Ever since we have started Race German in 2020, we have been growing at a rapid pace. Our business started in my basement where I housed around 50-100 products. All shipping and fullfilment was done here, but it quickly started to cause problems. Since it was run out of our home, we could not have UPS or Post Office package pickup, making us have to run to to the shipping centers everyday to drop off packages, using a lot of time and gas money. As business accelerated and more products were added to the store, we also started to run out of space to house everything.
In 2023, we moved to a larger warehouse (to me), about 1000 square foot, 9 hours south in Port Saint Lucie, FL. This was the first time we had a commerical warehouse with a roll up door, office space and air conditioning! Being a small business, I figured this would suffice for a couple years until we had to move again. Unfortuantely, but fortuntely, Race German kept growing at a rapid pace. Less than 1 year later, the "new" warehouse was full and we had to start stacking product on each other, which is not ideal from an organizational stand point.
Although Port Saint Lucie was a great town, we also realized it was not the best location for our business. Florida has one of the best car cultures in the country, but the small town of PSL did not offer many events, or have as many BMW car enthusiasts as we expected.
A short 10 months after signing the lease on the warehouse, we made the decision to not only look for a larger warehouse, but move to a more thriving car culture city. In August of 2023, we packed up everything and moved to Bradenton, Florida.
Bradenton Florida is on the south west side of Florida, about 45 minutes south of Tampa Bay. This area, being closer to Tampa, Orlando, St Petersburg and more, offers us to service the community better and be present at bigger car events. This area is also 20 minutes west of Cleetus McFarland's Freedom Factory, which has a thriving automotive culture.
The new warehouse in Bradenton is double the size of the last one at 2000 square foot. Moving into this location, we figured we would never fill it up, and would service us for years to come. As luck would have it, and from all of the great support from you guys, we started to add more and more inventory, quickly using every square inch possible. We even added 12 foot high industrial racks to utilize vertical space.
Race German thrives itself on being an unique shopping experience, offering products you do not usually find on typical aftermarket BMW stores. This is done through our great team of engineers, designers, and manufacturers. To acomplish this, we use many of our own cars as research and development. This has been a key part of the success so far.
We never anticipated that in less than 4 years, we would start to outgrow this warehouse as well. Looking towards the future, we had some decisions to make and started scratching our heads. Our ultimate goal is to have one large warehouse with a parking lot where we can house all our inventory, packaging, shipping, receiving, and research in development. To accomplish this we need enough space for lifts, and to store our cars indoors.
We immmediately started looking again for larger spaces. We found quite a bit of options, but we also did not want to get over our head finacially. Finally, we decided it would be a better idea to save our money and get exactly what we wanted. We did not feel that moving to bigger locations every year was the best option, so decided to wait.
In the Intermediate, we still needed to have a space to work on cars, test products, and develop new ones. This brings us to the purpose of this blog. We started looking for a smaller warehouse that was much more affordable.
Welcome to Race German 2.5. We signed a lease for a small 14x30 commerical warehouse that comes in at just about 420 square feet. This seems pretty small, and it is, but after doing some measuring, we found we can fit a single 2 post lift and up to 3 cars in it.
Check out our Youtube video below to see the new space. Make sure to hit that subscribe button and follow along as we transform this small space into a unique automotive studio!
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