has been one of the most aggressive companies in the promo products industry when it comes to making acquisitions. HALO’s recent acquisitions include former Top 40 distributors Sunrise Identity and CSE, as well as global incentives firm Michael C. Fina Recognition, which has since been rebranded as HALO Recognition. HALO executives remain open to making additional acquisitions. “We will continue to be active in acquiring well-run promotional distributorships that allow us to financially reward the owners for building a solid business, while providing accretive value with HALO’s superior service platform, creative tools, and world-class technology,” McGuire told Counselor.