Tennessee-based ITAD firm S3 Recycling Solutions will triple its California footprint after moving to a new Fullerton facility later this summer.
The 34,000-square-foot space will act as a full-service center on par with the company’s Springfield, Tennessee, facility, CEO Rod McDaniel said. The move into the building, which needs office space built out and a few other changes, should be done by mid-August.
It replaces a smaller facility in Fullerton that S3 took over as part of its acquisition of iGlobal Asset Management two years ago. That was S3’s first venture outside of Tennessee. McDaniel said demand has warranted a bigger space in the West; the company processed more than 500,000 devices companywide last year and is expected to complete this year with a 3,000% revenue growth over the past decade.
“We are bursting at the seams,” he said. “We initially started exploring because we landed a large client in California. They had a significant amount of equipment, and we didn’t want to haul it to Tennessee.”
With three times the space, McDaniel expects to handle triple the devices. He’s also hiring a business development representative for the western part of the country.
That’s part of a broader expansion that also included the acquisition of a Tennessee company earlier this year. Into his second decade as CEO, McDaniel said his company is positioned for more growth in the coming years.
“It’s a totally different industry than when I got in. But we are also a totally different player. We were smaller, where now we have more of a national footprint,” he said. “Consolidation seems to be the big thing. People are ready to exit due to age, so that presents consolidation opportunities for the industry.”
Continuing to scale through targeted acquisitions is a realistic goal for S3, McDaniel said, due to anticipated demand; the global e-scrap market is expected to more than double by 2032. Through gradual growth — “we don’t want to do an acquisition just for the sake of acquisition,” he said — he would like to eventually see an S3 facility within a 10-hour drive of any point in the United States, as well as growth into Canada and Mexico.
That would require logistical solutions, he said; the company does around 70% of its own equipment pickups now, with third-party providers completing the rest. It also requires S3 to continue innovating on the technological front — not to replace employees, he said, but to allow existing employees to do more, like using AI to complement warehouse floor and client service functions.
“Being ambitious, I’d like to scale more globally. It just makes sense,” McDaniel said. “We think there’s a huge opportunity over the next five years to build what we think is a platform that can continue to scale.”
S3 refurbishes items for resale and maintains a 95% reuse/recycle rate. The company expects to double its 12-employee team in California by next summer as a result of this acquisition.
