Photo / Courtesy K.L. Jack
The property at 279 Washington Ave. South in Auburn was originally offered for lease only. The owner agreed to sell it.
Updated: 5 hours ago
Auburn warehouse gives Maine’s largest fastener supplier room to grow
Photo / Courtesy K.L. Jack
K.L. Jack has 30 million fasteners in its inventory in its Maine and New Hampshire locations. Seen here is the Portland warehouse.
Portland industrial fastener supplier K.L. Jack, with branches in Maine and New Hampshire, has seen steady growth since its start nearly 50 years ago.
To accommodate continued growth, the company bought a 5,000-square-foot warehouse on just under an acre at 279 Washington St. South in Auburn for $725,000.
The seller was Twilight Years LLC.
The transaction was brokered on behalf of the buyer by Noah Stebbins of the Boulos Co. and the seller by Greg Perry of Broad Cove Collective.
“This building is nice structurally and will suit our needs really well,” said Gus Jack, K.L. Jack’s second-generation owner.
The building was originally available for lease, noted Perry. But — as a sign of the times with tight industrial inventory — the parties struck a deal for the purchase.
Tight market
The search took about a year, said Stebbins.
“We were looking for standalone industrial buildings in the Lewiston-Auburn market in the 5,000-square-foot range, which proved difficult to come by,” said Stebbins.
They looked at several possibilities, including land sites to develop a new building given the lack of industrial inventory on the market. But the search was tricky.
“There were almost no options that were publicly marketed for sale,” Stebbins continued. “We had to pivot and check out options that were for lease if the space checked the boxes for the buyer's requirement. From there, we would explore whether or not the owner would entertain a sale, which is how we were able to land 279 Washington Ave. South, since the property was originally offered for lease only.”
The building is less than a mile down the road from KL Jack’s current Auburn branch at 61 Washington St. North.
Garage beginnings
Jack’s parents, Kenneth and Mary, started K.L. Jack in 1979 in the garage of the family home in Limington. Coming from a career in industrial sales working for out-of-state companies, Kenneth invested in fasteners as a small startup.
“My dad hit the road and started selling,” Jack said.
After a couple of months, the parents realized they needed some help. It was 1980 and their son was in college, but he agreed to give it a try.
“I came in and discovered that I really enjoyed the process of distribution,” he said. “My dad was the perfect fit as the outside salesperson and I was well-suited to be the inside presence managing the business processes.”
Photo / Courtesy K.L. Jack
K.L. Jack is headquartered at 145 Warren Ave. in Portland.
His mother handled back-office functions.
“It was just the three of us for a while,” he said.
Hole in the wall
The business eventually found a small space in Portland on Commercial Street.
“It was really a hole in the wall,” said Jack. “We evolved from there a few years later to a larger hole in the wall.”
That was on Brackett Street, in the West End, where parking and truck deliveries were tricky.
“It was by no means the ideal spot for an industrial supplier,” he said.
The neighborhood’s narrow streets weren’t exactly designed for 18-wheel tractor-trailers.
“We’d be out there with our little forklift going in and out of our warehouse,” he recalled.
Brackett Street was near Maine Medical Center and fed traffic to the old “Million Dollar Bridge” that once connected Portland and South Portland.
“So whenever there was an ambulance heading toward Maine Medical Center, they’d be coming up Brackett Street,” Jack said. “We’d be unloading a truck and in the distance you’d hear sirens. Panic would ensue. We’d be frantically unloading a truck, holding up traffic, hearing the sirens coming. I could have probably lived without the excitement.”
30M fasteners
Eventually, K.L. Jack moved off the peninsula to its current location at 145 Warren Ave.
It opened its first branch in Auburn, followed by Manchester, N.H., Bangor, Gardiner and Gorham.
Since the start, the company has grown at annual rates of up to 25%, he said. With more than 45,000 square feet of warehouse and office space, K.L. Jack manages over 30 million pieces of fastener inventory in inch and metric, along with cutting tools, masonry anchors, chemicals, safety supplies and hundreds of other items for the construction, manufacturing, maintenance, repair and operations and marine industries. The company has one of New England’s largest fastener inventories, said Jack.
Photo / Courtesy K.L. Jack
K.L. Jack has long had a presence in Bangor. In 2018, it bought and renovated a different Bangor location, an experience that got the company started on the process of improving facilities in its existing markets whenever a suitable property became available.
“The challenging thing about fastener distribution is you could have a bolt in certain diameters and lengths and head styles and literally have eight to 10 different characteristics, which requires you to carry that bolt in eight to 10 different part numbers,” Jack said. “A fastener in a certain dimension suitable for marine construction would be completely different from one meant for repairing a tractor-trailer rig. If you’re going to be in fastener distribution for real and serve a broad variety of customers, you end up with 30 million fasteners.”
Maine and New Hampshire are active markets for the company.
“Customers are not operating out of large metropolitan areas, where if one distributor doesn’t have it you can go down the street to someone else,” he said. “People depend on us. So we’ve heavily invested in fasteners and related products to service many different types of markets. We’ve worked hard to be people’s Tylenol and not the cause of their headaches.”
Auburn fit-up
The company’s website, he added, “has been a critical part of our ability to continue our growth and is used daily by our local customers and commercial accounts as far away as Alaska and Hawaii.”
K.L. Jack has over 40 employees across its six locations, some of them with the company more than 30 years and many others between 15 and 25 years. Their experience and knowledge is critical to the company’s success he said.
Products are sourced directly from manufacturers.
The growth has meant the need for larger facilities.
In 2018, the company moved from a facility it had leased in Bangor since the late 1990s to a more suitable industrial building in a better location at 781 Odlin Road.
“That gave us the opportunity to upgrade our Bangor presence,” he said.
In Auburn, the company will move from 61 Washington St. North to 279 Washington St. South.
“It’s done a great job,” Jack said of the current location. “But we needed more parking and more storage. Shout-out to Noah Stebbins for his perseverance in helping us find the ideal building in a tough real estate market.”
Renovations in the new digs include applying high-gloss epoxy to the warehouse floor, installing LED lighting inside and out, creating an attractive showroom, building out offices, installing new racking and shelving and painting throughout.
The work is expected to be close to $400,000, financed with cash.
The company expects to move in June. In the next few months, the plan is to list 61 Washington St. North for sale, with Stebbins, as part of a “reverse” 1031 real estate exchange. Usually the 1031 IRS program involves selling a property, then investing the proceeds into the purchase of a like-kind property In this case, the purchase came first. Eventually, Jack expects to hire one or two additional employees.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, he’s looking for larger locations for the Manchester and Gardiner branches.
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