Airway Heights-based Zak Designs Inc. is planning a $3.9 million, 24,000-square-foot addition to its facility on the West Plains to create more storage space for the rapidly growing company, says owner Irv Zakheim.

The project will add 24,000 square feet of cold-storage space to Zak’s existing 48,000-square-foot warehouse space at 1603 S. Garfield Road, he says. The company had been leasing the existing space in 12,000-square-foot increments to outside companies for storage, but Zak has grown enough over the last few years that it now needs all of the existing warehouse space, he says.

“It’s added storage primarily,” he says of the new addition, which he says will allow the company to have a “cleaner warehouse and become more efficient.”

Work on the project is expected to begin in September and wrap by the end of the year.

Zak also is planning a 10,000-square-foot addition to its shipping dock to create a staging area and a total of five dock doors to allow the company “to increase our incoming volume as well,” says Zakheim.

Work on that portion of the project will begin once the warehouse addition is complete, he says. The shipping dock addition is expected to be completed by spring 2022. Garco Construction Inc., of Spokane, is the contractor for the design-build project. 

Over the last three years the dinnerware and drinkware company has nearly doubled its sales and expects to see growth between 10% and 20% in 2022, Zakheim says.

“We will double our sales by the end of this year,” he says, adding that Zak’s licensed product line, which features popular characters ranging from Disney to Harry Potter to Minecraft, has seen significant growth as children stayed home during the pandemic and new streaming services featuring those characters came online.

Additionally, sales of the company’s branded line, particularly its double-insulated drinkware, has grown at retailers such as Target, Walmart, and Costco, he says.

Garco built the original facility in the early ’70s and has built every successive addition for the company since it was purchased by Zak Designs in 1992, bringing the facility to a current total of about 230,500 square feet, says Zakheim.

The company has about 160 employees currently.