Attracting, retaining and expanding businesses is at the forefront of the City of San Marcos’ economic development efforts. The City offers a variety of services to help businesses thrive.
Piercan, a worldwide leader in manufacturing niche polymer products, including specialty gloves (used by NASA, pharmaceutical companies, national laboratories, military, and beyond) experienced this concierge service first-hand. The City helped Piercan secure a $1.5 million California Competes Tax Credit (CCTC) this summer. Announced by Governor Gavin Newsom’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz), the income tax credit is set up to help businesses that want to grow and stay in California.
With this assistance, Piercan will expand their San Marcos operations and hire 62 new employees. The company will be investing more than $7.5 million in wages, equipment and improvements within the next five years.
“The City was instrumental in obtaining this tax credit,” said Julio Cedillo, General Manager of Piercan USA, Inc. “I’m very grateful for their support and their guidance through this process, as well as defining new opportunities to help us grow as a company in a reasonable and responsible way.”
Piercan, an international company headquartered in France since 1948, has been operating in the U.S. since 1995. It started in Vista, then expanded to San Marcos, where it currently employs more than 60 full time workers. Thanks, in part, to this tax credit, accelerated growth is on the horizon.
Piercan’s San Marcos headquarters specializes in containment isolator and glovebox gloves as well as bladders that are used to form unique carbon fiber components for aerospace and recreational markets to create propellers for airplanes, forks for bicycles, wing spars for drones and bows for violins among other products.
“We’re planning to grow, we’re going to create more jobs here in San Marcos, and we’re going to bring indirect development to this area. We want to stay in San Marcos, and we will likely double our size and workforce within in the next five years,” Cedillo said.
The City of San Marcos has helped five San Marcos companies secure nearly $3 million in state income tax credits since 2017, allowing local businesses to expand and create new jobs. Winning these tax credits is highly competitive, so City staff help guide business owners through the process.
Only 22 companies across the state were awarded tax credits in this round of CCTC tax credits – and San Marcos was the only city in northern San Diego County to make the list.
Of the more than $73 million tax credits awarded, nearly $18.2 million of that will go to nine businesses (of which Piercan is included) that are adding high-quality manufacturing jobs to our state – a national leader in manufacturing. Early in the stay-at-home order, Governor Newsom deemed manufacturing to be an essential function of California’s economy.
“As California works to safely recover from the COVID-19 induced recession, this tax credit program continues to be a model for both accountability and transparency. What we see today is 22 companies not only choosing California, but choosing Californians,” said Chris Dombrowski, GO-Biz Acting Director, and Chair of the California Competes Tax Credit Committee. “We are innovators at heart and so is our economy and we will continue to invest in companies that look to build the future here in California.”
To date, the City has helped Piercan USA, Inc. earn a $1.5 million tax credit that will create 62 jobs; Wholesale Shade earned a $500,000 tax credit to create 26 jobs; Cliniqa earned a $350,000 tax credit to create 24 jobs; Creative Electron earned a $446,700 tax credit to create 22 jobs; Oasis Breads earned a $200,000 tax credit to create six jobs and QC Power earned a $100,000 tax credit to create seven jobs.
These companies are all are part of San Marcos’ booming manufacturing industry, the City’s second-largest economic sector. Manufacturing provides 11 percent of local employment, which is about 4,300 jobs.
“We love helping connect local businesses with resources that will help them grow in San Marcos,” said Tess Sangster, Economic Development Director for the City of San Marcos. “This is a big win for the City and Piercan, as their expansion and creation of new jobs will boost our local economy and community.”
Learn more about the City’s economic development division, or contact Economic Development Director Tess Sangster at [email protected]; (760) 744-1050, ext. 3120.
