Expanding and opening new locations is a natural growth step for companies. For a print and decoration company like Spectrum Designs, it’s a way to broaden offerings like direct to film (DTF) and embroidery, as well as promotional products and fulfillment. These sorts of things are important for decorators and distributors who aim to be a service provider that customers want to work with.

But Spectrum Designs, headquartered in Port Washington, NY, sees its new Hackensack, New Jersey location not only as an expansion of its in-house capabilities and growing footprint on the East Coast, but also as a way to do good in the community.

“Obviously it’s new job opportunities,” says Patrick Bardsley, co-founder of Spectrum Designs. “It’s a new geography, and it’s an expansion into a state that we’ve always wanted to go into, and where there is a need for employment for people with autism, [just like there is in] New York.”

Spectrum Designs employs autistic people as a means of providing job security and financial independence.

“There are various pools of data around the unemployment rate of adults with developmental disabilities like autism, but the most recent I’ve seen is that at minimum 40% of adults with autism never held a job,” Bardsley says. “It’s a really high unemployment rate. And I think some people have estimated that unemployment is as high as 85% nationally. So, it’s really unfortunate.”

But Bardsley says that autistic people make incredible employees due to their ability to be creative and execute repeatable tasks. “Because you’re producing all different kinds of products – there’s literally a catalog of a million-plus products to choose from – there’s great variety, there’s great creativity, there’s color, there are variants,” he explains. “So I think that lends itself to a feeling of repetition, but also creativity.”

The new location in Hackensack was strategically chosen based on certain criteria: It had to be near public transit for employees who don’t drive, and a short distance from restaurants and other small businesses so it can integrate into the heart of the community.

Spectrum Designs recently opened its newest facility in Hackensack, NJ, expanding to a new state and offering services like DTF, embroidery and fulfillment.

Spectrum Designs also teamed up with a local organization called North Jersey Friendship House, a local nonprofit that helps individuals with varying abilities maximize their potential. The organization provides onsite job training for Spectrum employees on some of the equipment that the new Hackensack facility will house.

Bardsley says that even with the good work Spectrum does for the autism community, the mission at the end of the day is still to be a competitive service provider in the industry. The organization recently joined ASI to enhance its service offerings.

“We have to be competitive in a marketplace that’s a commodity that’s very competitive,” he says. “And so, we don’t expect people to pay – we could never expect people to pay a lot more to work with us, right? We can never expect people to sacrifice quality or customer service or turnaround time. All of that has to be a checkbox before the mission. And then the mission is kind of the cherry on top of the ice cream sundae.”

That balance of two different but related missions is what makes Spectrum Designs unique, and also what Bardsley says might be the secret to its success.

Spectrum Designs’ expansion takes into account its employees, many of whom are on the autism spectrum, such as proximity to public transit.

“I think the truth is that we have the same considerations as other companies,” he says. “We do have to pay our bills. We do have to make financial decisions. We do have to make tough business decisions where you go, ‘Wow, is that a mission decision or a business decision?’ And that is a tightrope that we walk. But I think that’s what makes us successful. I think if we went too heavy one way or another, like if we were just making business decisions and lost sight of the mission, that would be a bad thing. And on the contrary, if we [said], ‘Forget the money; we just need to focus on the mission,’ we wouldn’t last long either. I think we actually have to combine those and make a lot of calculations that any other company does in our space.”

Spectrum Designs is considering further expansion beyond the East Coast, too, having started conversations with potential partners in California and Illinois. But like any company looking to expand, Bardsley says that Spectrum needs to make wise decisions and weigh the possibilities and costs first.

“Are the other facilities mature and steady enough to handle the growth and addition of another one?” Bardsley says. “Are we structurally there as well? These are things we’re going to find out. But, I’m very confident about this first one in [New Jersey], and we’ll see where we go from there. I do think in the coming years there’ll be more Spectrum Designs locations opening in other places in the United States. And maybe in the next decade in the U.K., but I say that every decade. We’ll see. One time I’ll be right.”