Take a peek at Carvertise’s new Riverfront location

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The company is well known in its home state, but its biggest brand partners, such as Project Runway, EA Sports and Netflix, run their flashy campaigns in big cities, where fleets of cars wrapped in eye-catching ads descend on the streets.

Despite Delaware not being a major market for the Inc. 5000 company, it’s keeping its headquarters and its growing operations, finance, marketing, HR and executive teams in Wilmington. There, it’s been quietly expanding to a new location in what was formerly known as the Shipyard Shops on the Riverfront.

“We had a lot of choices on where to go,” Carvertise CEO Mac Macleod told Technical.ly. “We’re growing and building the heart and soul of the organization here because we chose here. This is the birthplace.”

Hometown pride is a factor, but so is a sense of not fixing what isn’t broken. This is where the company did what not too many startups do: Scale a high-growth company out of Delaware – something even less common as a non-biotech or pharmaceutical company.

Macleod, a long time supporter of educational organizations such as TeenSHARP, sees Carvertise as an example for other local startups looking to scale as self-sustaining businesses that can become contributors to the state’s economic development.

The new Riverfront location is a part of that. Employees moved into the new space, which has been renovated top to bottom with architects Mitchell & Associates and an early design concept with The Mill founder Rob Herrera, in early January.

Production, including printing the wrapping materials for Mid-Atlantic clients plus wrapping local cars, continues to be based in its Browntown location just across the highway from the Riverfront HQ.

“There are two phases to this office,” Macleod said. “This is phase one. Phase two was starting on Jan. 31.”

Phase one is the front of the office, including a reception area, open kitchen and coffee area, desks, meeting rooms, and glassed-in offices for executives. In all, it’s about 7,000 square feet, and once walls are removed and phase two is complete, the space will add another 8,000 square feet, allowing the company to accommodate the new employees and clients it plans to bring on in the next couple of years.

“Our executive leadership is relatively young,” Macleod said. “But the principles that we adhere to and how to grow the business is very old school. We’re taking a new kind of business model and applying timeless principles, which is an outlier in today’s Silicon Valley era.”

Take a mini tour of Carvertise’s phase 1 interior space on a Friday, the company’s work-from-home day; all photos by Holly Quinn: