Longaberger Basket Co. (1997)
In 1978, sparked by the success of similar companies like Mary Kay and Avon, the Longaberger Basket Company created an empire through the multi-level-marketing sales model. By the mid-1990s, the company had 8,200 employees and 70,000 direct sales affiliates. Built by founder David Longaberger as headquarters for the Longaberger Basket Company, this building is a grand advertisement for its product and a unique features on the east Newark, Ohio landscape. It is a Mimetic form of their most popular product, a woven basket with a wooden handle. The basket-shaped building opened its doors in 1997, but its iconic building wouldn’t house the company for long. In 2016, with sales suffering and employee numbers down, the company moved out of the basket. The Longaberger company went out of business in 2018. But the basket building remains, an icon of Newark’s once billion-dollar industry.
