LI business gets $660G tax break to expand in Deer Park

An e-commerce company specializing in seasonal products that first started off housing items in a bathroom of an apartment nearly a decade ago will move the business to a warehouse in Deer Park and receive a nearly $660,000 tax break deal from the Babylon Industrial Development Agency.

Smartbuy Direct Inc. will use a 62,000-square-foot property at 100 W. Industry Ct., relocating from a smaller space in Westbury that "limits our growth," according to the application submitted to the IDA in October.

Xiaohong Zhang, president of Smartbuy Direct, said this is the first warehouse property they’ve purchased. When she and her husband, Zhiyong Zhou, started the business in 2011, they used part of their two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment on Roosevelt Island in New York City as space for the business.

"We used our bathroom as our storage room and then we rented a small storage unit and then we grew gradually," said Zhang, who left her job as a scientist to start the business. "We kept renting bigger size warehouses."

The IDA, which cuts taxes for businesses in return for job creation and investment, approved Smartbuy's financial assistance application during its Dec. 16 board meeting. The payment in lieu of taxes agreement would save the couple $659,250 over 12 years with the promise of adding 26 jobs. The average annual salary for the proposed jobs ranges from $42,000 to $65,000, according to the application. Zhang said the company hopes to move in by late winter or spring 2021.

The current property owner in Deer Park is 100 Industry Associates LLC and pays $155,540.20 annually in taxes, said Dan Schaefer, a Babylon Town spokesman. Smartbuy will spend $9.2 million on purchasing, renovating and equipping the building.

In 2012, Zhang and Zhou, who is vice president of Smartbuy Direct, moved the business to Hicksville and later to Westbury in 2015. The couple resides in Jericho.

Business at Smartbuy started to pick up after closing for three months following the lockdown order in March by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to stop the coronavirus spread, Zhou said. The company applied for and received a Payment Protection Program loan offered by the U.S. Small Business Administration to preserve the company’s 10 jobs.

While businesses have struggled to stay open during the pandemic, Zhang said she tries to remain hopeful about the future.

"There are challenges, and I always try to be positive and try to find a solution under this hard situation," she said.