COOPWORX LLC

411 Landmark Drive, Wilmington

Number of employees: 3
 
Year founded: 2020
 
Top local official: Tom Carter, owner
 
Company description: CoopWorx manufactures feed and water silos for chickens. The company, founded by a father-daughter duo, has sold nearly 2,000 units since it launched.
 
Products made locally: The company’s feeder comes in two sizes (40-pound and 80-pound silos) and two stand options (four legs and a single pole). The product is unique from most feeders on the market because it provides food and water off the ground, which eliminates pest issues, and includes hooded feed ports to prevent water from damaging pellets.
 
Molds are delivered and engineered by Idea Logic in Cary, and CoopWorx employees trim and prepare the molds and assemble the additional parts to prepare for shipment to customers.
 
Product distribution: Carter: “All over the country. It’s amazing how many places; we’ve shipped to Washington state, Oregon, we’ve shipped to Canada, we just shipped to Australia, Italy. They’re shipping everywhere.”
 
What made the company decide to make its goods locally? CoopWorx is a subsidiary of Carter’s original business, EXPOGO Inc., which manufactures portable tradeshow displays in Wilmington. Given EXPOGO’s existing relationships, location and product development pipeline, setting up CoopWorx as a subsidiary made sense, Carter said.
 
What’s your target market? Carter: “Anybody with backyard chickens ... Most people have 10 to 20 chickens, but it’s all over. We have a customer that’s got 300 chickens. We’ve got people with about three or four or five of them that are just basically backyard chickens or ducks. It works great with ducks.”
 
What’s planned next? Carter: “We’re going to be looking for a manufacturing partner that wants to manufacture in some of these other countries ... and then we would license the ability ... and provide the other components to them. Since it’s a bulky product, it’s expensive to ship.
 
“We’re getting ready to put a robotic trimmer in so that it can handle the stuff that’s being done with a drill and by hand right now.”

---

EDITOR’S NOTE: To be considered for the Greater Wilmington Business Journal’s MADE feature, contact [email protected].