Articles
Manufacturers on the Move: Why ROXBOX Relocated to Houston
Anthony Halsch founded ROXBOX Containers in Denver, Colorado, in 2018, parlaying a career managing the transport of shipping containers in Colorado and Texas to building out the containers as modular, multi-purpose commercial structures.
Halsch attributes the “light bulb” moment to luck – a modest account that downplays his ambition and talent. “I had an abundance of containers and an engineering background and started drawing them. I dusted off my laptop, opened SolidWorks and began designing buildings out of containers. From there I just started hacking them up in a dirt lot, with a mobile welding team that was coming out to our shipping container storage lot to work on other stuff.”
ROXBOX quickly found success – selling finished containers to hospitality businesses – breweries, kitchens, bars restaurants and the like. Today he’s pushed ROXBOX into the industrial space. “We are shifting (more heavily) from shipping containers into more volumetric steel-frame modular, where we're using light gauge steel framing to build out our buildings instead of taking a pre-built box and kind of recreating a building out of it, moving more into a more customized work.”
Houston’s a sales market that certainly fits Halsch’s ambition – but wasn’t the initial reason he moved the company from Colorado to Texas.
“It was definitely something we weren't, you know, really looking to do if we didn't have to. But as the volume of the projects started to grow for us, we began running into staffing issues. The building that we were in wasn't optimal for a modular business. And so we started looking around all over the country – actually starting in Charleston (South Carolina) and all the way to Tampa, Florida, to Alabama, and ultimately, Houston was the winner for us,” says Halsch.
“The biggest factor was that when we came down to Houston, I placed a couple ads just to test the labor market. And we had tons of applicants with a lot of experience. I also started looking at the buildings that were available here and the throughput that we’d be able to achieve; what was available in Houston were so much greater than what we had available to us in Denver, especially at the cost we were looking for,” explained Halsch. “We basically have almost the same exact monthly cost in Houston as we did in Denver, but now have bridge cranes and are on about three and a half acres. And, as you know, the building’s almost 50 feet tall. So we're able to stack modules with our crane inside the building where we didn't have a single crane in Denver.”
I asked Halsch if the move to Houston has met expectations.
“You know, it's been great – even better than what I had anticipated. Moving to a 40,000 square foot facility in a couple of weeks was a pretty drastic decision,” he laughs, “but ended up being very positive for us. The environment we have down here to do business is really solid. And not only that, but one thing that I wasn't expecting was that by having a Houston location, we started to get a ton of inquiries from Texas. We were advertising in Texas when we were in Colorado, but weren’t really getting any business here. I think Texans like to buy from a Texas company,” Halsch says.
My experience tells me this is true everywhere – companies like to do business with their neighbors. But as we manufacture more in the US, companies will be forced to expand their gaze to neighboring cities and states to find what they need. This, I suggested to Halsch, is why so many OEMs, brands, and manufacturers will find Houston to be such an attractive location. Greater Houston’s manufacturing assets are becoming a magnet for a new wave of US production.
Halsch agreed. “I tell a story often when I'm talking to certain clients, that if we can't do something, I can close my eyes and hit a golf ball in the neighborhood that we're in, and I can find somebody that can do it,” he says.
So what’s ahead for ROXBOX?
“I mean, one of the big things that I don't feel like we've tapped into fully yet is the industrial opportunities for us, in Houston. We build all sorts of things out of different elements of steel, and there's a lot of applications where containers and steel skid-based structures are necessary in this economy. And that is certainly one area that I would love to expand into more and really start leveraging some of our experience, to jump into more oil and gas projects,” he offers. “And in just the energy sector as a whole, battery energy storage systems, different types of renewables projects that need some sort of a vessel or structure for storage or multi-use; we can handle all that – and more. We have a very creative team and quality is our number one value here.”
An attribute that sells well – in any market, and any industry.
Contact Anthony Halsch to engage ROXBOX and his team at [email protected] or view the company’s incredible gallery of projects at https://www.roxboxcontainers.com/.
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Bart Taylor, GHMA - [email protected]
