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Superior Sheds has been making and selling its namesake product for 25 years come March 1.
After starting up in Longwood in 1994, when it took over another company, it grew so large it had to move its manufacturing operations to Orange City in 2001. And while the company today has more than 40 dealers and retail outlets in the Florida Peninsula selling its sheds, steel buildings, carports, garages and gazebos, all of the manufacturing is done in its facility at 2323 S. Volusia Ave. in Orange City.
Being a privately held company, Superior Sheds doesn’t release its earnings, but the Orange City facility made 7,720 structures in 2018, said Jeff Vega, the company’s director of operations.
“Everything else is supplied by outside vendors,” he said, including a line of gazebos made by a Mennonite sect in Georgia.
Superior Sheds has 87 employees in Orange City, mostly manufacturing workers but also a few administrative, delivery and sales workers. The company has a total of 116 employees in all locations, said Raquel Gibson, the office manager and human-resources director.
“We’ve more than doubled in size in the last decade, at least in the nine years I’ve been here,” Gibson said.
“And good employees are hard to find,” chimed in Vega. “Four of us have been here 25 years, and many others have been here a long time.”
In fact, Vega was a five-year veteran of the company Superior Sheds took over a quarter-century ago, so he actually has 30 years of experience overall.
With employees working 10-hour days Mondays through Thursdays, the manufacturing facility has an assembly-line feel.
Crews assemble wooden floors and wall frames at the rear of the property, following spec sheets that identify which products are to be produced. The floors and wall frames are then brought inside a huge assembly barn, where more crews attach the appropriate outside wall surfaces, put specified windows and roofs in place, and add wiring for electrical hookups.
The final products are then taken to a yard on the front of the property, where they await local buyers or loading onto flatbed trucks to be delivered to an outlet somewhere between Miami and Jacksonville on Florida’s east coast or as far west as Sarasota and Tampa on the west side of the state.
“We’re always looking for more dealerships across the state,” Gibson said.
In addition to the Orange City facility, Superior Sheds products are available at three other locations in Volusia County: on South Woodland Boulevard in DeLand, as well as Port Orange and New Smyrna Beach in East Volusia.
Gibson and Vega say the future remains bright for Superior Sheds.
“We’re here, we’re growing, and we’re being a part of Orange City,” Vega said.
For more information about the company, go to www.superiorsheds.com.
