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A trusted, but under the radar local employer that has been thriving and growing in Michigan’s Great Southwest for more than 50 years recently joined with community members to celebrate its latest expansion.
Special-Lite is a leader in high-performance commercial doors, frames, architectural interiors, and engineered partitions, with manufacturing plants in Decatur and Benton Harbor. In mid-October, the company held a grand opening of its new corporate headquarters and expanded production facility in Decatur, Special-Lite’s ninth expansion.
Company officials say the expansion represents one of the most significant investments in Special-Lite’s history, totaling 69,000 square feet. This includes 49,000 square feet of new manufacturing space, enabling additional investment in automation and CNC equipment, and bringing the company’s 194,000 square feet in Decatur and nearly 325,000 across all its locations. The project adds 20,000 square feet of new office space across two floors for the company’s various non-production roles, a product showroom, a dedicated installation training area, and a lab for product testing.
Special-Lite focused for years on the exterior door market. You have probably walked through many Special-Lite entry doors in schools, government, or commercial buildings all across North America. As entryways were upgraded, there’s a good chance the choice for the door system was Special-Lite. More recently, the company has developed popular new products for the interior door and partition market, fueling another round of growth.
In an interview with MoodyOnTheMarket.com, President and Chief Operating Officer Alex Esposito explained:
“This actually represents the 9th expansion for Special-Lite in the Decatur location. And really, over the last three to five years, the growth has been driven by diversification of our market. If you roll the calendar back, the lion’s share of our customers was in the K through 12 schools and university market segments. Since that time, we’ve grown and we’re really proud of our growth into healthcare facilities.”
Esposito said the key to that growth has been the demonstrated quality of Special-Lite’s products:
“We make doors that are durable. They’re high quality. They last over time in really harsh environments. So, any environment where that’s in play on the exterior side is a fit for a Special-Lite door. And that translates to the other piece of growth, moving from just exterior doors to interior. If there’s a new building going up, how many openings are in there? How many doors, how many windows, how many frames? That’s all in our wheelhouse.”
Special-Lite’s most recent major product roll-out is an aluminum sliding door system that is perfect for healthcare installations: examining rooms, patient rooms, laboratories—almost anywhere that maximizing space is a priority. Like most Special-Lite products, The SpecSlide Surface-Mounted Sliding Door System can be used in new construction or retrofitted in existing facilities without heavy construction work. That translates into important dollars saved for healthcare institutions.
Special-Lite employs about 200 people in Decatur and 85 in its Benton Harbor plant on East Empire Avenue. Danielle Johnson, Director of Human Resources, told us they pride themselves on longtime employees, even a few multi-generational family members who work at Special-Lite. She pointed out that it’s common for employees to join the workforce as entry-level production workers, then rise to higher level positions through on the job and outside training programs offered by the company.
The Special-Lite leadership team takes pride in staying and growing in Decatur for half a century, despite opportunities to move the operation to Kalamazoo or Elkhart, where the labor pool may be “deeper.” They said the small-town values afforded by Decatur are a positive recruitment element as they seek to fill positions. Special-Lite anticipates about 50 new positions over the next several years, both in the plant and the headquarters offices, which houses departments such as engineering, technical services, information technology, sales, marketing, finance, human resources, quality, and more.
COO Esposito had strong praise for the Village of Decatur and its support for the company over the years. He also thanked the Michigan Economic Development Corporation and Market One, Van Buren County’s economic development organization, for assistance in Special-Lite’s major expansion.
Learn more at: special-lite.com/
For an in-depth look at Special-Lite products and innovations, follow the link here.
