LuLaRoe’s move to Blythewood happened ‘lightning fast’

LuLaRoe, the West Coast clothing company that is opening a distribution center near Blythewood, made the deal to purchase the old Bose plant quickly and without incentives.

“This is the fastest-moving project I’ve ever seen,” said Jeff Ruble, Richland County’s economic development director. “They went from due diligence to closing in about six weeks. It was lightning fast.”

LuLaRoe’s plans were officially announced on Wednesday. The day before, thestate.com reported the company’s purchase of the Bose plant.

Ruble said Jushi, the China-based fiberglass company that is building a plant in the Pinewood Industrial Park, “took four or five years. We talked (to LuLaRoe) for two or three weeks.”

Chuck Salley, the Colliers International vice president who brokered the deal, said company officials had looked for some time for an East Coast distribution center, finally found what they wanted, and bought it.

“It was fast,” he said. “A 30-day due diligence and a 15-day closing. That’s very fast in the industrial world.”

CBS MoneyWatch reported last month that LuLaRoe’s sales skyrocketed 600 percent in 2016 to about $1 billion.

The Corona, Calif.-based company bought the former Bose plant — a 104-acre, 470,000 square-foot-facility near Interstate 77 — for $16 million. Bose closed the plant, which manufactured Wave radios, in 2015, costing the Midland 300 jobs.

LuLaRoe announced it will create at least 1,000 jobs at the site.

Both Ruble and S.C. Department of Commerce spokeswoman Adrienne Fairwell confirmed that neither entity offered the company any incentives beyond job creation tax credits and other considerations written into state law and offered to all businesses.

“We gave them nothing,” Fairwell said.

LuLaRoe is a different type retailer.

The company doesn’t sell its colorful skirts, leggings and tops through stores. Instead, it sells minimum levels of $5,000 in stock to independent consultants, mainly millennial women who then sell to their friends and acquaintances, building a customer base through social media and online “pop-up” parties.

The company depends heavily on its distribution system to deliver clothes to about 80,000 independent contractors, called consultants.

The company’s consultants and customers can be wildly passionate about the products and the firm’s charismatic founder, DeAnne Stidham. Stidham founded the firm in 2012, a single mother of seven at the time.

This story was originally published April 27, 2017 at 12:09 PM with the headline "LuLaRoe’s move to Blythewood happened ‘lightning fast’."