Exxel Outdoors Inc. Case Study

Exxel Outdoors Inc.
Case Study
Exxel Outdoors Inc.
Bringing American manufacturing jobs back by
betting big … and winning … on shuttered
Alabama sleeping bag factory
Haleyville, Ala. – Exxel Outdoors CEO Harry Kazazian made a calculated
gamble in buying a soon-to-be-closed sleeping bag factory in rural
Alabama at a time when most of the industry had moved to China. By
Fast facts:
modernizing, retooling and reinventing factory processes, Kazazian
- Founded in a garage in
the late 1980s
believed he could manufacture sleeping bags at lower cost and higher
quality than those he was getting from his Chinese manufacturers.
- More than 100
employees
- 20% growth in American
workforce from insourcing
- Providing critical
employment in area with a
high unemployment rate
- Town population: 4,300
- Recycles 98% of its
industrial waste
It was a good bet. Not only did he save desperately needed jobs in a
town with significantly high unemployment, his company continues to
bring previously outsourced jobs back to America, while also driving job
growth among the new American suppliers with which Exxel has
partnered. In January 2012, Kazazian was one of a few business leaders
asked to participate in President Obama’s “Insourcing American Jobs
Forum” in Washington, D.C.
Exxel Outdoors Inc.
“Colleagues said I was crazy to buy a plant slated for closure that was losing hundreds of thousands of
dollars monthly,” Kazazian said. “Today, we’ve increased American production of our sleeping bags from
40 to nearly 90 percent.”
Exxel Outdoors now produces more than two million bags annually at what remains the only major
sleeping bag factory in America. The company specializes in family camping bags under brands such as
Suisse Sport, American Trails and Master Sportsman, as well as a licensing agreement with brands like
Disney, Marvel and Hello Kitty.
Since rescuing the plant and expanding production, Exxel has increased its U.S. workforce by more than
20 percent with approximately 100 employees in Haleyville and plans to add about 25 percent more jobs
over the next two years. This expansion has had a ripple effect throughout the area. As Haleyville Mayor
Ken Sunseri explained, “Exxel has been a stable manufacturer in our community, providing not only
critical jobs for our citizens, but also for their suppliers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Mississippi and
Tennessee. Their payroll has built homes, bought groceries and provided economic development to our
city.”
Exxel Outdoors Inc.
Kazazian grew up poor in an immigrant family in Los Angeles, and literally began his business in his
garage in the late 1980s. So giving back to the community is elemental to his company’s corporate
culture. It routinely comes to the aid of communities struck by natural disasters, providing sleeping bags
and supplies to victims of Hurricane Katrina, the Haiti Earthquake, and the recent mid-west tornados that
hit the Alabama area particularly hard.
Being a good corporate steward of the earth is also important to its operations. The company’s products
are made from 80 percent recycled polyester fill, which has saved more than 32 million pounds of the
material from ending up in landfills. Exxel recycles 98 percent of its industrial waste, including shipping all
its cloth waste to India-based companies, who repurpose the material for other uses. It has reduced
package materials by 50 percent. And the company is exploring ways to run the plant completely on
renewable energy.
Kazazian believes his company’s successful gamble will be contagious in spurring other outdoor
companies to bring manufacturing jobs back to America. “Patriotism isn’t enough to make a factory run; it
has to make good business sense. We’ve proven that by making strategic efficiency improvement
investments, American manufacturing can compete and thrive. Companies tend to emulate success.”