Steelite CEO Shows Off Downtown Youngstown Headquarters

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Steelite International President and CEO John Miles said the company’s transition of its corporate headquarters to downtown Youngstown is nearly complete.

Miles, who announced in June 2022 that Steelite would be relocating its corporate offices and global headquarters from New Castle, Pa., to space in the Youngstown Business Incubator’s Taft Technology Center building, hosted members of the Rotary Club of Youngstown for their weekly meeting at the new headquarters space.

A worldwide distributor of tableware for the hospitality industry, Steelite has in excess of a third of the industry’s market share and annual sales in excess of $350 million, Miles reported. Its customer base includes hotels, restaurants, banquet centers, convention centers, country clubs and even stadiums.

“Any place that someone is eating outside of their home is kind of our customer,” Miles said. 

The corporate headquarters transition, which started in June, has gone “extremely well,” he said. Just under 110 employees are now operating out of the new downtown Youngstown location, a number that will grow to 120 in the coming weeks once work on the third-floor space is complete.   

Relocation of the corporate headquarters follows Steelite’s opening of its global showroom and experience center in downtown’s Commerce Building in late 2018, which was one of the steps that led to moving the headquarters.

“In New Castle, when we had people come in from all over the world, we didn’t have a good hotel,” Miles said.

When work got underway to renovate the Stambaugh Building and open it as the DoubleTree by Hilton Youngstown Downtown hotel, Steelite then focused on renovating the fifth floor space in the nearby Commerce Building that at one point housed the Youngstown Club for a showroom space. As clients visited the showroom and stayed at the hotel, they urged Steelite officials to move the company’s corporate offices downtown.

As an incentive for the company to move the headquarters, Youngstown officials provided Steelite with a job creation grant valued at an estimated $415,000. Steelite maintained its warehousing, distribution and light manufacturing operations in New Castle.

Miles put Steelite’s direct hard cash investment in the new Youngstown headquarters at about $7 million. “If you look at the capitalization and so forth, you’d probably say double that, so probably $15 million,” he added.

Steelite actively trades in 146 counties, he reported. It has about 60 brands across multiple product segments that service clients, each aligned with the type of product or a specific operation.

“Panera Bread is using a different brand than French Laundry is,” he said.

Miles also discussed Steelite’s intentional approach to making itself part of the Youngstown community, including sponsorships of projects and programs from Youngstown State University to employee dance recitals and Little League teams involving employees’ family members.

Also, each employee receives a $50 gift certificate for a downtown restaurant every month in an effort to support the establishments, which have been particularly hard hit by ongoing road construction projects.

“We believe in building bridges, not walls,” Miles said.

“It just makes so much sense,” said Sharon Letson, executive director of Youngstown CityScape and a past Youngstown Rotary president. The initiative represents “exactly the feel and spirit that we need downtown, supporting one another.”

“It’s great to see a company like Steelite invest in the community. They can be anywhere in the world, but they choose to be here,” Councilman Mike Ray, who represents the city’s 4th Ward, said.

Ray also acknowledged that the city, which supported the hotel project, intended it to be a catalyst for economic development downtown, though not necessarily in the way it turned out.

“I don’t think anyone thought that someone would locate a headquarters here,’ he said.

Pictured at top: John Miles, president and CEO of Steelite International.

Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.