Shoemaker Estas Brands Plans Production Facility in Brooklyn’s Industry City
By Rebecca Baird-Remba January 14, 2019 2:24 pm
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A shoe designer and manufacturer is abandoning its Midtown headquarters to build a new production facility and education center at Industry City in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
Estas Brands has inked a seven-year lease for 15,000 square feet at Industry City’s Building 3, located at 219 36th Street, according to a release from Industry City. The shoe maker plans to relocate from its current home, a 6,000-square-foot office at 156 West 56th Street, to its new headquarters within the next two months.
The company’s new fourth-floor space, dubbed the Brooklyn Design Lab, will hold its offices, a sample-making room for shoes, and an education facility that will teach the public, clients and potential employees about how shoes are made. Estas hopes to partner with universities to develop the educational portion of the brand’s platform, the release notes.
“I couldn’t be more excited about this project and our move to Industry City Brooklyn,” Steve Reynolds, the CEO of Estas Brands, said in prepared remarks. “This relocation gives us the ability to build the first-ever New York-based footwear sample making facility that will be open to the industry.”
It expects to produce 50 to 75 pairs of shoes a day at Industry City, including custom, direct-to-consumer footwear that will be shipped via its retail brand, M4D3. Estas and its partners own several shoe factories in Asia, Vietnam and Ethiopia, where they produce and ship 70 million pairs of footwear to the U.S. a year on behalf of various brands and retailers.
Brielle Milano and Jeff Fein handled the transaction in-house for Industry City, and Estas Brands did not have a broker. Asking rents in the 16-building industrial and office complex range from $15 to $40 a square foot, per the release.
“Brooklyn Design Lab sits at the nexus of multiple industries; in this case, fashion, design, and production,” said Kathe Chase, the director of leasing at Industry City. “By co-locating the executive offices, production facilities, a design studio and a training center in one space, innovation and collaboration can happen across company divisions.”
Jamestown owns the six-million-square-foot development with Belvedere Capital, Angelo, Gordon & Co., Cammeby’s International and the Fructhhandler family’s FBE Limited.
