Echo Incorporated cut the ribbon on their new 129,000-square-foot warehouse expansion. The new warehouse was built to accommodate additional space requirements resulting from the company’s recent merger with Shindaiwa Incorporated, and to support future growth of the Shindaiwa brand in both North America and Latin America.
Check out the video here: Echo/Shindaiwa Ribbon Cutting.
“We consolidated the distribution of Shindaiwa products for North America and Latin America in Lake Zurich last October, but didn’t have sufficient space in our existing buildings,” said Dan Obringer, president of Echo. “This expansion provides us with the warehouse space we need, and allows us to gradually transfer manufacturing of Shindaiwa products from Japan to Lake Zurich—so we can manufacture and test all Shindaiwa products here in the same manner as we do for Echo products.”
The warehouse expansion started in October 2009 and was completed by June 2010. Echo was lauded by Suzanne Branding, mayor of the Village of Lake Zurich, for their performance during these tough economic times, and their ability to create jobs for the local community over the past 25 years.
Echo and Shindaiwa Stronger Together. Joe Fahey, Echo’s vice president of marketing, said Shindaiwa continues to be a very strong brand name that many professional landscape contractors have a very intense satisfaction with. “Why would you want to mess with that?” Fahey asked. “We (Echo) believe in the Shindaiwa brand very strongly, it’s going nowhere but up.”
Since the merger in 2009, the Shindaiwa line has been narrowed. For instance, Shindaiwa-branded chainsaws have been discontinued. But the lineup still includes the popular commercial-duty blowers, trimmers, brushcutters, edgers, hedgetrimmers, sprayers and spreaders. Also, modifications to Shindaiwa’s unique C4 engine technology, being re-branded as Hybrid 4, are in development.
“Shindaiwa is a more focused brand with a heavy emphasis on landscape contractors,” Fahey explained. “Echo will be a much broader lineup that also appeals to homeowners, arborists, and other markets.”
