TLC's Friday Adventures

Today, TLC staff was lucky enough to be invited to take a tour of the Dansko office buildings, and the Dansko warehouse out in Jennersville.   We thought that our blog readers would be interested in learning about this wonderful business that is in our back yard.

When you first pull up to the office buildings, you'll see beautiful gardens around the parking lots.  They are not only pretty but functional in filtering all of the runoff from the buildings and parking lot into various systems that get reused throughout the property.  Only in very large storms--Hurricane Sandy size, does Dansko have runoff leave their property.  There is an amazing array of local artists who have sculptures throughout the parking lot and paintings and sculptures also line the walls of the interior.

When we entered the office building, the first thing that you see is the green wall.  Not only does it offer a spectacular diversity of plants, but was also the largest in the United States when it was built--Longwood Gardens drew their inspiration from Dansko's living wall.  The lobby also has a floor that is made of completely recycled and reused glass--this theme of re-purposed materials and supporting local efforts is a large part of Dansko's culture.  The offices were constructed in a way that used many recycled and local materials, and is highly energy efficient. 

They do all of their work in-house: Marketing, Design, Photo Shoots, Accounts Payable, IT work--including programming--if it is a function of Dansko's business--someone in our community is employed to handle it.  Everywhere you look throughout the building you see hints at how generous the business is throughout the community.  If you are familiar with TLC, you know how much Dansko supports our organization, but they give support to so many organizations in the county.  Above and beyond, they also care about their small and local retailers, in fact, the reason that you can't walk into a Dansko store anywhere in the United States (with the exception of the outlet in Jennersville) is because they want to help support local entrepreneurs and smaller stores throughout the country.  In addition to being so amazing and supportive both philanthropically and also among the local community--they just built an amazing warehouse!

The second leg of our tour involved the warehouse where we saw the robot operated system which helps to ease the shipping and handling process.  The machines help to bring shoes to the front of the warehouse


where they are packed, processed, and shipped by the Dansko employees.  In this case, technology has definitely not taken away jobs, but has helped to make the jobs of the employees much more efficient. 

After the tour, we did a little shopping--make sure to come out to one of our upcoming events to check out our new Dansko kicks.