EVERETT — Electric Mirror, a high-end supplier for the hotel industry, has outgrown its home in an industrial park adjacent to Paine Field.
The family-owned company is moving this year to a bigger building in the Seaway area of south Everett. The move, the owners say, will let the company continue expanding its product lines, workforce and sales revenue.
The company has added nearly 100 employees in the past year, bringing its total in Everett to about 360. It also has sales and technical support staff members in Asia and North America.
“We’re busting at the seams,” president and CEO Jim Mischel Jr. said.
Currently, Electric Mirror’s marketing team is in a trailer outside the
Beverly Park Road factory.
Mischel’s modest office is crowded with banker boxes full of file folders, bookshelves packed with three-ring binders and four chairs around his desk. It often doubles as a meeting room for Electric Mirror’s leaders.
It’s been 11 years since the company moved out of a garage in Mischel’s father’s house and into a former dental office in Edmonds. In 2007, it moved to its present location.
This next move will be about five miles north to a 25-acre industrial park developed by Underwood Grantland, which bought the property from Cemex in 2011. Electric Mirror will occupy 110,000-square feet of a $20 million, 200,000-square-foot warehouse.
The move will give the company room to expand its manufacturing lines and research-and-development activities, Mischel said.
That means more jobs, too. Electric Mirror could have as many as 500 workers next year, he said.
The company had about $50 million in sales last year, and is on track to hit $62 million this year, said Aaron Mischel, who co-owns the company with his brother Jim.
Aaron oversees sales for Electric Mirror, which does about 70 percent of its business in North America. The rest is largely split between Asia and the Middle East.
As the head salesman, Aaron is often on the road. Last year, he visited more than 30 countries, often visiting several in a row. “Every night was a different airport” in a different country, he said.
The company’s focus has been high-end hotels, but recently has started selling to buyers in the luxury home market.
Construction has already started on Electric Mirror’s new home. The company is putting millions of dollars of work into the building, which it is leasing, said Brett Kinney, director of the company’s business operations. “It’s a big obligation.”
The company will move in stages starting this fall. The goal is to finish by mid-January with only losing three days of production.
“We’re saying to our community that we’re investing for the next decade in Everett and Snohomish County,” Jim Mischel Jr. said.
Dan Catchpole: 425-339-3454; dcatchpole@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @dcatchpole.
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