StairMaster LLC plans to add as many as 100 people this year and has already doubled the size of its Vancouver, Wash., headquarters.
StairMaster president Dustin Grosz said the company by September plans to add up to 60 positions as a result of consolidating certain business functions that are shared by a sister company, Irvine, Calif.-based fitness equipment brand Star Trac.

StairMaster plans to add another 40 positions in Vancouver within the year.
To make room for the growing work force, StairMaster moved into a new 26,000-square-foot office at 4400 N.E. 7th Ave. in Vancouver. It had occupied a work space of just under 10,000-square-feet.
The moves come after StairMaster ended its first year as a stand-alone brand by exceeding its goal of $25 million in revenue by about 12 percent, Grosz said.
“We beat what we estimated last year and we’ve had a really good start to 2011,” Grosz said.

Vancouver neighbor Nautilus Inc. sold the brand, as well as licensing rights to its Schwinn Fitness indoor cycling products, for $12.3 million to Ohio entrepreneur Michael Bruno, whose Chinese contract manufacturing firm, Land America, makes fitness equipment.Later last year, Bruno also acquired Star Trac, a substantially larger company that Grosz said netted as much as $175 million in sales two years ago before struggling recently. Grosz, a former Nautilus executive who is president of both brands, said administrative functions — including finance, IT, human resources, accounting, purchasing and planning — for both StairMaster and Star Trac will shift to the new Vancouver headquarters. Only about five employees are relocating, meaning StairMaster is on a hiring binge. While Star Trac has struggled — Grosz estimates sales this year to be about 40 percent lower than its $175 million peak — StairMaster continues to grow.
That’s due, in part, to the brand’s focus on growth internationally, which accounts for an equal share of the company’s total revenue. “The international market was not hit as strongly with the economic recessionary woes and cautionary buying that had surfaced in the domestic market,” said Therese Iknoian, editor-in-chief of Specialty News, a trade publication covering the fitness and outdoor industries.

“There are still people investing and now getting the funds needed to open clubs again,” Grosz said. “For two years basically everybody sat back and said, let’s get more out of our current equipment. Now they’re saying, ‘We’ve got to start buying new product.’”

Read more: StairMaster adding 100 jobs to new Vancouver HQ | Portland Business Journal

SOURCE: http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2011/05/25/stairmaster-adding-100-jobs-to-new.html?page=all