A fashion distribution company will open a center in Greenwood, where workers will package and send clothes to women across the country, with plans to eventually employee nearly 900 workers.
Nearly 200 employees have already been hired to work at Dia&Co, which is a three-year-old company that provides plus-size clothes to women by selecting items that fit their size, budget and tastes and shipping it to their home. The company plans to employ 872 people within three to five years, according to a contract signed with the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, which is providing financial assistance for the project.
The distribution center is located in 211,000 square feet at 800 Commerce Parkway West, in the Southpoint Business Park southeast of the Main Street interchange on Interstate 65.
The minimum pay for the jobs will be $10.73 per hour, according to the contract. The contract does not specify if that amount includes benefits.
Greenwood is not offering the company tax incentives, but Dia is getting $3 million from the state, a news release said, with up to $2.8 million in tax credits over 10 years and $200,000 of training reimbursement over the next two years.
The tax credits will be proportional to the number of new employees that Dia hires because the goal is to incentivize the company to employ more people in Indiana, said Dana Monson, the interim director of the Johnson County Development Corp., which assisted Dia in finding its new location in Greenwood.
When the company first considered opening a distribution center in the area, they reached out to the county development corporation, which helped find a site that had just recently been vacated by a previous business earlier this summer, Monson said. The development corporation will be assisting Dia with getting in contact with local organizations that will help them build and train their workforce, Monson said.
“We at Dia&Co are immensely excited to open our new distribution center in the heart of Greenwood,” company co-founder and president Lydia Gilbert said.
“We chose Greenwood because of its business-friendly environment and bustling economy, and we look forward to providing a positive economic impact on the region and investing in the growth of our employees for many years to come.”
Two other distribution companies have cited a growing e-commerce industry as the reason they want to open facilities in Greenwood.
Newgistics, which provides distribution services for online retailers, will build a 447,000-square-foot warehouse in a newly created business park off of I-65 and Worthsville Road. FedEx officials sited e-commerce as one of the reasons behind a 600,000-square-foot facility proposed in Greenwood.
“E-commerce is a growing trend because consumers are wanting to be able to purchase online,” Monson said. “They are needing more facilities and need an area where they can do fast shipping. That is what is driving the e-commerce market to come to middle America as opposed to the coasts.”
Gilbert and a Harvard Business School classmate founded Dia in 2014 with a focus on making the fashion retail industry more accessible for the 67 percent of American women who wear sizes 14 or larger.
A grand opening event is planned for Nov. 16.
