Fashionphile is investing $4 million to expand operations in Chelsea, alongside Empire State Development.
The luxury re-commerce platform said the new East Coast processing and authentication center — taking up more than 60,000 square feet of the Starrett-Lehigh Building in West Chelsea — will create 150 jobs starting in 2022.
Bolstered by tax credits, the project is expected to be complete by 2025. Empire State Development will offer Fashionphile $3.5 million in performance-based tax credits over the next 10 years in exchange for the company’s job creation commitment.
The expansion will also enable Fashionphile to create a “first-of-its-kind interactive experience” where customers can shop, sell and get an inside look at how the company authenticates and processes the items they see on Fashionphile.com.
The move marks Fashionphile’s first corporate presence in New York City, following the opening of the company’s Madison Avenue showroom in 2018. Its existing headquarters in Carlsbad, Calif., houses a 30,000-square-foot showroom and authentication center. Additionally, the company is the exclusive re-commerce partner to Neiman Marcus, which took a minority stake in Fashionphile in 2019, and operates technology offices in Los Angeles and Provo, Utah. The company has maintained a bicoastal presence over its two decades of operation.
“We are proud to be part of the city’s recovery efforts and are grateful to the State of New York and Empire State Development for creating the incentives we needed to make this exciting expansion happen for our company,” said Fashionphile chief executive officer Ben Hemminger.
Empire State Development acting commissioner and president and CEO-designate Eric Gertler said “e-commerce is one of the many engines supporting the state’s economic recovery.”
On the move, Sarah Davis, founder and president of Fashionphile championed the storied history of resale in New York while expressing excitement for the new scale and technology developments underway.
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