EverythingBranded USA (asi/160791), the U.S. arm of U.K.-based Charles Alexander Distribution, will be expanding to the West Coast this year with an official opening scheduled for the first week of October. We spoke with Paul Rowlett, CEO and founder of Charles Alexander Distribution, about his company’s rapid growth.

Q: How did Charles Alexander Distribution come about?
Paul Rowlett: I started this from my bedroom in 2010 with £1500 and a dusty laptop. By 2013, we broke through the £2 million barrier and increased our team to 15 people. We’ve now expanded to 130 employees in the U.K. and we’ll have room for 150 employees in our upcoming West Coast office in the U.S. We are forecasting that when all added up across the brands, we should do $35 million for the whole of 2018.

Q: What do you attribute this amazing growth to?
PR: Our business is based around Google. We have very good SEO and a very, very strong online back office. It’s purely ecommerce. We advertise very heavily and we offer added value to our customers. We know what works and we do it well.

Q: Why is now the time to expand to the West Coast?
PR: We are quite a powerful business in the U.K., so the natural progression is to look at the American market. ASI has been a major factor in planting our feet fast. EverythingBranded USA opened an office in Delaware and exceeded $6.5 million in its first year. We tried having our U.K. team work for the U.S. brand, but we couldn’t recruit staff to do the hours. So we made a decision to look into Las Vegas. We have friends there and an opportunity was available. We’re moving in the third week of August, and our official opening will be in October. We invite suppliers to come for bit of a party and to see our surroundings.

Q: What are your immediate goals with the expansion?
PR: This month we are on track to do $1.5 million in sales for the EverythingBranded USA brand only, and this is after only 14 months of actual real trading. Our ultimate goal is to be a Top 40 distributor by the end of 2019. That sounds like explosive growth, but we should be able to do it. We’ve got the numbers, the people and the management. It’s more passion than arrogance. Once we get there, people will start seeing that we’re not going away. We’re here to stay.