Thirty years ago, a Victoria’s Secret merchant named David Hirsh left his job and started his own business. He was 30 years old. He’d noticed something many in the industry hadn’t said out loyet: many of the brands he was buying for couldn’t find vendors willing to do the unglamorous work. The figure-it-out, do-it-fast, do-it-well work that most companies tried to hand off.
So he became that vendor.
Today, his company sits in a 265,000-square-foot building on the edge of Johnstown. It moves over 1,000 ecommerce orders a day across seven different brands. It turns around every piece of in-store signage for Bath & Body Works in 24 hours. It screen-prints Homage tees by the truckload. It builds Mac Tools’ entire lifestyle apparel line, from concept to checkout. It plugs into the Shopify back-ends of influencers running their own merch operations.
You’ve probably owned something Atrium made. You’ve definitely walked past their work. The point is that you didn’t notice.
What You See When You Walk In
The first thing that hits you is the music.
Loud. Unapologetic. Bouncing off concrete in a 25,000-square-foot room where presses are running Patriots gear and someone’s loading direct-to-film transfers and a row of workers is folding, ticketing, and bagging Homage shirts bound for Dick’s Sporting Goods. Joe Ryber, who runs the warehouse, calls this “light manufacturing.” He says you can feel the temperature of the company by walking through it. He’s right.
Past the printing room, you hit staging. Blank shirts on pallets. Aisles of Bath & Body Works signage stacked floor to ceiling, organized by promotional theme. Fall harvest in one stack. Three-wick candle BOGO in another. It looks like a library if libraries shipped seasonal candle promotions.
Past staging, you hit the big room. 150,000 square feet of fulfillment. Auto-sensored lights flick on as you walk under them. Forklift drivers move pallets between static and dynamic zones. Pickers fill colored totes for whichever brand is up next on the rotation. Twenty-six dock doors line one wall, swallowing semi-trucks at a rate of ten to twelve a day.
This is where products finish their journey. Not Atrium products specifically. The product itself, period. From overseas factory to American consumer, this is one of the last buildings the box ever touches.
Concept to Consumer
David calls Atrium “vertically integrated.” His team calls it “we’ll do whatever you need us to do.” That’s what concept to consumer means. They’re end to end.
Most companies pick a specialty and scale it. Atrium did the opposite. They picked a small group of brands and went deeper with each one. Designing. Sourcing. Manufacturing. Decorating. Warehousing. Fulfilling. Distributing.
Mac Tools was an automotive tools company ten years ago. Today, with Atrium’s help, it’s a lifestyle brand running thousands of SKUs. Outerwear. Hats. Bar stools. Dart boards. Atrium designs the artwork, manufactures the products overseas, imports them through Johnstown, and ships them to retail and to consumers’ doorsteps.
Victoria’s Secret, where David started his career, never left the client list. Every day, store-supply distribution moves through the Johnstown facility. Bath & Body Works has been there nearly as long. So has Mac Tools. Newer names like Homage, Huega House, and Bussin’ With The Boys (the FanDuel Sports Network podcast) have stacked on top.
“A lot of successful companies are great at one thing and try to sell it to as many companies as possible,” Joe says. “We try to be as many things as possible to a few companies.”
Different math. Different result.
The People Are the Operation
A hundred and five people work at Atrium. Eighty are permanent. Another ten to twenty get layered in during the August-through-December rush, because retail is retail. One in six speaks more than one language. Four different languages get spoken on the warehouse floor on any given day.
“I don’t care what language you speak,” Joe says. “It’s really about body language.”
Rebecca has been with David for 27 years. Several others have been there 20 or 25. The number of multi-decade veterans isn’t the kind of thing you find in a typical 100-person fulfillment operation. It’s the kind of thing you find when the founder treats the building like a community he’s responsible for.
David is in that building most days. He’s not in an office. He gave his up.
“I’m out building relationships and working with customers,” he said. “Maybe one day again. Right now? No office.”
The CEO without an office is the CEO who knows what’s actually happening on the floor.
How a 30-Year-Old Company Survives
Atrium has lived through the dot-com bust, the 2008 financial crisis, COVID, and now tariffs. The strategy each time has been the same: pivot.
Justice Retail went out of business. Atrium picked up Homage. The L Brands Columbus ecosystem shifted under their feet. Atrium expanded into West Coast and East Coast clients. Department stores died. Specialty stores rose. Direct-to-consumer ate everything. Influencers started running their own merch lines.
Atrium plugged into all of it. Shopify. TikTok Shop. Amazon FBA. Instagram. Facebook Marketplace. If a brand can sell it, Atrium can store it, pick it, pack it, and ship it.
“If you got a million Instagram or TikTok followers and you need someone to handle the back end,” David said, “I want to talk to you.”
The Pitch
Three decades in, David’s pitch hasn’t really changed.
“Our competitive advantage is we’re willing to do the work.”
That’s it. No buzzwords. No corporate-speak. A 30-year-old, family-feeling, 265,000-square-foot building on the edge of Johnstown that’s quietly become indispensable to brands you already buy from.
David isn’t planning to retire it. He isn’t planning to sell it. He’s planning to be here for another 30 years.
Hidden in plain sight. Just the way he likes it.
Learn More
Atrium is online at atriumco.info.
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