Take a VR tour of Carvertise’s new space on the Riverfront

Carvertise, the mobile advertisement company founded by Mac Nagaswami in 2012 (back when it was known as Penguin Ads), gave itself a full makeover last year, including an expansion of their space at 1313 Innovation.

The fast-growing company — now a national name — has officially grown out of 1313 and now lives in a bigger space near the Wilmington Riverfront, thanks to some help from the Mayor.

“About four months ago I was telling [Mayor Mike Purzycki] how we were struggling to find a space in Wilmington that could house all three unique functions of our business (administrative, printing, and installation),” said Nagaswami in a recent Facebook post. “About four minutes into our conversation, he then takes out his cell phone and begins texting local commercial developers who could help us find a spot. He connected us with Medori Enterprises, and four weeks later, through the Mayor’s help, we landed in a new 7,500-square-foot facility at the edge of the Wilmington Riverfront.”

The all-in-one location is truly all-in-one. Within the same open space, the company can design, print, laminate and cut car wraps for its rolling advertising campaigns. Every Carvertise wrap is made here and shipped out to a contracted install shop — unless it’s for a local campaign, in which case the cars are wrapped right on location. There’s also a waiting room for drivers, meeting space and workspace for operations.

“I usually work over there,” Nagaswami says, gesturing to the corner during a recent walkthrough of the site alongside this reporter. “Actually, no — I’m usually out here, in the middle of things.”

Being just a few feet away from every department (with the exception of sales, which has offices in Boston and New York) has been a game-changer, he says. “It’s night and day. Before, operations used to be in a completely different area [from local installs]. I was operating out of the Hercules Building in our office, but all of our car wraps were happening somewhere else — so I was kind of removed from it. But here, I’m close to it.”

Carvertise has clients across the country, including AAA, Empire Today and the Delaware Department of Labor. A recent partnership was struck with international bread company Bimbo for an Uber and Lyft campaign in Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco to promote the new organic, non-GMO Oroweat brand.

Want to see the new location up close? MOT Charter School senior Shaun Gupta, who works for up-and-coming startup 360VR Technology (founded by his older brother Sury Gupta and James Massaquoi) created a spiffy virtual reality tour of the space: